Author Archives: tiphane

pronouns: they/them/their

the Healing Hearts 5K

I’m walking, not running, tomorrow in the Healing Hearts 5K around Lake Merritt in Oakland, a benefit for the Crisis Support Center of Alameda Co… Anyone can join my team here: runsignup.com/bibi

I’m never sure how to talk about attending this yearly run, as it’s sort of raising the question “why?” that I don’t really know how to explain. Yet I want to explain it here while keeping a veil on events and personal feelings.

It has been an emotional roller coaster this past year, and like many people I must turn off the news when it’s just too much to bear. Lately I went from a longer high note, to then crash in feeling unsupported. I feel that most people around me see the problems as political, not personal, so for them it’s a matter of voting at the next election. For me, every day the news want to remind everyone that trans people should be scrutinized and judged on superficial argumentation. What happened to “live and let live?”

Very early in my life, my mother wanted to steer me towards being a boy, and other adults messed with my mind a bit more, so I had a hard time relying on others for support. I turned violent against myself a few times, or readily adopted self-sacrificing ideas like fasting, but I’m also hypersensitive and intolerant of pain (it gets even more complicated, as I will hide the pain because I expect scorn from others).

So this morning, as I recovered from about a week of a combination of negative feelings (I’m aging and my body needs more maintenance), I figured it was like this: I am walking a tight rope, getting some support that feels fragile at times, and it’s hailing with hateful policies and language. I fear asking for support, because in me is this feeling that my friends could withdraw in the way the adults in my childhood withdrew and wanted to quiet me.

And so I fear telling a friend they’re important to me! But they are, and I’m anxious not to do anything that could jeopardize my fragile support system.

So that’s how I feel when I join the Healing Hearts run/walk: there is a support system when yours falls apart. And we should support that.

Ignore the Trolls

It’s been a while, I know, but if you look at the date of this post, we’re two months into the regime, and most of my time has been spent trying to shield myself from it all.
As I may have mentioned before, my Modern Dance class and teacher have been my sanctuary, but also my avenue to process my emotions. Lately I have attended often enough that I learn the choreography of the month quicker (combined with learning how to learn), and I can let the movement take over and soothe my mind. At times I have gone to class feeling desperate, and the warm-up sequences felt arduous until I had sort of a crying moment, after which I was rebuilding myself with every movement. And then I laugh whenever I forget where I am and go in the wrong direction!
In my class two days ago, I found myself next to another dancer who had made an unasked for negative comment to me before, and I was distracted by their style and presence, as if I owned the space. It was not until I chose to ignore them that I could dance freely (and frankly better). They were still there, but I deliberately ignored their presence and I was no longer distracted. I enjoyed the dance so much, and I realized that I had put myself in a leading position for others.
So that is the essence of my message today: ignore the trolls, do not engage with them. Build your own scenes, as you would in an Improv class where you leave your ego at the door. Ignore the bullies (who form the current government), and chase the old ones away from your mind. I realized the whole lot of the people in power now were like the bullies of my youth: unable to grow up, stuck in a narrative of dominating by violent words and actions.
In a sense, these modern grown bullies have helped me improve my self-esteem. My own flavor of gender dysphoria nourishes my low self-esteem, but having bullies so senselessly destroying everything around them has had the reverse effect on me. They are despicable and hateful. Why would I let any of them influence me?

Sometimes I Feel Like a Child Needing a Hand…

Sometimes I feel like a child needing a hand to go through a difficult moment, but there’s no hand…  Do I mean I’m helpless?  There’s a positive bent to it: most of my life I have learned to solve my own problems.  But unlike the heroes in movies, I have serious vulnerabilities and I get swayed into perfect storms like the one I just experienced.

I remember High School Physics only for the demonstration of how waves interact with each other.  You can experiment in a bathtub if you wish: waves originating from different sources at different frequencies add (and subtract) when they meet, and create stormy conditions.  The emotional storm I was experiencing originated from nearby waves (recent interactions) with waves that have been going on in my body for decades.

I hate myself (more about that later) for even exposing that I blame my mother for several things, but other adults when I was a child were either harmful, uncaring, or just plain scary.  My peers from my age group were either bullies or indifferent, and all I could really do was to try as hard as I could to bring good grades from school in order to get recognition from my mother.  That was hard work also because I seemed to have trouble learning in class especially when interrogated.  Several of my waves originate from events in childhood that were outright traumatic, or were themselves trauma caused by the responses to my responses to trauma.  After that the best protection against the daily bullying is to make yourself as quiet and invisible as possible.

Now that decades have passed with a few episodes of self-harm, I find myself coping with gender dysphoria in my own way.  It does come back, like a ghost, or… what I learned about abusive people.  I feel very vulnerable, but I return kindness with extra kindness, and sometimes I have to control it so the kind people will not feel invaded by my desire to hang on.  I read signs of abandonment when others are just living their own lives, and again I try to solve those issues on my own.  It is very tiring, and it comes to that storm I was describing, when I try to please everyone, sacrificing myself, doing unsolicited volunteer work and then fearing the wrath of those whose work I just did.  And so on and so forth.

Sorry this was as cryptic as I could make it…  I don’t want to describe real situations and actual people.  But in recent years, my entourage has been very positive, I find I can love people and read how much they can take.  The hardest part for me is to understand that I am not the cause of someone’s sadness, and to take a step back before I try with all my capacities to fix it.  That comes from a form of emotional blackmail my mother practiced with me.  The sad thing is I don’t remember her being happy with me while I do remember her anger at me when I returned from school in complete distress (she was angry at the fact I had peed in my pants as a result of the chain of events that had caused it).  Or when I had tripped from roller skates and hurt my knees.  Or when I had been stung by wasps.  They were all accidents, but somehow instead of comforting me she focused on whatever I shouldn’t have done.  I have a hunch this doesn’t lead to being curious or adventurous…

After reading this text above, I hesitate to show it to anyone, but I tell myself it might help someone.  Maybe parents and caregivers can be more aware of how they react to unexpected behaviors in children.  Maybe other adults can learn to address their childhood issues with less harmful ways than drugs, alcohol, or self-harm.  It can be daunting, because I know how easier it was to drink a bottle of wine to put myself in a slumber to forget a confrontation.  Come to think of it, that will be the subject of my next post!

Memoir or not Memoir?

Last night, I attended a play reading (“Pluck” by Jan Rosenberg) and stayed for the post-show discussion.  I often resist being there because it usually takes me a few hours to understand it better, and as was the case for those who talked, my focus had been on the eating disorder part.  Yet, while I could relate to how I have had ups and downs with my food over the course of a lifetime, I felt I had missed the mythology in it.  It was a generational thing, the myth including a werewolf, which would be associated with being trans.  I often quote my third therapist saying that all their clients had very different experiences leading to who they were, and I certainly didn’t grow up knowing what was inside of me.

I often wake up, as I did this morning, with the feeling I “should” write a memoir piece.  Yet I have started more than one and left it on the pages of a notebook, or in a file on my computer, abandoning the project at the thought of reader bullies…  But also because in my “third third” (Ann Lamott’s expression) I feel I want to spend most of my time dancing (modern) and running.  While running is my way to maintain my body in good condition (a self-esteem booster too), dancing at the studio where I go has been the equivalent of unspoken therapy (expressing myself through movement) as well as improving my social life.  So writing memoir, writing a blog, or anything that might involve the judgment of others, has taken a back seat.

It’s also complicated.  I don’t have a simple biographical line that could explain who I am today.  I still question myself against the norms of my generation, in which someone transitioned with conviction or remained closeted for the sake of fitting the binary.  I have been relieved by how young people now have a looser classification of themselves.  I live in a town where I don’t turn heads (except for the annual influx of tourists) and rarely get the angry stare of a man for whom my image is challenging, so I’ve been lazy with my appearance (luckily because it’s still a lot of work going out).  I have hair loss, but still prefer my long hair to wearing a wig, so I always have a hat on.  Or a head band in dance class.  And the wig doesn’t fit inside my bike helmet.  So I settle for “my pronouns are they/them or she/her” so I lessen the need for another judgment: am I trans enough?

Alright, then.  I’m not sure what the next post will be…  But it will come…

On Getting in Touch with Feelings

I’ve been a few months “nesting” in the way perhaps others have experienced post-pandemic. I used to fly away as an escape, but now it feels like I don’t need to escape, and I can claim I’m saving the planet by flying less, but rather it is because I’m finding happiness in my daily life.

I’m attributing this change in great part to attending a Modern Dance class, specifically for Older and Returning Dancers. I prudently signed up for this class, because my past is loaded with issues: first finding happiness in attending a friend’s class, but then having to go locally to a class in which the teacher and some “friends” enjoyed criticizing me. Follow that with decades away from the dance floor. The occasional party in which the music and the social scene were right would allow me to find pleasure again in the movement. And then finally, at the beginning of this year, part of my decision to nest, I found this class. The first time I went, I kept repeating to myself “this is not an audition” to calm my fears I would be singled out and shown as the person with an inflexible body (and the wrong gender). The teacher, Robin Nasatir, turned out to be the best for people like me. At every class since then, she’ll joke that everyone gets an A, and if you find yourself forgetting or going in the wrong direction, just improvise (I find that I just catch up by checking others). It totally works. I found that every class raised my happiness level. I would sometimes show up with the weight of the world on my shoulders, and leave the class lighter.

Which is what happened at the last class in October, when most of us have worked the choreography of the month often enough to be in some kind of automatic mode. It was our last opportunity to do it, when Robin put a different music and said to improvise the tempo by letting the music guide us through. Little did I know, the music came like a gentle wave at the beginning, which carried my limbs through the moves, but crescendoed with a heavy bass coinciding with a moment in which we dropped our bodies and raised them up before stepping into a rond de jambe… Anyway, I had seen our teacher do that move and wondered how could she drop so well in so short a time, but now I had the luxury of time. Little did I know I started crying… The music felt like the weight of the world, my body did drop, and then I had to rise against it, still crying, my hand finally opening up to the ceiling, and my mind only questioning in the background if I should just stop there because, you know, you’re crying?

Usually I find joy in dancing on a happy kind of music (I’m finding Dancing Queen old now that my repertoire has widened). Some people go on roller coasters, I’d rather be on the dance floor. But that day felt like many clouds in my mind parted to let the sunshine in. A new month with a new choreography has just started, a little more learning and attention are needed, but it’s fun too and I feel lighter (I am trying to maintain weight, believe it or not, seemingly because older people lose muscle mass?), because the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders…

And so, yeah, I’m not going on random travels. I also try to shield myself from news of the anti-trans movement, because I feel so fragile returning to the times of my childhood with all the eyes looking down on me to make sure I repressed all feelings. I also find that’s part of nesting, making sure my environment doesn’t question myself (and I know where the pitfalls are).

San Francisco Pride 2023

I often get depressed on Pride week-end, when it would seem it’s a big party out there… Which is probably just confirming that I’m an introvert! But this year I had a full week-end:

On Friday I was attending TransMarch, which to me is meaningful and non-commercial. I was late to it but just in time for the march itself, and ended up in front of it where… they used to have the elders in and around the trolley. Except that I realized I’m an elder now, and one of the few still around. Anyway, we were delayed at the start by a group staging a street die-out, and then on Market street waiting for the traffic people to let the cross-streets flow, and I needed to go eat and sleep… A photo of us appeared on sfgate with me very visible in the center of it:

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/san-francisco-trans-march-2023-18169122.php

So that was fun… Also to see the youth in all stages of gender fluidity, I remember my own youth spent mostly disconnected yet having a tiny desire to be like them, except they weren’t born yet to show me the way!

Then on Saturday morning I ran the SF Pride Run in Golden Gate Park. I had signed up as non-binary, abandoning the competitiveness of my age category, and yet noticing that the F side of the binary had very fast runners in the 60-69 age group, while I might have been leading the M 60-69 age group! I used to place maybe third, or sometimes fourth or fifth, and this was again confirming that many of us may have left during or after the pandemic. I also feel the fragility of this age, that the time will come when I’ll slow down and maybe walk part of the way.

On the way back from the run, riding the N-Judah, I had the unfortunate chance of sitting across a person who, after seeing my Pride Run t-shirt and number, started blabbering their view of what the letters LGBT (notice the old four-letter acronym) meant, and how this was contrary to their christian beliefs. I ignored it, letting myself cry inside and looking away. There was repetition in the recitation, which I have heard before as signs of mental illness (the person recites news bytes from TV, etc.), and I certainly didn’t want to engage and try to educate them! A couple of young women who had also come back from the run whispered words of support as they exited, which helped me smile back at them…

I was thinking about religion… How they condition their followers with their beliefs about other people, and those beliefs never get realigned with reality…

Anyway, on Sunday I volunteered to be a “monitor” on the Pride Parade course on Market street! I felt like doing that, almost like a “bucket list” type of thing. Some years ago I had marched with the ACLU contingent, but this year no such opportunity had made itself available. The task was supposed to be showing contingents a sign to speed up or slow down, but it became clear right away that we had no control over it. But it was great fun to help people avoid tripping on the curb of the bus shelter, and to pass the occasional gifts to the kids on the other side of the shelter! I made my own personal awards as follows: most self-centered contingent, Apple; saddest contingent, Macy’s (a few people holding a banner, a sign of the times); perplexing but courageous contingent, Target (because of how they reacted to right-wing threats); largest gap made, DHL; greatest adversary, the wind blowing against their banner.

And unlike my imagined fears, no right-wing terrorist. Hopefully they are busy harassing people on the internet and shooting cans in their backyard…

Finally on Sunday night I went back to see the closing night of ACT’s Wizard of Oz, which was so great because they had mostly local actors I knew already performing so well together in a very creative staging. I never saw the movie, and I think it would lack all the qualities I fund in this production. I was so happy to be in San Francisco…

Buying a Swimsuit as a Political Act!

This turned out to be too funny, and sad at the same time. The threats by the Republican Bigots on Target for featuring Pride-themed items, as they have done for many years without so much attention, made me curious to see what they had come up with… And I ended up buying that controversial swimsuit, along with a very comfortable gaff. Now as I went back to Target’s web site, it seems they have withdrawn it…

Which is too bad… Receiving it and trying it on gave me a moment of Trans Joy! For the first time in my long life I was comfortable in a swimsuit!!! Highly recommended now, I wonder if they’ll reappear wherever they can send them without getting the bigots’ attention (let me guess it won’t be a church-affiliated thrift shop)!

Seriously, however, the current assault by the Republican Party on trans and LGBTQ+ people is so despicable and indeed we have reached the point in which they have motivated wannabee terrorists to threaten the people at Target. They have already motivated shooters, and they act as if nothing happened. I don’t see how anyone could be a member of that party, as they have gone well beyond civil political tactics.

Making Bags for Donations

During the pandemic, I have made several tote bags following a pattern by noodlehead with variations… I’m also offering to make a grocery size bag on demand using fabrics that I have or that the buyer supplies.

Here are the current bags I offer (usually in a fundraiser, that I list in this page)… Contact me for questions!

Rainbow Unicorns Sold!

The unicorn bag differs from others in that there is no outside pocket, and the inside pocket is divided. The sides and the bottom have a canvas interior, and the handles are made with the same dark blue twill as the bottom.

Horses

This bag has two outside pockets and one inside, the bottom is made with a thick denim fabric, the inside lining is black twill.

Orange in Red

This bag has two outside pockets, both inside and outside bottom sections are made with a sturdy fabric. The lining and handles are a bright orange twill that complements the ensemble.

Pink in Blue Diamonds

I worked at a studio alongside quilters and was inspired to build these panels and combine these fabrics with the pink twill used for the lining. Two outside pockets, and one inside. The bottom has a foam layer inside.

Flower Squares

Two outside pockets, and one inside with a snap button. The lining, handles, and the bottom are black twill.

Shopping Bag

This is the bag I use every day and is the model for a custom-made bag if you request it! The lining is a natural color fabric (the vendor says it’s waterproof), the handles are a 1″ webbing. Ask for what other fabrics I have, or supply your own (I find many at Discount Fabrics in Berkeley), preferably cotton. I have been using this bag every day, it’s even been a favorite at the check-out counter!

Reentry and the INFP that I Am

An hour from now, I am going to a social event, my first one in about a year and a half of the pandemic isolation. There will be people with whom I cut ties at our last zoom meeting, when I had a meltdown of sorts (in what I recognize now as a typical INFP incident), people I like to see from a respectable distance, and people who have not seen me as a trans woman before. Also, I no longer drink, and I will opt for the sparkling water instead of a glass of wine. I will most likely escape after an hour, which will be easier because this is not at someone’s house where I would feel pressured to be polite and graceful in making an excuse for leaving.

I’ve been told many people have issues similar to that with “reentry,” resuming a daily life of being exposed to interactions with people. It’s not that I’m afraid to catch one of the COVID variants that could come back with some of those who already fly around and stir the big virus pool. It’s really that I’m back in a world that needs to be managed.

Recently, after having a few interactions that were disturbing, I returned to reading passages in the book, Please Understand Me II. In it is a guiding questionnaire to figure where you may fit in the four-axis personality and character scale known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The first time I took the Myers-Briggs, administered by a therapist, I was definitely IN, but as the therapist pointed out, I was only hinting at TJ. INTJ would be your typical Computer Science major, like I was. I figured out lots of things with this therapist, but not everything (it’s taking me decades), and I didn’t have a chance to revisit the questionnaire (especially because I was ESL in the language of feelings and emotions at the time), until about 15 years later, when I still remained 100% Introvert, but the last two letters had shifted to NP. Reading the description of Plato’s Idealist and other subclassifications in the book somehow didn’t satisfy me, because that was challenging my career choices and also the marriage that was coming into a big crash ending. Decades later, now, after discovering so many things about myself, reading about it is making a lot of sense.

Last night, I went back to another very useful book, The Introvert Advantage, which I had found so useful that I had made a presentation about it to a group at a retreat. In it was not only information about who are introverts, but also strategies on how to live better lives without feeling bad about not being the life of the party. Last night I saw that they had made studies on how we (introverts) think and interact, how the pathway in the brain is different, which I had sort of skimmed through before. But I just had had the experience of a couple of meetings with a person who was “making my head spin” and I needed to figure out how that was happening.

I have always been easy prey for con people, salespeople, and Catholics (because I was raised in a very Catholic environment, and there were fanatic Catholics who took me as their project when things were falling apart – I have recovered from that). The thing I figured out last night was that I respond emotionally to certain words and situations, and I don’t have time to process, so my response is usually to end the interaction with buying whatever it is they’re trying to sell me. In the past, I have had to cancel memberships and payments pledged the day before. When there’s a more personal involvement, it provokes a storm in me, I become obsessed with how to reconcile the need to break the relationship and that of creating harmony around me. It takes a lot of time, and the anxiety can be very high (I start fearing that the person will find ways to be back). I’m not surprised that some of us can develop mental illness from being exposed too much. In my case, I think I figured it’s better to hide, yes, but to tell the intruder that I’m stressed out at the moment.

So… I continue writing this 24 hours later. I went to the event and I was happy at the end. I wore a dress I made, no leggings because of the warm weather (I made sure there were no apparent hairs!), a pair of sandals I rarely wear, a hat (that I made as well) I always wear because I have a seriously bald spot. Most of the people I talked to had fared well in the sheltering-at-home, as I had. Most of the people had not seen me in a dress before (I used to wear mostly sweaters and tight pants), and many expressed being happy to see me be out. Only one person acted like I didn’t exist, but then I realized that this had been our situation ever since we had met. I resisted dwelling on that person as it would break my happiness with the event. That is an INFP characteristic to want harmony around us, but relearning about that allowed me to ignore the thought that there remained at least one person who was not happy with me. I turned the feeling around: they have never connected with me. In fact, there was a time when they should have, as the leader of the group, checked on my well-being, and they never did. I left the group without explanation and they never asked why.

So it’s all good. The key was to stop thinking about how I could have made this relationship better, when it is in fact meaningless. There is no purpose in trying to be a nice person to everyone, and constantly wondering if I disappoint them. That just makes me vulnerable to salespeople and con men!

And most importantly, I came out as transgender to so many people by just being there, that I have gained self-esteem overnight. That was a major event!

p.s. I just found out that the book Please Understand Me II by Kersey is an improvement of the Myers-Briggs test, which has been criticized for leading to inaccurate assessment of people in work environments. So go to https://keirsey.com/ to find out!