After getting feedback for some time that I should start blogging for a variety of reasons, and as I got directed to this site from a friend's blog on Facebook, I decided today was as good a time as any. I don't consider myself a particularly great writer, but I do think I think about a lot of interesting things, and have had a lot of interesting experiences (which will be the subject of some blogs,) and thus I begin.
I am 54 years old, married for the third time, to the Keeper Husband. I never dreamed I would be married more than once, since for my parents it was "till death do they part": married in their early 20's, they had 46 years of marriage until my father died from a level 4 glioblastoma, an incurable form of brain cancer. My parents' marriage was volatile at times mainly (in my perspective) because of my mother's issues, but overall I believe they were happy and loved each other very much, and that was my role modeling.
My first marriage was to another assimilated Jew like myself; we were married for 14 years and had two children. My second was to a Catholic who attended a Unity spiritual center, and lasted less than 5 years. TWO divorces? Eek!
While growing up, I also never imagined I would have the lengthy health issues I've faced. I had my first bout of ulcerative colitis at the very early age of 10, then had only an occasional flareup until I was reaching the end of my second pregnancy at age 35. At that point I was sick on and off for the next 11 years, the last 3 being chronic and increasingly severe, until I was hospitalized on New Year's Eve of 2003 weighing 95 lbs.
I had lost 30 lbs in the previous 4 weeks, losing 2 lbs every day at the end, and was literally dying of malnutrition and dehydration, because - as we were soon to find out - my colon was almost completely shredded.
The following week I had a permanent ileostomy performed when they removed my colon. (Most people have heard of a "colostomy", which is when there is still some colon left. No colon is called an ileostomy, because it ends at the ileum.) What this means is that the end of my intestine permanently sticks out of my abdominal wall and is covered by a medical pouch 24/7, which I poop into and empty several times a day. I completely change the entire pouch a bit more often than once a week.
Remove the diseased colon and I'm done, right? WRONG... Four years after my surgery I was almost completely crippled with horrible pain inside my entire body and out, and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Turns out I have a propensity for inflammation: eat the wrong foods, get too stressed, get physically injured, or get exposed to the wrong chemicals (inhaled, topical or ingested) and my body would go crazy. After receiving excellent care from my friend Dr. Lucia Lein in Shoreview, MN, a brilliant alternative doctor, I eventually reached the point of my pain being at about a 1 or 2 most days, down from the original 10. I have continued getting great care from Dr. Brett Brimhall, of Brimhall Wellness Center in Mesa, Arizona. (In some circles he is considered to be one of the top natural doctors in the country.)
Another thing I never expected during my "normal" white bread upbringing: that I would have a transgender son. My second child was born Rachel, from the age of 2 starting insisting he was a boy, he was supposed to have been a boy, and that when he grew up he was going to be a boy. His dad and I tried to explain that it doesn't work that way, and assumed that he was probably going to be gay (which was fine with both of us at the time) but the joke was on us: on September 23, 2010, a Hennepin County judge declared him legally male, and approved his legal name change to Trey.
I read other blogs and newspaper articles about parents who are condemned by the religious right for "allowing" their children to be trans, or "turning" their children into trans people, and I can say with complete confidence that it does not work that way. Although I had watched plenty of Oprah I had never really plugged in what transgender was, least of all that I had a trans child myself. Almost his whole life he would get extremely excited whenever anyone mistook him for a boy, and starting at about 7 years old begged to be allowed to wear only boy's clothing. For a few years he did think he was gay because he didn't know about transgender then, and could only identify that he liked girls and definitely did not feel like one himself. He figured out who he is by attending a GLBT group at his high school, and has never looked back.
He does have some effeminate mannerisms, but from attending a U of MN support group for trans teens and their parents (The "Trans-parents" bwahahaha) I got much better at not being "binary", or going straight into labeling people based on their looks or behavior. Gender identity is much more fluid than that, and I enjoy catching my old brain trying to pigeonhole people.
I also never expected to lose my only sibling, my older sister Diana, to suicide. This is another topic I'll be blogging about at some point, since this experience had a profound impact on my beliefs about that choice.
The last thing I'll mention that I never dreamed I'd do in my lifetime is the level of travel I've enjoyed. My mother has always been very gung-ho about travel, and her joy of it has enabled my children and me to have experiences most people can only imagine. Trey turned 8 in the Galapagos Islands, and the children were 10 and 13 when we went to Antarctica with Wasbund #2. My daughter Sara has been scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef thanks to my mother, and I have been to every continent except Africa - about 27 countries, including to India twice, Japan twice, France 8 times, Denmark, Peru, the former Yugoslavia, very remote islands in the western South Pacific (Melanesia and Micronesia,) and many others. I was also an exchange student in France and Germany.
When William and I were putting our house on the market in MN, I had many boxes of memorabilia to go through in preparation for our impending move. I spent days reading printed out emails, letters, magazine and newspaper articles I had written, etc.
Having so much of my life distilled right in front of me was amazing: at age 52 I recognized that I had already been through more than most people go through in several lifetimes, between the health issues and almost dying, 19 years in 2 abusive marriages, the extensive travel, the deep level of friendship I enjoyed with so many incredible people, the variety of jobs and interests I've had, the level of personal and spiritual growth I've accomplished... I just sat there and felt an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude. I came into this lifetime to play on "fast forward" and am certainly achieving what I had set out to do!
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