Today’s eight months after my gender-affirming top-surgery, a.k.a. masculinizing mastectomy.
Today’s also four weeks after hitting rock bottom at the end of August, like sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and then starting to come back up.
The coming back up hasn’t been easy or rosy, and in many ways I still feel disheartened or disillusioned as well as tired.
Friends and community and rituals and nature helped me turn a corner somewhere, somehow, after hitting rock bottom four weeks ago.
The blue “supermoon”, or super blue moon, on August 30th & 31st, enjoying it on my own on that Wednesday and then admiring it together with my housemate on the Thursday night. And embracing the pagan ritual of setting an intention to shed things, feelings, behaviors we don’t want or need, setting the intention with the full moon and then shedding with the moon’s waning over the next two weeks until the New Moon and the ensuing possibilities of renewal.
So then I celebrated the New Moon in September, enhanced by Rosh Hashanah and its rituals that I shared with one of my closest non-binary friends here who is Jewish. Among other things, I went bathing in the creek, immersed my whole body (with its beautiful boyish chest) in the refreshing running waters and then basked in the sunshine. Meditated, relaxed, and then went out dancing, to celebrate the new moon, the summer ending and the new season approaching.
Then, this past weekend, it was the Autumn Equinox immediately followed by the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur: a New Season starting not only with renewed intentions but also with a heightened understanding of myself, of my life, my patterns, my behaviors, my choices, and of Love. I asked for forgiveness where I felt I might need to, opened myself back up to the possibility of a relationship or, at least, dialogue, with someone important in my life, while also taking on my responsibilities with a new perspective that comes from a new awareness.
These four weeks feel like they’ve been a lot of work. It’s been very intentional work. I’m still feeling extremely disillusioned about it being really useful in the long run from the practical viewpoint of functioning in this materialistic world, but it has brought me some peace. Maybe a disheartened peace, but some peace nonetheless.
The Little Prince and the Fox 