Author Archives: adventurerliberated

Yesterday I had a very stressful day. Logistically stressful because of expensive car issues and emotionally taxing because of the exit interview for my current job that ends in two weeks.  All I wanted by the end of the day was quiet — and to be held. I would have really needed (or wanted?) somebodyContinue reading “Holding ourselves, holding each other”

This summer, I’ve often felt sad and disappointed for being unable, because of injuries, to achieve the goals I had set myself: climbing and leading trad routes; bagging fourteeners; preparing to run my first full marathon in October (before I turn 43). In many moments, it’s felt like each goal I was setting myself wasContinue reading “Giving space & creating inclusive spaces”

[Trigger warnings: panic responses, meltdown; transphobia.] I finally dragged myself out of bed past ten thirty this morning. Part of it was simply physical exhaustion: I was unable to get to sleep until almost one in the morning and then woke up to pee shortly before six and couldn’t get back to sleep for aContinue reading “Delayed meltdown”

The main feeling I have as a first impression after my first rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus is that I’m not a gay guy after all.  Gay men seem to be so strongly defined by their sexuality, or sexual orientation — allosexual and gay.  I, instead, feel more defined by my transmasculinity, i.e. byContinue reading “First impression”

I don’t know what it is, I cannot pinpoint it, but my voice is different from that of cis-men. I hit the notes of baritones, I get them right, and I can even go as low as many basses, but something is different: I sing the same notes as cis-male-baritones but it sounds different somehow. Continue reading “My voice is different”

Today’s the big day: my first rehearsal with the gay men’s chorus!  And I’m feeling positively terrified.  These next couple days will be an immersion in masculinity in different, and diverse, ways: this afternoon I’ll be cross-training at the gym with my closest climbing buddy and then we’ll get food together, to have some ofContinue reading “Stepping out into the broader world of masculinity”

There are three main types of wounds or traumas or causes for pain that are mentioned in relationships: rejection, abandonment, and neglect.   Rejection and abandonment are often the “two loud siblings” in this trio of poisons: they are usually the ones that are easier to see, easier to detect; they can literally be loudContinue reading “Neglect: the quiet killer”

I honestly didn’t think this day would ever come: the day I would think of myself as a “man”. I still am, and feel, trans and nonbinary and gender-nonconforming. I always will be all that. But today I can pair those adjectives, or labels, together with the word “man” to describe myself: no longer justContinue reading “The beauty and weight of being (perceived as) a man”

[Trigger warning: grief; old age, end of life, death.] I’m falling apart. Both literally and figuratively. My body is physically falling apart which is causing my spirit to break down and my mental health to go down the drain.  I don’t know how much longer I can go on this way. If this is theContinue reading “Falling apart”