Introduction

©Megan Newton Photography
June, 2018

When I told my brother Caleb that I decided to have top surgery, I paired it with a 30 minute download on my emotional process of arriving at the decision, on the C train, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I wanted to keep telling him more but we had reached W 4th St and I needed to get off while he continued up into the Bronx. I wandered around Washington Square Park waiting to find my partner, while I continued to tell myself aloud, how I had arrived. From that point on, I decided I would capture this process in a more tangible and lasting way. 

I considered what had helped me navigate this journey, including countless blogs and facebook posts, FAQ’s for surgeons, and insurance navigation advice. I feel infinitely grateful for these resources and this is not that. Instead, I sought to name my experience in the spaces between the to-do lists and physical labor, between the dysphoria and freedom. I wanted to capture and pause and hold what happens in the liminal space of transition.

TransRamblings is a collection of journal entries, poetry, and random stories, and photos taken by Megan Newton, who became my friend throughout this process. It is not a full story, but instead excerpts that can be read linearly, or not. It tells of an emotional journey capturing the intersections of my trans identity with my very personal experience of growing up in a dysfunctional household, losing my mother and brother at age 9, and being a social justice activist, organizer, performance artist, poet and nature-lover. The overlap exists in order to not separate my trans identity from the rest of my life.