Dawn & Hannah — Everything Happens For A Reason

Dawn

Hello, my name is Dawn, 1.5x divorced. Meaning one divorce down and one in the works. My ex and I have an amazing relationship now that we are no longer involved romantically. Our goal is to make sure our children grow up to not be half as f**ked up as me, for sure, and to communicate and not lie like their father; to live with integrity, to be righteous, to be humble, to know that they are allowed to be exactly who they want to be. Everyone has a story, I just want my kids to have a success story, not a survival story.

I am a very blessed woman and try to live life by example and hopefully learn the lessons I am supposed to along the way. I am a mother to four wonderful and uniquely awesome children. My two youngest are boys. Aiden, he is 12, he is my angel, and total momma’s boy. When he was born I hadn’t ever planned on having any other children or even having girls. He and I definitely have a bond that the others and I do not have. He was my first born biologically. He is extremely empathetic, so sensitive and quick to tears.

From the time he was walking I have always had the feeling he was gay. I couldn’t tell you why or what he did to make me feel that, it obviously doesn’t matter, except for his being allowed to be. But as he got older I guess around 7 or so, he started really liking clothes that would typically be considered girls, he liked to paint his finger nails. But he didn’t get the girlie side from me. I am not known for being very girlie. I barely wear makeup. But I do own lots of things that would make you think otherwise. I can represent when I need to.

When he was younger, he would randomly say that he wanted to be a girl. And I would say okay, and to let me know if that was really what he wanted to do. He came to me one time and just straight faced told me that he wanted to be a girl. He seemed very serious, so I told him he needed to really think about it and if he did that we would start making the necessary changes and adjustments to make it so. He has his own female persona with her own name. He loves skinny jeans, sparkly shoes, painted nails and when his hair long, having it pulled into a top ponytail. And he is beautiful. But at this point he does not want to be a girl. Which I am not pressing. I do believe he has a bit of a personal struggle, but he completely stopped all things girlie. I think it is his age and he is becoming aware of his body.

Then there is my forever baby Mikel, who is 10. He is by and far the most brilliant person I’ve ever had the privilege to have met. He is so smart on so many levels and has a real quest for knowledge. He knows he is awesome, but my baby is so humble. He has also maintained his innocence in a way that is admirable.

My boys are both so amazing.

My girls are two beautiful sisters with the same mother, different fathers. They are equally beautiful as they are special. Marie came into our lives when she was 12. I used to party with her mother, but over time I came to realize that this little girl was going to fall through the cracks and her mother was going to ensure that. I never really fell between the cracks myself, because I lived there most of my childhood and as an adult I can’t let that happen if I have any say in the matter. That is the extent of her story that I can share.

My oldest is now 18 and discovering herself as well, she is probably one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. She is righteous. She has more pride than I think is healthy, but she is 18. She’s working her way through medical school, I am very proud of her. She’s is so strong.

Marie has a younger sister named Lynn. Lynn’s father passed away when Lynn was 14. She moved in with an aunt but things did not work out so August of last year we added another daughter/sister to our home. She is 15, almost 16 now has a very strong sense of self. She was raised by a single father and he did a great job at making sure she knew she was loved and to love and respect herself. Her goal is to be a psychologist and I know she will succeed.

Then there is my ex Adam. He is a good person and he is very understanding and patient with my lifestyle. Where many co-parents might be alarmed at the people that I have in my life, he is very accepting of them. Although sometimes I confuse the shit out of him, he goes with the flow very nicely and just makes sure that I am okay because he knows that I am forever trying to save the world and that sometimes it wears me down emotionally. He knows that would never put my children in a situation that was unhealthy for them, so he doesn’t question my choices.

This is my family. We are all weird and different and bring our own unique selves to the mix. We all love ourselves and each other. We don’t always agree or get along, but we do communicate and

collectively we make up one incredible family that is about as open minded and genuine as any one family can be. I love them, they are all my world and I am so very thankful that I have these incredible individuals in my life. Another thing to know about me is that I definitely live by my own rules and and I have no problems with the fact that people see me as strange or weird. My best friends, my children, even my ex all know and love me for these very reasons.

Today I still very much the “tomboy” I was when I was young. I have always been proud of the fact that I don’t subscribe to the status quo and have always forged my own path. I have never questioned my gender, as I am female and love myself and who I am. Although I do display quite a few masculine traits, I have never wanted to be a boy. I have always wanted a penis though. But that would be in addition to, not replacement of my girlie bits.

I don’t care too much for makeup, but I love to wear short skirts and heels. I am slender in frame, I am pretty, I have a twisted and dry personality, I love to laugh, I love to cry, I love to LOVE. I have always been an equal opportunity lover and have never limited myself to one gender or sex on purpose. I must confess that although I am comfortable with who I am on the inside, I don’t want to look like a man or come across as presenting myself in anyway as male. I cannot tell you why that would even be an issue, but it has been and I haven’t figured out how to just let it go yet.

Since I was in my early teens I have had many a gay male friend that had to struggle with their identities and the stigmas and the unnecessary hatred that would be spewed at them if they were to come out of the closet. Some I outed by accident, some I told were gay but they just weren’t ready to admit it. Until my 20s all of the gay men in my life were closeted. It was the way of the world back then, and I hated it, and I never understood why it mattered. I spent many hours of my life being a support system for young men that didn’t have one and I did so with the true intent on showing each one of them that they were okay and that they were loved and that their happiness is what matters. Twenty years ago was such a different time. It hurt my heart to watch these young men have to lie to the world around them so that they could find pseudo acceptance from their peers. I would never wish that emotional burden on anyone. It is so cruel.

Which lead me to be the kind of person and parent that I am today. Which is very, very, very, accepting, so that my children understand that there is nothing that they cannot tell me. I’ve always said that when my kids bring their boyfriend or girlfriend home that they better make sure they are quality. And that this is the only requirement I have. I’ve had people actually tell me that by saying both genders that I am inviting them to be gay. To which I always say that is ridiculous and the only thing I am doing is letting my children know that they should always be comfortable with themselves and their choices.

Why is any of this important? It’s all important, because if my family weren’t so amazing and if I weren’t so open minded I most likely would not currently be in a relationship with Hannah, my very beautiful transgender girlfriend whom I met in what I would consider an unlikely place, under what would normally be not awesome circumstances. As it was, the everything happens for a reason, reason happened to be a collapsed lung.

December 22 , 2014, as I was waking up I rolled over in bed, moved my left arm to stretch out and as I moved I felt this incredible pain shoot through and continue to burn in the left side of my chest. I ignored the pain all day, told myself it wasn’t a heart attack, that I had just somehow really pulled a chest muscle when I stretched out and continued on with my day. I learned quite a bit about myself that day. First and foremost, I am a stubborn dumb ass that could have really done some serious damage to myself by ignoring what happened. The fact that I thought I could walk around and just “ignore” what could have possibly been a heart attack tells you how much I didn’t want to deal with it. I have a very high tolerance for pain. And most importantly my smart ass attitude never shuts off.

Work was the first time I had dealings with another person besides my children that day. After being questioned about how I felt, told that I didn’t look well, and having extreme chest pains that made it almost unbearable to breath, I decided to take myself to the hospital. I was immediately admitted and it took about 3 hours for them to figure it out, but thankfully it was not my heart that was causing me so much pain. It turns out that I my left lung had spontaneously collapsed. I walked around for 18 hours with a lung that didn’t work and chest cavity taking on air. Which could have killed me. Add the cigarettes that I smoked throughout the day and ask me why I didn’t get ffirst^t place in the Darwin awards. I was lucky.

That day changed my life. Not in huge profound way at first but I now know that when you wake up with severe pain in the left side of your chest, it doesn’t matter what you think it is or if you can handle it, just call 911. Mostly I realized that I am extremely loved by my close family and friends. I honestly wasn’t upset at the idea that I might have died because I realized I was extremely happy with my life.

On December 29, 2014 I was finally freed from the box that was attached to my lung and the tube that kept me attached to a wall and I was on a mission. I walked to the hospital waiting area and that is where I ran into the man that would eventually be my girlfriend. I apparently looked lost or confused so he offered his assistance. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was delirious from a week of not being able to sleep while simultaneously being completely strung out on morphine and Percocet or if it was really my extreme desire and need for a cup of coffee. I stubbornly accepted his offer of help. Help is not something I am good at taking from others.

That turned out to be a very nice bonding moment for two strangers being brought together by a collapsed lung. He was very nice and extremely patient with my absent minded ramblings. After walking me back to my floor I went back to my room and started to get ready to leave. I just didn’t want to leave without seeing him again. I am not one that gets attracted to people easy and I rarely give my number to anyone, and not that I was necessarily attracted to him but I felt that this person needed to be in my life and that really he needed a friend. So, I made it my mission to give him my number. But I didn’t want to actually strike up that conversation. So, I did what any self respecting adult would do, and I scratched it out on a paper towel and the next time I saw him I shoved it into his chest. I figured he would end up throwing it away. But I also decided that if this was someone I am supposed to have in my life, it would be so.

Turns out, it was so. But only after he realized he had thown away my number. He had to go back and dig through trash to find it. A day later he sent me a text and we started to talked a bit. I learned that he was married and had some little ones. I told him that I would in no way be the other woman. I don’t like the idea of it, or the hurt that it can potentially cause his wife. But if wanted to be friends that I would like that. We met for lunch and spent the next several hours talking about life, getting to know each other and I guess in reality, interviewing each other. I had to figure out if this man would be able to be just friends with me because his life story is a good one and I really wanted to hear more, but if I can’t see it moving past the initial attraction I won’t spend much time on it because people just get hurt. His interviewing of me was apparently for more than just a random cheat on his wife. Although that would have been completely fine as well.

As our day went on we covered very many subjects and many of the questions and statements he was making me made me think he was kind of a homophobic jerk. But, I run into that all the time, and being that he was just out of the military, it didn’t surprise me at all. One of the many commonalities we shared is that we were both Marines. So as homophobic and close minded as he may have seemed, I am always up for changing the way people view their world. I believe most racism and bigotry is born out of ignorance not arrogance. It is taught behavior and I am always ready to help enlighten the people in my life that are willing to be enlightened. So as he was making off handed comments bashing guys who wear pink and making jokes about crossdressers, I told him that was ridiculous and I explained to him that both of my sons love to paint their nails, do their makeup and dress as girls. I told him that my oldest son has gone back and forth wanting to be a girl throughout his childhood and that I am not one to judge, but that I will always preach acceptance over ignorance. I have had this conversation with many people. He heard what I had to say and was very receptive to it. He thought it was awesome that I would support my son that way.

It didn’t really dawn on me until a couple months later that his line of discussion that day wasn’t about gay bashing or being homophobic, but that he was feeling me out. That was December 31, 2014. I believe the next time I saw him was the third of January. We were hanging out at my place, this was our third meeting; we were discussing our weird proclivities and at some point he told me that he likes to get dressed up in women’s clothing and really has a thing for vinyl. I just so happen to love to play dress up. I also happen to have a closet full of costumes, with one such outfit being a very tight fitting nurses uniform that is all vinyl. So, I asked him if he would like to play dress up. Yes, yes he did.

Side note: I hate vinyl. I was pretty sure once I got him into the nurses uniform and really experiencing vinyl he also would not be a fan. But besides that, what happened when I got him dressed in that outfit was amazing. He not only loved being dressed up as a woman, with a wig of purple and a skin tight vinyl outfit sucking the moisture out of his body. He very naturally slipped into the role of a woman. The Marine, the man that has always had to man up, be a man, take it like a man, act like a man, that very man that I saw moments before was now standing before me as a very petite woman with eyes wide open, with innocence and wondering in her expression that all I could see was a young girl emerging into this world for the first time. She loved the way she looked, she was about as a happy as I have ever seen any person being, she was in love with herself and honestly she was beautiful and I could only see the woman she was in front of me. She told me that she not only wanted to wear women’s clothes, but that her whole life all she wanted was to be a girl.

Dawn and Hannah

What she told me in that moment without saying the words was: Thank you. Thank you for letting me free. Thank you for letting me see me, and thank you for doing it without judging me. In that moment, I knew that no matter what, no matter what happened between us, that I will always have this person in my life. I was the first person that she ever bared her soul to in such a way and in that moment I became her support system. I was the first person in her entire life that she didn’t have to lie to. She told me that I was the woman that she had been looking for her entire life. The woman who would tell her she was okay and that it was alright to be her. Figuring she had her whole life to think about it, I asked her what her name was. Her face lit up with so much excitement at the idea of being able to choose her own name. “My name?” It only took a few moments. “My name is Hannah.” Her name is beautiful just like she is.

I am am new to this. Besides my son expressing interest in being a girl, I have zero experience in the world of transgender people. But that hasn’t stopped me from embracing this as one of the most amazing experiences I can ever have had the privilege to be a part of. I feel like Hannah has blessed me with this gift. I embrace it and her whole heartedly. I am honored and flattered that she felt that she could be so open with me. I take my role in this very seriously and I do what I can to help her be the woman she desires to be. With being said, January 4, 2015 was our first excursion out and about with her as Hannah and I took her shopping for wigs. We walked in 30 minutes before they closed and in a whirlwind moment she tried on many wigs and insisted that she was a blond, and I felt she really was a dark haired girl, so I bought her a blond wig and a black haired wig.

The way she viewed herself versus the way I viewed her were way skewed. Unfortunately through years of denying herself and rationalizing her thoughts as being bad and unnatural, she had seen herself as a whore and not worthy of love and respect, which is so heartbreaking. What I saw was a young naive girl that has had zero guidance or emotional support. I saw a girl that needed some love and reassurance. Hannah needed to be told that she wasn’t bad and that she deserved to be loved and respected. She needed to see herself with love and not loathing. I love that girl. She has an incredible spirit. She has an openness about her that is envious.

She was so excited and so in awe of my acceptance of her she wanted to share that with people. The way we must have looked and the way we behaved must have already set the stage for some interesting internal monologues and although to me it sounded absolutely insane to hear her say it aloud, she told the sales girl that her and I had only known each other for a week. Hearing those words right then in that moment summed up the intensity of the week we just lived through. If week one was crazy, week two was just as intense. All I can say at this time is that Hannah is amazing and awe inspiring. I am so proud of her. She is fierce!

Throughout this post I have only referred to Hannah’s male identity as his, him, or he. From this point forward, if I discuss the Hannah’s male counterpart, her name will simply be Mannah, short for Man-Hannah. Hannah isn’t fond of that name, but I don’t want to assign another male name to her. She has already had to hide for so long, that a silly play on words feels better to me than calling her “John.”

Tags: featured, Identity, Transgender

Category: FYI, Transgender Body & Soul