Empire Conference 2010- Day 1

I am here in Albany, NY at the Empire Conference. This is my first time attending. I was optimistic about this conference. Day 1 is almost over and I am disappointed. There were 2 workshops today that I was very interested in attending. "Privilege of passing" and "Male Privilege for Trans-Masculine people". Unfortunately BOTH of these workshops were cancelled and they were the only 2 workshops that I wanted to attend. Everything else on the program to me was kind of "blah" because either I have done the exact same presentation before OR it just wasn't something interesting enough for me to want to sit in a room and talk about it for an Hour and a half.

Since those workshops were cancelled I decided to go to the pool and swim off my stress. Well guess what... The pool is closed for maintenance! Now I am hoping this is temporary because earlier in the day the pool was open and the water looked inviting. The pool is beautiful. The pool being closed don't help my mood.

Lunch was a little disappointing but I ate a BIG breakfast late in the morning so it was fine.

The day isn't done yet so we will see hopefully it gets better. I will keep you all posted!

I survived... my first week of accounting!

Yup my title said it. I survived my first week of accounting and I did better than I thought. I still have about 6.5 weeks to go in the course but I am optimistic espcially because for the most of the week my mind was preoccupied wondering whether my surgeon called my insurance and/or what was their decision. Sine I have that answer I can now focus my energy on other things such as passing this accounting course.
Speaking of which I have homework to do!

Surgery date...

So now that I have all my affairs in order I should be getting my surgery date some time this week. The schedule has to be reviewed and I will be talking to the surgeon to see how soon I can get in for surgery. I am very happy and this all feels surreal. I don't know when I will post the exact date up on the journal since I like to keep at least some aspects of my transition process until I feel ready to share them but I will eventually share which surgeon I am going to, when and where.

I truely feel blessed for how far I have gotten in my process and I continue to have faith that all will go well.

May 13th, 2010- Usually 13 is unlucky

The surgeon finally called! I spoke to my insurance today and my hospital stay for surgery was approve which = to my surgery being pre-approved also. I spoke to the surgeon's assistant and she will be consulting with my insurance to get the "rates" that they pay. Once she has that she can see if there is going to be a difference between the surgeon's usual cost and what my insurance pays. If there is a difference I will have to only pay the difference in the surgeon's fee but NOT the hospital stay. So within the next few days I should know more about that.
I am excited to book a surgery date! I want that date for this to feel real but even then I wont get excited until I am on the table.

That is all for now.

Lower surgery update as of May 11th,2010

I am still waiting for my surgeon to call in for the peer to peer review which should have happened by now. UGH!

I will post more once that happens.

The only good news is that once the peer review happens I am good to go for surgery and will just have to schedule my surgery date.

Religion and me

Lately religion has been coming up more and more for me. I was brought up Baptist. Though my church was in NYC we were part of the "Southern Baptist" chain so basically VERY Extremely conservative.
When I turned 18 I ran for the hills and avoided all religion though it was all around me. I women with all sorts of religious beliefs and upbringing. Now I am married to a womna who has been raised Catholic but considers herself "spiritual". I too consider myself "spiritual" but I really don't feel like that is enough.

I find myself search for the higher power. It is hard to discuss it with guys around me because the friends I hold close all have different views on religion. One is an adamant (yet respectful) Atheist, another is Muslim, Another I don't know what he is, I have some christian friends and another fried currently considering converting to Islam.

I have one friend who has been go over bible teachings with me for the past few months so that I can actual learn what it means to be a Christian as opposed to being told "BE A CHRISTIAN". Yet even with that I find myself searching. Part of me likes what I know about Buddhism, another part of me is interested in Islam then there is the side of me that i comfortable in Christianity.

I feel like I am shopping for faith in a way. I just find it interesting that all of this is coming up for me now. I feel like part of it has to do with the fact that I am no longer angry at the world and God for that matter.

I don't where I will end up but I find learning to be very helpful and I plan to learn as much as possible before I go any further.

Are you serious?!

I was on a forum and a guy someone comes on asking people about THEIR experiences with regards to relating to cismen. They expressed that they felt "different" from cismen because they were a transman.
Along with some other commentary about the "female experience" and being feminist.

I responded to them respectfully stating that my thoughts, experience and opinion differ.

They made a comment about being raised female and how that is a disadvantage in being able to relate to cismen. I responded saying that I guess I was lucky for not being "raised female". I said this being "sarcastic and because my upbringing WAS NOT FEMALE!

Was I assigned female at birth? YES

That however does not give anyone the right to assume what I have been through and what I have experienced. Also the person was white American. As a Jamaican by culture but American by birth Person of color my experience vastly differs from theirs. I even said that later in a comment but all of a sudden I am "an asshole".

Well I am one happy asshole because I do not feel "tortured" or "less than" because of what my birth certificate used to say.

This kind of thing is getting really lame and I am getting tired of seeing it OVER and OVER again. You say you are a feminist and women shouldn;t be seen as less than because they are women but then you call yourself less than because you "used to live as a woman". Stop contradicting yourself!

UGH!