This was written a day before Trans Pride Seattle 2015 and was my coming out so to speak on Facebook. I have added some to personalize it for this blog. Please no hate. Any hateful comments will be deleted. The picture on the right is of me at Trans Pride Seattle. I am the girl in a black and white dress, with earrings and pink/orange hair with my fist raised. It was the first time I had worn a dress since I was a little kid.
Pink for Trans Pride Seattle...I'm so happy! Tomorrow I will be getting my self all gussied up.....For the first time since I was a kiddo my outside will be a genuine expression of the girl I am. By being true to my self, tomorrow I can start healing.
#FeelFreeToShare
I can start to let go of the pain and memories that I repressed...Of crying at night for a week after my 1st set of foster parents threw away the dress, skirt, hair barrettes and pink brush I had brought with me, to comb my long hair and that my mom had given me when I had to enter foster care....
You see my late mother embraced ME and let me express my gender and it didnt feel strange to me or her. It felt right and natural and I was allowed to freely express me for me. When I had to leave, the last words she said to me was: I know you will not understand but you need to stash these away...People arent going to understand...Well they didnt and life became hard...I eventually repressed ME to the point I didnt remember who I was. I forgot ME. It took a long time for ME to find me.
After the foster family threw away my stuff. I remember a foster sister I had gotten close to, offering to trade me a dress for a pair of my jeans. I remember us playing late at night....dress up and other stuff and she accepted me for who I was. Just another girl.
One day the foster family caught me in the bathroom with the dress on and after spanking me hard with a belt, they went into the garage and came back with a dress that was way too small and meant for a preschool age kid and I had to sit all day on the front porch like that with my diapered nether region exposed. I eventually soiled my self which just upped the shame I was feeling and eventually, one of the neighbors daughters came over and sat down next to me. It took several tries of her asking what was wrong before I finally told her that I had gotten in trouble because I wanted to be a girl. She asked why and all I could say was that it was because I felt like a girl inside...she thought about it for a few moments and then shrugged her shoulders and said...oh ok...You can always come over to my house and play dress up with me. I wont tease you...and she bent over and whispered in my ear that she still wore diapers to bed at night because she couldnt keep the bed dry.
She stood up and knocked on the door which caused my heart to skip a few beats because I had no idea what she was going to do and I didnt want to get in any more trouble...My foster mom eventually came to the door and asked the girl what she wanted and the girl crossed her arms and I shit you not she said " You be nice...there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a girl and you need to change her diaper and let her come in side so she doesnt get teased..." My foster mom glared at her but she let me inside and that was that. I remember playing with that girl a couple times before I had to move...we played dress up and house mostly. She always ended up being the mommy and me the baby....I dont know why but with her it didnt bother me. Besides my mom, that little girl and my foster sister at the time, were the only ones who stood up for me and who I was.
I do think back to my early childhood before I entered foster care at the age of 6 and I thank my mom for embracing me and loving me and never stopping. I think my natural expression of my girl gender made her happy because I was a twin and my sister died and I survived the complicated pregnancy....I remember now that my mom said: "you know....you have pretty eyes and eye lashes. I bet your sister gave them to you because she knew she wouldnt be around to see the world"....
One day i asked her if I could change my name..she said that I should wait till I am older but if I were to be called something else, what would I want to be called...I thought for a moment and I said: Isabella...I could see tears in my moms eyes and I remember asking her, half crying my self why she was sad....It was then that she said: That was the name I would have given your sister.
One day I will change my name to Isabella....Isabella Parker or Baker Cline
When my mom passed away unexpectedly in December of last year, the trauma of that experience started bringing up memories and feelings that I had long since forgotten...repressed out of survival.....and now I am to a point where I now who I am again and like my mom and child hood me, I am letting me out.
It feels great to be real.
One day kids who express themselves in a gender that is different from what is assigned to them at birth, will be able to do so with out being harmed and forced to repress something so natural to them...One day they wont be beat up and mocked and teased and punished and humiliated or murdered or scarred so bad they commit suicide. #FeelFree2Share
#IAmMe #IAmBeautiful #IAmNotAshamed #TransLiberationNow #IAmAGirl
Family photo circa about 1984. I am the older kid. I so had my moms hair and eyes.
RIP momma. 12/21/1961-12/18/2014