A family update.
Kat has been very busy with work. She has two webinars a month each month for training new volunteers for the Trans Family Line for significant others, friends, family members, and any ally from a transgender person’s life to call and get support, help understanding, and information about resources they may need. She reaches out weekly to her volunteers both on the Trans Lifeline, and on the Family Line. She has meetings at least once a week sometimes more. She has modified a lot of the training, adding personal experiences, and constantly making tweaks to perfect the training experience for her volunteers. She is really shining bright with the pride she takes in her work and it definitely shows. Jayden and Joshua are doing great. The two of them love having a routine at home. They enjoyed the light and water show we took them to recently. The family oriented place has fake wild life, light and water shows multiple times a day, a McDonald’s the kids like to eat at, a huge assortment of plants set up around a stream, and a waterfall. There are strings of lights trapesing the trunks and limbs of the trees, a large gazebo with chairs scattered about the area; it’s quite peaceful. We take a trip there a couple times a month. There is a park within walking distance from our apartment, and the kiddos have had lots of fun on the slides, swings, and climbing apparatuses. They had their yearly pediatric exam last month; the doctor said they are both right on target! Jayden is wonderful at learning. She’s doing great at her schoolwork. She has a firm grasp on math, language, and reading especially. She is picking up reading speedily, but then reading and books have always been a huge part of all of our lives. The kids have many books. Jayden got a bunch of clothes recently, to include some My Little Pony and Frozen decorated pieces, you should have seen the look on her face! The joy those clothes brought her was precious to see. In addition, several pair of new shoes for her as well. Joshua begs to go to school, and is learning a great deal from being close to Jayden while she’s doing school. He is typically glued to our sides soaking up as much knowledge as possible. He loves growing his hair back out. He wants badly to be a boy with long hair. He will say to me “I’m going to be a boy and have long hair!” With a shrill excited-ness only a three year old can express. Joshua loved his new clothes as well. He was so excited to get some more appropriately gendered clothing; his options were rather limited before. He also got some little cons; they are so adorable on him. We are missing the road; all of us greatly miss traveling. Josh told me the other day he misses us driving in our van. He also talks about our stay in San Francisco a lot, and tells us frequently he misses it there. Jayden says she misses Portland and wants to go back there. Katherine says she wants to travel back up to Washington. I miss traveling as well. Maybe soon we can get our van up and running, get my license, maybe take a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon. I would love to visit there. Jayden’s curriculum included it not long ago, and I think it would be amazing to take the children there. In other news, Katherine and I went to the DMV to get our state ID’s this past week. Yay, we will finally have everything swapped over to our new legal names. This was the final step in having our documents changed. Two years after our name change. Just received them in the mail today! Also in the mail, but a few days back, I received two packages from disability. I was rather excited to find out that I was finally hearing from them after a year. Well, being homeless during that time, we did not have a reliable way to receive mail. Unfortunately, when I opened the first package it said this, “February 28th, 2017 Please respond within ten days of this correspondence. Your case is up for review. More information is needed to determine your disability status. Please contact me, case manager’s name here, at telephone number here.” The second package was informing me since they hadn’t heard from me, my case was being denied. I will have to start all over again, the 90 days has passed since the closing of the case, before I even was notified. The mail sat in a human services department until they received my updated address (two months ago) and finally got around to forwarding it. Either way the denial came before we had a stable address. Thursday was my first doctor appointment in several months. It was a relief finally to see a physician. He prescribed a new medication to treat the fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, and non-restorative sleep. Unfortunately, there was a week wait while the physician and insurance got on the same page about which medication to authorize. Tonight I will be beginning the new treatment. The Trans Job group is growing, and hopefully helping people connect to valuable available positions. The Transgender Parents group is also growing. We have valuable conversations happening here. Which is helping to fuel my new project for Transgender Parents called "Three Two One Trans", which can be found @ : threetwoonetrans.wix.com/threetwoonetrans If you haven't already checked it out, please do and subscribe for the latest posts straight to your inbox! There is a Facebook page for transgender news, updates, events, media, trans creators, and more called "Trans Lives Matter". To keep up with the latest please like & follow! This concludes the update. I want this to let other transgender people know they aren’t alone when dealing with struggles like housing, finances, kids, access to food, clothes, and medical issues. You are not alone, but we in spite of ourselves and our struggles have made it anyway, so far that is.
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Authors:James and Katherine are a transgender couple raising two kids. They were southerners when coming to understand themselves as trans. Ultimately it lead to a nearly three year road trip to find home. Now they are re-housed and still focused on outreach in the transgender community! Archives
October 2020
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