Strong Medicine

As I lay in bed this morning, letting the morning light filtering through my curtains slowly waken my senses to the new day, my mind reflected on the reasons I have to be grateful. Maybe the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday prompted some of these reflections, but I find it also emotionally therapeutic to stop regularly and remember all the reasons I have for gratitude. In this world, filled so often with negative news, with stress, and with the pressure to constantly feel like I’m not enough and my life is not enough, practicing gratitude is one of the most basic forms of self-care and at the same time a radical act of protest against the evils of this world.

I am grateful for the fresh scent of the incense burning in my room. I am grateful that I have a room, and a roof over my head, a place that is safe, secure, and comfortable (even if I’m out so much that I don’t spend that much time there!) I am grateful to my brother, who rents this place to me, who by his generosity gave me a place to land when my world disintegrated a couple years ago. I am grateful for my lavender and purple walls (if you know me, you won’t be the least surprised by that!) that create a soothing environment each day. I am grateful for the clothes I have to wear, and that I am able to wear the clothes I’ve always wanted to, clothes that make me feel beautiful. I am grateful for the comfortable bed I sleep in every night (thanks Magda!), and for the hours of rest I enjoy there.

I am grateful for my work. I am grateful to have a job where my work contributes to making the world a better place. That’s extremely important to me. I am grateful to work for an organization that has supported me through my personal journey since the day I walked in the door over two years ago. I am grateful that I work in an environment where we support one another. I am particularly grateful for the team of women I work with, for the energy we share, for our commitment to supporting each other and succeeding as a team. I am grateful for my supervisor, who has engaged with me to jointly create a positive dynamic between us. I appreciate that she empowers me and my teammates. I am grateful that I can get up each work day and be enthusiastic about going to work.

I am grateful for the opportunities I have to engage in transforming my community, working alongside some amazing people. I feel so fortunate to contribute my time and energy, not only at work but outside of it as well, to making the world, and my community in particular, a better, more inclusive and just place.

I am grateful for my health. I am grateful to live finally in a body I feel at home in, that in fact I really love for the first time in my life. I am grateful that I am able to engage in physical activities that I enjoy, like soccer and dance. I am grateful for my soccer teammates, a wonderful group of people who support and encourage each other each game regardless of the score. I am grateful for my dance studio, which has been one of my chosen families since I came out 3 years ago.

I am grateful for the warm, life-giving sunshine that fills most every day here in Southern Arizona. And I’m grateful for the occasional rains that refresh the land and my spirit as well. I am grateful for the window next to my workstation in our new office building that allows me to enjoy that warm sunshine and the beautiful sky.

When I think of the reasons I have to be grateful, more than any other I think of the friends who surround me. My mind often reflects on various friends, their faces bringing a smile of delight and filling my heart with joy. Not that long ago my friendship circle was nearly empty. Now it overflows with so many wonderful people. My gratitude knows no bounds when I think of all of you. You enrich my life. I am grateful for those who have laughed with me, cried with me, comforted me in grief, rejoiced with me, played with me, celebrated with me, encouraged and challenged and supported me more times than I can possibly recall. I am grateful as well for my family, for my parents and my children who have continued to stand with me through my transformation, knowing that it has impacted them as well. Words cannot begin to adequately express the profound depth of my gratitude to my friends and my family. I love you all so much.

Above all, I am grateful to be alive, to awaken each new day, to live and breathe, and to live fully and truly as myself in this world. I am grateful to live authentically and vulnerably. Life is a gift, one that I want to celebrate each and every day. And when the circumstances of a particular day draw me away from that, I want to recall these reasons I have to be grateful. Gratitude is such powerful medicine.

Representation Matters

On my rare, unoccupied evenings at home, I like to occasionally curl up on the sofa and watch Netflix. My current program is Glee. Yes, I’m that far behind the times. I started watching it a few years ago but never got beyond the second season. I don’t remember why I stopped watching it the first time, but I enjoy the mix of musical numbers and high school drama. I’m not really a binge watcher, so I’ve only made it into season 3 so far.

(If you are even farther behind in your shows than I am, spoiler alert.)

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Last night I watched the episode Dance with Somebody. This episode, a tribute to Whitney Houston, made me so happy. I find it beautiful that this series finally in a previous episode allowed Santana to openly embrace her lesbian identity. In this episode we see her romance with Brittany celebrated to Houston’s song “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” This alone delighted me. Even more, I rejoiced when the lyrics Santana and Brittany sing were modified to acknowledge the fact that they love each other as women. (I might also add that their dance number was quite hot.) Instead of the original lyrics they sing “I need a woman who’ll take a chance / on a love that burns hot enough to last” A small but highly significant difference. Representation matters.

I’ve wrestled with the lack of representation in the arts since coming to embrace my gender identity and sexual orientation. I grow weary of the perpetual focus on hetero-typical relationships, as if there are no others in the world. We are beginning to see small changes in this in television and movies, such as in Glee. Even there we are largely subjected to romances focused on a male and female character. When it comes to music, the absence of non-hetero romance is even more pronounced. How many songs do you know that celebrate the love between two men or between two women? I can’t think of any in the realm of popular music, and a friend of mine who is better versed in the music scene also couldn’t think of any. Which makes it necessary for us lesbians to queer romantic songs when we sing them, as Santana and Brittany did.

Last month I performed a couple songs for a karaoke night, including Gypsy by Lady Gaga. If you are heterosexual, you may not have even noticed that the song makes reference to a guy, making it another typical song about the relationship between a man and a woman. I wasn’t comfortable going on stage, even for a karaoke night, and singing about my interest in some dude. Not a chance. So I had to queer it. Thankfully it had few male pronouns and references, so it wasn’t hard to do, though I had to practice so my brain would override the help text displayed on the karaoke screen. Many other songs that I really like would be much more difficult to alter. When I hear them play I have to do the mental work to transpose the imagery from male-female to female-female.

You might think that I’m making a big deal out of nothing. If you are hetero-typical, you don’t have to think about how love and romance are portrayed in the arts, because your sexual orientation is already pervasive. You might find it jarring when something atypical is presented, such as a lesbian or gay relationship. If you are particularly conservative, you might even feel offended or protest being “subjected” to such portrayals. Do you realize that for those of us who are homosexual, this is what we endure all the time in media and the arts? Just the other day I went to a ballet performance. The show overall was a delightful compilation of original works by young choreographers, but even here the pieces that touched on romance or love all had a hetero-typical axis. How I’d love to see a ballet piece with powerful romantic tension between two women (or two men, though frankly that would interest me far less.) Recently I talked with a friend about how fun it would be to queer the musical The Sound of Music and have a transgender Maria who falls in love with a Countess. Oh for the day when a musical like that would be a Broadway hit.

Which is why seeing Santana and Brittany celebrating their love to the modified words of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” delighted me so much. It’s a small but meaningful step in normalizing non-hetero romance. It doesn’t require the erasure of hetero-romance. That’s not going to happen. But society needs to make space for others who don’t fit within that narrative. The more we see non-hetero relationships and romance portrayed in film, music, and other art forms, the more they become recognized as normal and valid expressions of human love. Inclusion happens in part as people begin to recognize and affirm the humanity of people who are not like them. Someday, hopefully soon, I hope to hear hetero-typical people singing along to the lyrics of a song celebrating lesbian romance. That would make my heart sing.