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I will say again Robin how sad it is that people cannot be accepted as they really are. There are some of us though that can accept transgender people and are not bothered by it at all. You are a good person, and I am glad to have you as a friend. I hope that you will find peace.

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Thank you, Charlotte. Friendship breaks down all kinds of barriers and makes us all stronger together.

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I recently had an occasion to go through years of my parents’ (RIP) Christmas newsletters to friends and family. All the letters were newsy and delightful until it came to time to encapsulate my past year. There wasn’t much written about me. What WAS written was a grayscale of a deafening paucity of information. It is embarrassing to me now wondering what people were led to think about me back then.

My satirical spin of a typical newsletter reference goes something like this: “Kim is still present, has weight and occupies space. She is still a tomboy but I may see an ever so slight glimmer of her maybe starting to possibly like some dress, maybe. She has a cat.”

Reading these newsletters brought up the hollow loneliness I felt as a child. The newsletters validate the source of the loneliness from a time that a child could not be expected to recognize or name.

I am happily married to my wife and soul mate, living my life on my terms (well let’s not talk about politics) but this memory of invisibility can still bubble up from the background.

Thank you Robin for your post. Your writing is cathartic.

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Your satirical newsletter is brilliant. I'd happily read that. But it absolutely points out how little we often know or share about the children/adolescents in our lives, and more often than not I hear adults reference all of their hopes/dreams/imaginings for that child's future rather than the one that kid is living.

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