The Winter I Stopped Asking for Permission
When the wind no longer rustles leaves, but whips through bare branches that reach to the sky as skeletal hands, fingers contorted and outstretched for that golden, celestial disk’s warmth beyond the clouds, we hunker down. It is a time for beast and bird alike to find solace in the chill and the long nights. It is a time to count one’s blessings.
I feel this season etched into bone and sinew. There is an epigenetic marker in my blood—a memory of a time when "counting blessings" meant tallying pennies and shelf-safe cans through the Depression. As the poet said, “Baloney on your plate, and you were happy that you ate.” Though I have never lacked for shelter or bread, there is a hunger of a different sort. And when I finally made those needs known, I found myself in a different kind of winter.
My birthday falls in January, and a while, the month felt like a tax I had to pay instead of the celebrations I recalled in youth. It was in the dead of winter that I spoke truly enough to ask for the love and support required to explore my gender—to finally see who I fundamentally am. I am blessed by the support of friends, but I have counted the cost of that truth: the end of a thirteen-year relationship, an end that began on my birthday two years past now.
As time passes, I cannot say the loss hurts less; it simply carries a different weight. In the quiet, toddy in hand, a fear used to nag at me: the fear that in becoming my truest self, I had somehow rendered myself invisible to other women. That the very people I desired to connect with would no longer find me alluring, physically or emotionally.
And the truth is, the fear was a ghost.
For the last several months, I walked a path with someone—a woman who, for her own reasons, could not easily navigate her life with my presence. We enjoyed the rollercoaster for its thrills, but at some point, the ride must end. This winter, I made the decision to walk away. It was brutal. It was painful. Looking at the wreckage, it is easy to wonder if something is broken.
But when two people move beyond mere cathexis and into actual love, a deep, abiding friendship remains even after the romance is interred into the frozen, winter’s ground. Perhaps, in time, after the wounds are sealed, such can blossom.
Vulnerability, while uncomfortable, is not weakness. These spaces of doubt are affirming because they prove I have transcended my prior self. In accepting the blessing of self-understanding, and accepting my role as a guide for others through sexual and liminal spaces, I have become a more complete woman. I have learned to appreciate the patched holes in my own hull—they are how I know I am still in the water, sailing a steady course through a torrent on the black, racing sea.
My own history of seeking, of doubt, and of radical self-reclamation has not made me fragile; it has made me empathetic. When you step into my space, you are not met with a cold, impenetrable mask. You are met by a woman who understands the weight of a secret and the ache of a long-denied hunger. My insecurities have been the whetstone for my empathy—I can see you, because I have had to truly see myself.
More importantly, my experiences are why I am the right person to take the helm for you.
So, I count my blessings: my eager, passionate heart; my health and the undeniable power of my physical body; and the realization that I am not less alluring, but exponentially more so. I have gained the wisdom to build a space for sexual ecstasy and acceptance—a space where we are celebrated together, where women who yearn for connection -to be seen- get exactly what they want.
The winter is cold, but those with whom I share my hearth find warmth.
