Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 26 Oct 18 - 12:07 PM

I didn't post this earlier, as I didn't want to intrude on the remembrance of Tommy.

Here's the poem Wendy mentioned. I wrote it for my mother, who was reliving her memories of sexual assault during the Kavanaugh hearings. I felt that if she, and other women, could be brave enough to come forward about what had happened to them, then I could be brave enough to come out as transgendered.

I understand now why you didn't want sons
Even though you got one anyway
Born into the wrong body
My life might have been different
Knowing now what we didn't know then
You knew I was different
But the way you raised me would have been the same
You protected me and camouflaged me
Until I was ready to be the real me
You may have been born in the year of the tiger
But you have always been a dragon
Fiercely protective
But with a wisdom you rarely credit yourself with
I don't know if dragons have larval forms
But I think they must
Because I have finally shed my chrysalis
And become my own dragon

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Oct 18 - 06:19 PM

Easy does it, everyone.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 Oct 18 - 10:23 PM

Don't forget Mr and Mrs Rapparee --
they have a tough anniversary or two at this time of year.
Himself is bracing for an ow-that-smarts surgery.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 18 Oct 18 - 11:30 PM

I've been away from Mudcat for several days and dropped in to catch up. This is a busy time of year for me, but I'm still sending my love to all and keeping you in the Light.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Oct 18 - 01:26 PM

Have a thought and a prayer
for Keith A of Hertford,
who has his own thread above the BS section
where people who can't post in BS
can add their posts.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 16 Oct 18 - 10:54 AM

wishing you a peaceful anniversary, Pete

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Oct 18 - 05:47 PM

Pete, my salute to you on making it through the year.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 15 Oct 18 - 04:07 PM

Thank you keberoxu for you thoughtful comment ; it is one year today that we lost our Tommy. I remember how this crew took a strong part in supporting us through that . Blessings all       Pete

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Oct 18 - 08:09 AM

I have a difficult anniversary every Xmas/January. Never know how it will manifest each year. This year's falls on my husband's long-anticipated retirement, with some house-leaving.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 13 Oct 18 - 02:58 PM

Keep this vessel above the horizon.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Oct 18 - 02:12 PM

October, for some reason, is an anniversary month
for some of the most challenging bereavements.
I won't list the anniversaries here, for the
Jane's Rainbow crew:
you all know who you are.
And my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: billybob
Date: 09 Oct 18 - 07:07 AM

Tamson, just sending love and best wishes to you,I read a beautiful poem in another place,written by you. So wonderfully constructed and sensitively written. Might you share it here with this special crew?

All is well here, enjoyed a huge family gathering at the weekend to celebrate my cousins golden wedding. Four generations of cousins, their children and grandchildren and 2 Aunts from the generation before.It was so good to see all the little ones getting on so well together,shyness evaporated almost immediatly.Meanwhile us"oldies" found ourseleves on the wedding photos, did I really wear such short skirts and the big hairdo.

Medical appointments for my daughter this week ,for an unpleasant procedure and then Billy has his 4 monthly appointment and trial results,fingers crossed!

Coffee pot on....

With love
Wendy xxx

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Oct 18 - 07:24 PM

Keep fighting the good fight, gnu.
Maybe life sucks and then you die,
but wherever your mother is going to go,
there will be a reward for you in due time.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 05 Oct 18 - 04:51 PM

Being as I've just met "R1" on one occasion, I guess I won't be seriously tempted to blather "One of my best friends is...", but, between that meeting and our history here, I certainly count him (you) as a friend. For a good share of my life, I would have been really put off by the transition. Now, however I toss it around in my head, all I feel is happy to know that a good person has made a decision that needed to be made. Y'know...it feels good to know that about myself.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 04 Oct 18 - 09:47 PM

Aw, shucks, gnu.

Keb, don't worry about it. It's all good.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: gnu
Date: 04 Oct 18 - 09:13 PM

I will NEVER use the name Tamson in Mudcat! That there be r1. Always was and always will be. r1 has been a good buddy of mine for a long time. And r1 will always be a good buddy of mine. A person I respect, admire, and learn from. Even more so, now.

Thanks for being my friend, r1. Yer 'one of the good ones'.

Oh... while I am briefly here, I shall add... life sucks and then you die. That is all. Dismissed. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em. >;-)

gnightgnu

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Oct 18 - 06:37 PM

I ought to have addressed you as Tamson rather than Tami,
but you know who I meant ... best wishes.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Oct 18 - 11:46 AM

Good to hear from you, frogprince.

Thinking of gnu.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 03 Oct 18 - 05:44 PM

Okay, Tamson! Sorry you had to work and missed the festival.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 03 Oct 18 - 09:41 AM

yah! Tamson

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 09:37 PM

Actually, I've been back home for a week. I'm glad that I made the trip; I enjoyed it as a whole, and had some non-predictable moments with people I met that were genuine fun.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 07:26 PM

Go, Tamson! I'm pulling for you.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 06:21 PM

I had to work during PMFF this year. And it's Tamson. Close enough to the one I was given at birth so as not to make things too difficult for those who have known me as Tami.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 04:53 PM

ranger1, that friend was right. You will know who your true friends are. Many of us will never find out, or we'll find out in different ways, like who sticks with us through a serious illness.
I didn't spot you at the PMFF but wondered how you were doing. I'm wondering what your new name is.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 01:19 PM

I finally came out as transgender on Facebook the night before last. Earlier in the day, my manager at the market made me a new name badge with my new name on it. That, and a friend telling me that the people who really mattered wouldn't care and those who couldn't accept it didn't need to be in my life were the nudge I needed.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Oct 18 - 01:02 PM

Safe journey home, frogprince.
We're still here and still thinking of you.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Sep 18 - 02:45 PM

sail on, sail on

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Sep 18 - 01:57 PM

Done it again. I apologize, Tami.

We still need this ship on our horizons.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 03:30 PM

Keb, that question's a can of worms I really don't want to open right now.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 02:15 PM

Ranger1, are your relatives doing any better?
That post a ways back in this thread
sounded like you had a whole cluster of calamities.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 14 Sep 18 - 07:54 PM

I kept a blog that was letters to my dad for a couple of years after he died, my way of working through my grief. That end to your day that Judy would have loved? That was the kind of thing I'd put in those letters. Doesn't have to be electronic, the old-fashioned paper and pen variety work well, too, if that's something you think might help you.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Sep 18 - 05:53 PM

(((Dean)))

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 14 Sep 18 - 04:49 PM

For all the friends and family I can think of: "Today in Menorca"
Before I left home, I booked with "Jeep Safari Menorca" for today. So glad that I did. We set out into the countryside on miles of one lane "roads", between stone walls, that would have destroyed a sedan in a fraction of a mile. The driver/guides had made sure we fastened our seat belts; they weren't kidding. First stop, a huge limestone quarry, now like parkland in a canyon, where you could see the difference in how blocks had been cut to a certain depth by hand chiseling and then by power saws. (Most construction has been concrete for decades now). More country roads, and a maze of one-way streets in some old town. On to an overlook with a very long view of island and sea. Just after that we stoppped momentarily while the drivers manually locked up the front hubs for four wheel drive; we had come to the really interesting part of the road. Actually the ride wasn't as violent as it had been, because we were slowed way down for a ways. On to a lighthouse, with adjacent man made cave, used for armaments during the Spanish Civil War. An excellent, very Spanish, dinner at a farm with no other civilisation in sight. Final stop, an hour at a very nice beach. I laid back a while after being dropped back to my hotel, and walked a little way to one of a string of street cafes. Just as I started back to the hotel, the street resounded with brass and drums playing ...something...followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In" and other standards. I found the street totally packed with so many people following the band, kids on shoulders, that I couldn't see a sign of the band somewhere up there. After a few blocks they turned into a hotel complex and circled the pool, and I could see it was about two dozen young people in white shirts and dark slacks. They sounded like any professionals you could ask for; some of them might have been in high school, but several couldn't have been above fourth grade. It was a sublime conclusion to a good day.
          Then it got me.                  Judy would have loved it so much.
I'm okay, everyone, but I'm still kind of a soggy mess.   
                      DDE

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 10:17 PM

Ouch!

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Sep 18 - 09:29 PM

November 29. Hemorrhoidectomy. Me. What a pain in the...you know what. But it's best to find out about the polyps that are there.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Sep 18 - 06:04 PM

Thanks for checking in, frogprince.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 09 Sep 18 - 04:33 PM

Well, crew, I've been enjoying Naxos, if not as fully as would have been. There are now ashes in each of the four beach areas where we swam together "as nature intended" each time we were here. (I haven't explained that part of the significance to everyone.) There always happened to be a be a few too many folk around for me to walk along scattering, so I would sit and scoop down in the sand beside me and cover a portion of ash. That leaves just a handful or so at home that wouldn't quite fit in the little travel urn; I have to decide where those go. Some like to keep at least a portion, but for myself that feels a bit like keeping a finger as a holy relic. As Ranger1 noted, I too am finding a certain comfort in knowing these remains will be in places meaningful to Judy.
                            Dean

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 03:52 PM

Aw Pete. Just the right thing to say.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 06 Sep 18 - 03:25 PM

There can't be many ministers and their wives stayed with the same church or parish for so long wysiwyg . We'll done and blessings to you

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 11:00 PM

Dean its a voyage to remember or maybe even have the surprise of your new life.

wysiwyg I second that emotion and honeymoon.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 12:27 PM

Word received.

My Episcopal priest husband's formal announcement of his surprisingly-soon (Jan 1) retirement is now publicly known in the parish (after an unavoidable one week delay). This affects me in so many ways only another clergy spouse of my vintage can understand.... And there are none near me.... my only almost-peer is dealing with her own equally serious stuff two states away... and there are now only a few days open to me to support hubby and parish full of dearly loved elders and a few potentially negatively-reactive folks. I'm at least able now to bring my unique skillset to this brief and intense moment. Sunday morning will be especially chaotic but an avalanche of community blessings and cursings can fall on us at any place or time-- some fell on him this AM. And we're clearly too old to deal with this all "easily".

His first plan was 2009 early retirement after 25 years' exhausting ministry. The market wiped that plan out. I started later, 25 years ago, and for me it's not early. I'm 65 and facing a family dementia history. No one in the parish knows that yet. We arrived here as newlyweds. We'd like some honeymoon time. Now.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Sep 18 - 09:06 AM

Dean, +++

I think I can cast off today (I'm waiting on a word of news). Soon I'll be able to speak openly about the situation that made my seas so rough, and the smooth winds will leave me in place to catch the current for home.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: ranger1
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 08:41 AM

Dean, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but knowing that the ashes of my loved ones are someplace meaningful to both myself and them gives me comfort.

My uncle spread his portion of my grandmother's ashes over the cellar hole of the house she was born in, now a piece of protected land belonging to the people of the State of Maine. I will spread some of my portion on the osprey sanctuary after the osprey leave for the season, and take the rest with me to leave in beautiful places that she would have loved to visit herself.

Safe travels, my friend.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 09:14 PM

I can only wish you peace, and may your travel (getting from one place to another) be boring in the extreme.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 08:09 PM

I can't wish you a "happy" holiday frogprince, but I hope you find what you need. Sending good wishes & hugs.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 07:17 PM

Susan, forgive me for this, but...:

They called her a screamer,
Well, maybe she was,
But you'd have to hear for yourself...

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: gnu
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 05:23 PM

6300 posts!

Froggy... Bon Voyage.

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 02:42 PM

First leg of the journey to Greece this evening: crossing the border to a motel, to catch an early train to Toronto tomorrow. I'm running on very mixed feelings...anticipation, to visit Naxos again, distribute ashes, and spend some days in Menorca while overseas...trepidation, at making the journey without Judy. Thinking of all the support the "crew" here have given me, and of the waters that are rough for some of the rest of you.

            Dean

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 11:28 PM

Sandra, they egged me on.

~S~

Subject: RE: Jane's Rainbow: for all needing support & comfort
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 07:21 PM

lovely memory, Tami. I have no memories of my grandfather even tho I was 7 when he died & didn't live too far away (my other grandfather died before I was born)

Susan - just re-read your last post & wondered about the effect of your keening screams in the birthing room on the staff!