An integrated self

My ritual space is a semicircular mat in the centre of my living room. I hallow it by meditating there. I have also been performing a new ritual there, a dialogue of my male and female selves, about how each has sought in fear to suppress the other and how each may now accept and support the other and gain from the other’s strengths. I worked this out with a friend of a friend, Joanna Procter, who lives “within the M25” “South of the River”.

I think it is working, because this has been percolating in me for so long. Before I decided to transition I had a dialogue of my female and male selves with my inner rationalist and my inner toddler which is my I Want. I concluded that my female self was more real, and must be allowed out to express herself. After I transitioned I once performed, led by a friend, a ritual of my female self hearing and accepting my male self into her. And I still feared and suppressed and fought within myself, semi-consciously.

I claim victim status as a transsexual woman: accepting myself under the tyranny of Normality, which some call Kyriarchy, has been hard and painful and I bear scars. And I am transcending that hurt, to find blessing in my own uniqueness, gift where I once saw curse.

In my ritual, I speak from different parts of my self, in different places in the space, then stand in the centre arms out to envelop then enfold all parts of me, saying, “I am One”. Some of those parts may be different parts of my brain, evolved coping strategies, habitual ways of being. Some I have perceived as separate voices in myself, such as my inner critic. My aim is to have these parts trust each other, so that they/I may work together, and to discern their different voices, so that each may have its appropriate weight.

As I do my process, the struggle seems so much less important, the joy feels so much more.