Top Surgery LOG Day 1 & 2

POST OP DAY I: A Reflective Sleeping fish

Relaxing into it

The night before my double mastectomy ( with so-called “chest masculinization”) was a night of broken sleep and future reflections. I lay in the bed of an AIRBNB studio we found in a municipality of Denver, called Lakewood, Colorado. By “we” I refer to myself and the incredible feminine soul I call my friend, lover and, sometimes, “baby lady”. Her name is Megan Joy. She lays next to me, her body warm, heavy, and golden with attempted rest. I don’t sleep much, but feel at ease and in a surrendered state to the impending surgery. A mexican prayer candle of the Virgin d’Guadalupe blankets the room with her light and her strength. I watched the light dance on the cream walls around our cocoon and release myself of all my old ways, making room for the newness that whispers to me from a mere six hours away. I breathe into my chest, which still holds gently two docile mounds of mammary tissue and fat. I imagine what my life post-knife feels like. I calmly anticipate and accept the pain and constriction that only time (and a good surgeon) will afford this chest.

As I sit here now, post-surgery fatigue curling all around me, I can admit that my intimations of the future were pretty spot on. The pain is mostly dull and low, prickling here and there as skin tissues reach forward to reunite with their fellow kin. The constriction from the bandages is so similar to the chest binding I have implemented for over a year that the tightness feels reassuring and protective. I find myself now, a sleepy and well-wrapped Piscean blob, absorbed wholeheartedly into the couch and gingerly typing this here record. I feel, succinctly, reborn.

It all reminds me of this wonderful song by Antony and the Johnsons:

One day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful woman.

One day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful girl.

But for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

For today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

One day I'll grow up, of this I'm sure.

One day I'll grow up, I know whom within me.

One day I'll grow up, feel it full and pure.

But for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

For today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

POST OP DAY II: Water Purifies and Cleanses  ▽

Family and All that it Evokes

My parents and brothers came in for the first two days to see me after surgery. I was both thankful for this gesture and overwhelmed at the idea of navigating their energy after such a tremendous opening. I felt sweet and soft and sugary after top surgery. I felt feminine in this bizarrely ironic way. I knew a Truth in a way of perfect clairvoyance... that this surgical intrusion, this incision and removal of the mounds that marked “Womanhood” for so many, had released pain for me of 10 long years. The irreversible visit into the dark tunnel of the OR  had broken me into an unlikely wholeness. Now, it was strange and awkward to interact with my family. I felt starkly different, surrendered to my pain and the delicious release that that pain marked. My family was all very much themselves, loud and boisterous and masculine-minded like so much of society is taught to be.

And here I am, cut wide open to release so-called feminine body markers, and I feel the most tender and sweet and relaxed I’ve ever been. I feel feminine, and what’s even more profound: I feel the infinitely penetrable depths of feminine strength. Strength in pain, strength in vulnerability. Such strength in breathing, pulling inward and surrendering to the every moment. To respond instead of to react. And now my family comes for support, and they are all subtly dumbfounded by me. I know I feel different to them, they’ve smelled the tweak in my disposition. And it’s not because I’m a wounded animal. Its that I’m a wounded healer. I’m stepping into a mysterious sense of Grace; and surgery was a spiralling staircase I knew necessary for my ascension. I simultaneously ascend up into the higher parts of myself, the ones cleansed of fear, as well as ground down into my earth--my body, this vessel of mine that I know to be magic. I disdained this holiness for so long, and know I come to cherish it in this soft motherly way. I am quietly and wisely rejoicing this event. As much as I anticipated the actual physicality of surgery, I could not have previously comprehended this incredible sense of gentle freedom that pervades my being. I am so proud of who I am. Never before have I known this with such transparent honesty. And neither has my family.

As I change in ways that disrupt and even destroy my daily persona, as I travel into my subconscious and even poke around the edges of my unconscious, I affect those close to me. I reflect for them the places where they are afraid to go inside themselves. The fear of being one’s authentic self is perhaps the greatest fear we as humans grapple with. Top surgery was a physical manifestation of a larger hidden journey of my soul. Landing outside of the gender binary is a small but important part of my soul’s purpose. Teaching others by example that it is okay to be soft, vulnerable, and loving is my soul’s desire. Because of this, I do not fear the feminine, as many assume of those who seek top surgery. I have cleared the way for my feminine, taken great and sometimes calculated risks to reach her, and believe in her energy as she heals my broken-to-wholeness body. I do not fear her. I know, resolutely, that the feminine is the future.

That which is Feminine appears inside all bodies of all expressions, and does  not demand any constricting labels to satisfy her. She is within all of us, regardless of our self-definitions and personal stories. Her gentle power sits inside all of us, often dormant but with patience unsurpassable. She can work through all of us; be gentle and kind and open us up to ourselves. This feminine nature will heal a sickly world of fear-based limitations, spawned from of a false sense of control. The collective schizophrenia brought about by a masculine imbalance of “do, do, do” “make, make, make” “conquer, conquer, conquer” will dissolve under the warmth of her embrace. I reclaim the feminine. I reclaim love over fear. I reclaim my body.   

Lunar New year 2016 'scopes

Lunar New Year Tid Bits 2016

What if the story of your life was not about suffering for the sake of benediction? Imagine a world wherein you have always been strong enough to forgive whatever harms you. It can be hard to finally feel strong but, Pisces, you are different then you once were—kinder at the core and luminescent. I wish you could see with clear eyes the many ways you were cared for—each of us your mother as if we knew how to be mothers.

 Still, I think it only fair that you try your best, Aquarius, to find out just how much this past year of endurance has taught you. Test your limit. You’ve made it this far so why not go farther?

new moon aquarius 2016

Monday’s new moon invites you to meditate on what you can outgrow in order to live your next year with less baggage and more room for your own flow. 

No matter what date your birthday falls on, Monday’s new moon can be counted as a secondary one (yes, you too Aquarius Risings). With the new moon in your sign/1st house of self, identity, body and being, this new moon is hitting your refresh button for the year.

Mark it intentionally.

What are you growing yourself into becoming this year? What are you growing yourself out of? What small spaces do you reside in because you told yourself that it’s fine to exist like this? What is the cost of letting yourself outgrow those tight fits and do you have that kind of currency? No growth comes for free. You can’t burst out of your shell and keep it in tact at the same time.

Some things have to go.

Things like worrying about fitting into situations that never felt good anyway. Things like fitting into roles that you never chose. Things like fitting in period.

Especially in your public role. Your career is a hotspot for learning how to define yourself. The challenges that present themselves, as you try and carve out a space for yourself in the world, are sacred challenges. They are supposed to be there. Your job is to keep finding the inspiration to match them, meet them and be with them in ways that feel productive.

- See more at: http://chaninicholas.com/new-moon-in-aquariushoroscopes-for-the-week-of-february-8th/#sthash.olWxRUSI.dpuf

Me Memoir Teaser, Edit 1:

I begin this memoir-so-far with the sun on fire, the moon drenched by the rivers in space, and myself feeling this cosmic hot and cold in my parent’s kitchen. I sit, amidst my true pubescence, in banana-clad boxer briefs. Here I am. I will proceed with a grounding exercise to ease my fiery pitta mind:

My name was Maria Angela Rechsteiner for the first 22 and a half years of my life. I was my mother’s princess and reminded my dad of his alcoholic mother. My name is now Marval Rechsteiner. I am 23 and almost- a-half years of age. I am sitting, typing, and eating a bowl of rice-ramen noodle stir fry. I love oxford commas and see them as essential, exclusively. My testosterone level is in “normal male range”, and I am going to write a memoir-so-far to suss out the transitional transgressive transliminal space that I find myself in. This radical act is largely for me, but if you choose to follow along I do hope you enjoi.  

2: Memoir Momens

August 3rd, 2015 ; SL, UT

It’s my six month anniversary on Taking back the new Me. 6 Months of dying to wake up. It’s been nine months total in Trans ‘Lization.

Who knew another ol’ transsexual jew would be teaching me to dance for the first time, and write again. I am the student of Trans women the world over. Woman, in all her forms, is my perpetual teacher. I praise that which she embodies, the Divine Feminine.

My mother, my lover, and Kate holy Tranny Jew Bornstein.

Thank you.

From the bottom of my wounded walking warrior stud heart on my shoe strings. Thank you.  

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I’ve been quite lethargic in the middle of the days lately. Some transit’s asking me to slow down and feel myself breathe. Breathe in and breathe out. And to feel the scary parts. The parts that we use control and neurosis to not totally feel, to dull out the pain. They are creeping in on my periphery and I can feel them clouding my vision; on the cusp of my awakening they appear.  

I am learning my new body.

I like my penis. He is small now, but powerful and quite earnest in his contract and release. I am pleased with his transformation so far. I am growing fonder and more familiar all the time. 

I like how my body is hardening, and still how androgynous it is. I sometimes find my breasts sexy, but often not on me, just sexy like phantoms separate from I. I still feel dysphoria from the places where fat has deposited in an estrogen rich body. I have a hard time looking at those parts, still.  

Dancing and writing helps. It is necessary. Working out also feels fabulous and cathartic and empowering. I am a little lion ready to grow large and powerful. The working out is masculine, so is the masturbating with my Peen, and the dancing and the self-penetration is often more feminine. Still, I find myself much on the masculine side, than ever before. I find myself more fierce, confident, sometimes ferocious and impulsive. However, my feminine grows with my masculine, and I can feel places where I am beginning to soften. 

Largely, this is a time of expansion for me. The Me that came before felt so small, when I craved to be as Big as I felt inside. Now I am actually becoming Big, as I navigate around the traps of modern Mask-ulinity. I am shamanically expanding, far beyond any notion of control or power over others. I am looking to have power over myself and to Love first and foremost myself and all beings.  

That is my approach to Life: it be Love.    

Entry 1: Memoir Momens

August 3rd, 2015: Salt Lake City, UTAH

I reminisce over this day, my old casually-constructed identity, and a coat I almost inherited before my brother snatched it back. I miss that coat badly, a coat I’ve never even worn.  

Sometimes we miss the things we don’t know. Sometimes we long for that which we WISH we knew or had, but don’t. Nostalgia for some anticipatory abstraction of a feeling. The desire to know it beats even the desire to own it. I crave it. A solitary black coat, so outwardly masculine like my new identity...stoic, mysterious, gallant and dark. Is this to be my karma? And like that is it apparently not, as my brother swooped it right up and onto his own masculine-read body. 

I feel I dodged a bullet; from the antics of this heteronormative imprisonment of masculinity. This “flavor” of “Man” that is so sexy to me. I want to wear it, smell of it, be it. That is, until I sense the stench of death that floats all around it. Death of spirit, a spirit starved, carved out, empty sacks of forgotten children, masquerading as big ol Men.  

I will perhaps wonder for a long time whether the predicament of Mr.Straight White Man is an awkward consequence of biology or socialization. How much of both if it’s both? Why do the majority of Mr.SWM’s seem to occupy a both garishly fearful and arrogant space where no one can win? Why is their definition of success about stomping on the face of their neighbor? And with the innards of such cowardice and fragility? Held and coddled by their sad and patient wives or girlfriends, mistresses or secret boyfriends. And why? And how? Seriously! 

It is disturbingly obvious to me. Mr.SWM’s adherence to a common life of servitude to a false sense of Mask-ulinity. This zealous service to a fictional God of Manhood that presses them for violence, violence, violence as the Best and Only form of communication. Or if not the only form, the best choice to use when threatened, or when the people around you may be forgetful of how Manly one indeed is, no question.  

This sick instruction affects all men! Men of all shades, and all who were raised as Men even if they very much are not! This means you TransMan, TwoSpiritMan, GenderfuckedMan, Manless Man, Aeon-sometimes-Man.......like me. This means you, Me. This means you.    
Here’s to rejecting the rulebook and schooling myself in the art of Queer Feminine Masculinity.

The Horoscopes for 2016

Pisces & Pisces Rising

One of the battles that you face this week might be more about a sense that you get that something has gone astray. There’s no telling if someone has an issue with us unless they tell us. There is no way to control what another does or says about us. There is no way to convince anyone of anything about us, nor should we ever need to.

Refuse to explain yourself. Give the facts. Be clear. Be fair. Be transparent. Be willing to be held accountable. Be generous with others. Be generous with yourself in regards to the things that you are learning in social circles, about friends and in community. Be done with being apologetic for simply being yourself.

Be curious about what things you are learning that help you feel clear. Be interested in aligning yourself with teachers that can help you learn more about such practices. Be careful not to project too much on to them or to expect anything from them other than what they can teach you and what directions they can point you in. 2016 will rock your world. With two very potent eclipses in your sign (in March and September), you’ll be asked to step up your game in many aspects of your life. This can be glorious. This can be terrifying. This can be everything that you need and then some. This will all be much more helpful if you are able to work out any angst through a spiritual or philosophical practice or pursuit. Follow what gives you hope, what makes the world make sense and what helps you to decipher your next steps and the most important precepts to follow.

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Cancer & Cancer Rising

This year wants you to find the time to organize your life. But it’s not exactly enough to organize it because it’s the right thing to do. It’s not enough to organize your self because your horoscope told you to. It’s not going to stick or make any major difference to the quality of your life if you do it merely because it’s some duty that you feel you must do.

You’ve got to get organized for a higher purpose. There is a lot of creative power in your chart this week and in the coming ones. There is a lot of energy for you to harness and draw upon. There is a lot of potential there if you want it. You might start feeling sexier, smoother and more sophisticated in your saunter. You might feel more alive, more ready to pounce on life and more able to conquer your fears of it. You might know all of a sudden what you wish to pounce on and feel lithe enough in your loafers to do so.

However.

The theme here, and for a great part of the year, is that if you don’t organize your life in accordance with the bigger visions you have for it, not nearly a needle point of it will be able to get done. Make it your New Year’s resolution to streamline your days in the sleekest of ways, so that you have the down time, the play time and the creative time to make sure your bigger picture gets a place on your planner.

- See more at: http://chaninicholas.com/happy-new-year-horoscopes-for-the-week-of-december-28th/#sthash.hs7M6Sh5.dpuf