Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains By Naz

Man is born free,and everywhere he is in chains. By Naz


"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.  He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they"............the legendry words of JJ Rousseau.
There are essentially three types of people; those who put a bird in a cage and enjoy watching it everyday in their custody, and those who let the bird out of the cage and make joy of seeing it fly with freedom.
Type I will always tell you that they LOVE their bird.  They provide it with a cage, food, water and all other essentials.  Some would go further and clip their bird's wings so it can't fly, or if it did, will not fly far, a made to measure bird that one can always catch and put back in the cage.Paradoxically, Type II will also tell you that they LOVE their bird.That's odd, the naive of you will ask? how can LOVE be represented by two opposing views.  Let me remind you of what you already know but choose to ignore; Love is a Godly character (God loves his children)....if you are a believer, subscribe to this notion, if not, skip it.......the emphasis is that Love is an emotion that demands higher standards than usual.................standards of Gods.
Love implies that one should not bring any harm to the object of one's love.........otherwise the term would be meaningless. Love is an emotion strictly reserved for objects (including humans) for their specific qualities.  Love is not a tool or means to change these objects into what one thinks they should be to achieve self gratification.  One loves something/someone for what it is/they are.......full stop.
Would a rose change the colour of its petals to satisfy its audience? Love hence also implies no expectation of/or return or payment of any kind from the object of one's love. Love is an emotion that carries its own satisfaction, it is absolute as opposed to business or commercial transactions that are variable in character and where one rightly expects some profit return.
As Love is absolute (you either love something or someone or you don't!) it also implies it is long lasting (eternal is too strong a word).
 One can't love for 3, 15.55 or 37.34 years and then stop loving! You love something for good or you don't .....as simple as that.
Enough waffle about love, the subject is freedom.  Subscribe to Type II, let the bird out of the cage and watch it enjoy its freedom and you will live happily ever after.  Subscribe to Type I, deny your bird its freedom and forfeit your own right to freedom, as someone somewhere, somehow and at sometime is bound to put you in chains.
Who is Type III?.......Ahhhhhh....these are people, usually men, who can't take NO for an answer!............more to come about that subject in good time.

An Understanding...

My daughter, Grace passed away in September 2010. There wasn’t an obituary. There wasn’t a funeral. There wasn’t a casket or even a body to put in one. No one sent me sympathy cards. No one brought me casseroles. This wasn’t because no one cared; it was because my child is still alive.
When my daughter came out to me as transgender I was driven by fear. I feared my child would kill herself if she couldn’t begin her transition from my daughter to my son. That fear and longing to save my child overtook anything else. I forged into a new life and helped her transition. I didn’t expect to feel such grief. C.S. Lewis said: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
I had to put away all of the girl pictures. I had to get rid of any sign that Grace ever existed. I had to remember to call my child the name that she chose: Chris. I had to replace she with he. I had to start calling who I thought was my daughter my son.
I distinctly remember crying one Saturday afternoon in bed mourning the loss of my daughter. Grace came in and hugged me and said, “Mom, if this is going to be so hard for you I won’t do it.” I looked in her eyes and saw such fear. I knew in her heart she needed to transition to alleviate her pain. She was willing to keep going through that pain to spare me pain. I thought what a great kid I had and how her heart and soul were what I loved not her gender.  I then said, “No, I know you need to do this and I’ll be ok just give me time.” She looked so relieved and said “Thanks, mom and we’ll get you help too.”
Grace slept in bed with me that night. When we awoke I found her staring at me so pensively. I said, “What are you thinking about?” She said, “You have a really big nose.” I burst out laughing and so did she. She and I had always used humor to get through life, and I needed it now more than ever. I realized that my child would be the same honest, wisecracking kid I grew to know and love no matter what the gender. I knew it my heart we would both be ok.
My grief lessened over time as I saw my child blossom when transitioning to my son, Chris. He became happier and had a confidence I hadn’t ever seen. He and I formed a closeness that I hadn’t anticipated.
I need parents out there of transgender children to know they are not alone. They need to know feeling grief is a very real and normal part of the process. They need to know that it really does get much better.
I moderate a private Facebook group for parents/family of transgender kids (young and grown) we now have 170 members across the whole world. It’s a very supportive group that has helped me immensely.

Grace is gone but Chris is very much alive. I am grateful every day that he is my son, and that I was lucky enough to be chosen to be his mom. It is an honor that I cherish.
There wasn’t an obituary  instead there was a birth announcement. I gave birth to my child again but this time in the correct gender.
Until next time.

Mary J. Moss
Feisty single mom to a terrific 14 year old boy who just happens to be transgender


Founding member of New York Citizens for Transgender Rights (NYCTR) https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-Citizens-for-Transgender-Rights-NYCTR/102338483283522 and http://www.affirmingtransgenderrights.com/

Love is a verb....

I found this very interesting....


“Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words “I love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are.”


When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find “good reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with “good reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him.

Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities:

• He’s not the man I thought he was.
• The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know
what to do
• The relationship may be over.

Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.”

“Reality Check
His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your fault. Lying is his choice and his problem, and if he makes that choice with you, he will make it with any other woman he’s with. That doesn’t mean you’re an angel and he’s the devil. It does mean that if he doesn’t like certain things about you, he has many ways to address them besides lying. If there are sexual problems between you, there are many resources available to help you. Nothing can change until you hold him responsible and accountable for lying and stop blaming yourself.

The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don’t feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to.
Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection—and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can’t erase his lies, and as we’ll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt.”


“I know men and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots.
After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost

Perhaps...

Perhaps the time has come for me to understand ~ to reach in where it can be dark and frightening and grasp it all, that so it can be aired and digested by someone else. You might shout 'I don't want your darkness', but the clever thing about this is I don't have to care very much, so very soon now I can begin to unload and upload anything I want... and it really won't matter a jot.