Everything and nothing

Back in 2001, at the age of 25, I had a career crisis. I was working as a Training Manager for a large retailer, and they had recently introduced new systems for training staff through a structured programme. I was working with this programme day in and day out and was thoroughly versed in its application and use. Then head office invited applications for someone to run this programme nationwide. Perhaps naively, I applied for the job. I had no tertiary education, and was relying on my extensive experience to make me the best person for the job. But I wasn't. When I spoke to someone at the Human Resources department they told me that were looking for someone with a degree in Industrial Psychology. I was upset. Frustrated. Annoyed. And then I decided I needed to take action.

My husband and I were still renting our house, and the overwhelming societal message was that we should be buying. I wasn't sure how that was going to happen while I was still in a relatively low paid retail job. I was smart and knew that I needed to keep growing and learning so I wouldn't stagnate.  So I decided that I would look into doing some part time education in the Human Resources sector, get a better job and buy a home within the next ten years.

And then I unexpectedly fell pregnant.

We were surprised, but not unhappy. Children were always on the agenda, but the timing caught us off guard because our financial situation was not secure in the modern sense of the word. We didn't own a house.

Of course the model that my husband and I had both grown up with was with a stay-at-home mother, and the idea of going back to work with a small baby was unthinkable. At that time there was no paid parental leave anyway, but I did what most mothers did at that time, and that was to apply for and take the one year's unpaid leave. It turned out that in that time my role was phased out, so I would have had no job to return to anyway.

Pregnancy was easy, but I had a difficult and very, very long labour. I didn't sleep for over 48 hours, and after that I had a newborn who needed feeding every few hours. I remember feeling stressed by the relentlessness of his needs when I was so, so tired. Breastfeeding didn't come easily, and in the second week I was expressing milk because my nipples were so damaged. My son was bringing back milk with blood in it when it was at its worst.

I struggled with adjusting from full time work to full time motherhood, and to ease this transition I worked part time on the weekends from when our son was four months old. At first, I worked at my previous employer, and a few months later I found a better paying job somewhere else.

When our son was thirteen months old I found out I was pregnant again. In early 2003 I resigned from my job, and did not work outside the home again until 2008.

But what was I doing in all that time?  I became occupied with child and community oriented jobs. I joined a local Playcentre, helped as a session supervisor and participated in training in order to hold a qualification that enabled the centre to retain its license. I helped run a mother-to-mother support group, offering support and empowerment to other mothers.  I researched early childhood options for our son as he approached his third birthday. I had no car some days of the week, so I walked my son to kindergarten and back three afternoons a week. I breastfed the baby, I planned meals, I researched and prepared healthy food options for my family. I cleaned the house. Money was tight, so I made meals from scratch and researched how to make money go further. I took the children to Plunket and the doctor.

In 2004 the old societal guilt trip about not owning a house reared its head again, so I started applying for jobs and researching daycare. I was offered a job by a former colleague from my retail days, but I remember standing in the middle of the local fruit shop with my then eleven month old and realising that I couldn't in good conscience put him in daycare at that age and so I turned the job down. The house would have to wait. Or not happen at all.

In 2006 we moved to a whole new suburb, and not long after, our daughter arrived. With a four year old and a two year old, I researched local early childhood centres, visited the local kindergarten to get a feel for it, did all the paperwork so that our son could transfer from one kindergarten to the new one. As he approached his fifth birthday, I accompanied him on school visits. I enrolled him at school. I took my son to school and home again, as well as taking his brother to kindergarten and caring for a new baby, who mostly just fit in with whatever was going on. I took on many jobs within my volunteer mother-to-mother organisation, which enabled me to be involved in community service without compromising my children's care while they were small.  I worked part time as a homebased daycare educarer, which meant I could earn myself a bit of pocket money, but again, not compromise the needs of a baby and preschooler.

In 2008 I found a job outside the home, and decided to apply for it. It was in a public library, and it was the best job I have ever had. I found it encompassed all the things I enjoyed about retail, yet none of the negatives. I could be of service to the community, but didn't have to aggressively sell anything. My husband looked after the children so we didn't need to utilise daycare.

In 2009 our last child arrived. But this time the country had moved on, and I was able to take advantage of four months of paid parental leave. Most of it was lost in a blur of worry and stress over a baby that would not feed properly and not put on weight. I was able to go back to work on reduced hours, and ease myself back into my usual two full days a week by the time our son was six months old. I was working on my husband's days off so that we didn't have to utilise daycare, and our small baby could still be in parental care. Eventually the strain of one of us always being at work, alongside growing boys' weekend sports commitments meant it was time to move on to a weekday job. As it happened, my children's school had a vacancy for a library assistant, so I approached the school principal about taking the role, and she agreed to me taking it.

I was devastated about leaving the public library job, and hoped that I might be able to return to that sector one day, but right now this was a choice I needed to make for my family.

Due to my youngest son's age, an in-home nanny seemed to be the best option for his care. I searched and interviewed until I found the right person.  I spent a greater part of my wages on the nanny, but figured this would pay off in the longer term because I had secured a job, and soon I could access government subsidies for childcare once our son was old enough. My knowledge of child development meant that I had an awareness of what he would be able to manage in terms of non-parental care, so in time he moved on from the nanny in our home to being cared for in someone else's, and then, after more research, to a small, friendly daycare centre, and finally, to the kindergarten that his siblings had attended.

In the meantime, both my parents died, and my life was turned upside down. I began re-evaluating my entire life. As I have already written about, I went to therapy to help deal with anxiety and panic, but the therapist uncovered much more - I had experienced a loss of autonomy. I had lost myself. At the time this was uncovered, it was all I could do just to manage the immediate problem of my anxiety and panic. But it wasn't going to go away.

By that time I had spent eleven years in service to my family and community. My community work was for my own benefit as well, as it kept my mind engaged in things outside child rearing, but it was still child-centred. I was able to sit on a board of a non-profit organisation, but I was still on 24 hour mother duty as I breastfed a baby at the board table. I grew a social media site for my volunteer organisation around cooking dinner, vacuuming the floor and taking children to swimming lessons.

The day before I left my husband and family home in 2014, I also saw a therapist. I wanted to address two things. Questions about my sexuality, and my child rearing burnout.

I was tired. So tired. The therapist agreed I was burned out.

I probably should have stayed and worked through those feelings, but there were so many feelings, and they were so overwhelming, I ended up needing to take action. I needed to run.

People refer to the analogy of the airplane emergency procedure where you are told to put your oxygen mask on before you attend to anyone else.

I had spent years keeping everyone else's oxygen going, and although I tried to secure my own mask, now I was suffocating.

Even though I ran, I still saw and cared for my children every day. But I needed to hunker down and take care of myself, too. Weekends away weren't cutting it. They just meant I had to go home again and I didn't want to. Having more money thanks to an inheritance didn't help. What I needed was space.

A year on I have worked out what was suffocating me. I have learned how to put in place boundaries for children that ensure that they still feel cared for but I don't end up emotionally exhausted.

Back in 2001 my husband and I made the choice based in our shared values that I would stay at home to help look after our family. At university I have learned that what we were doing was market and non-market work. Because we believed in the value of a primary caregiver being a constant in a baby and young child's life, it mostly fell to me, as the stay at home parent, to do the other non-market work as well.

Since making those choices, it seems there has been a shift in society where I am expected to provide for my children equally. As a feminist, I think this is great. However, there are huge problems for women who have bought into the ideal of the 'bring home the bacon' husband while they stay at home with the babies. Many made those choices years ago, before society moved on, and now they are trapped and suffocating too.

I have no education because I gave it up ... twice. Firstly for a man. Secondly for my children. I tried very hard last year to finally have a third chance, but it was too financially and logistically difficult.

I have spent more than a decade putting my children first. I am desperately trying to balance putting my children first, but doing it without losing myself again. I have worked in my children's school for five years, and am still known by many not as 'Dania from the library,' but as 'Jacob's Mum' or 'Freya's Mum.' I can't provide for anyone beyond myself because I am not qualified enough for anything beyond minimum wage employment. I work in my children's school because it means that I can see two of them every day, and that I don't have to work late nights and weekends and have them in someone else's care when they are with me.

Now, nearly at the age of 40, I am worse off financially than I was in 2001 at the age of 25. This is the price that many parents, overwhelmingly women, pay for being the non-market workers in our society. For being the child carers, the cooks, the cleaners, the taxi service, the social arranger, the thrifty shopper, the medical assistant. Sometimes juggling low paid work outside the home. Sometimes trying to run a business in the home. Sometimes volunteering in early childhood services, schools, community groups so that they can spend time with other adults. They might make this choice willingly, but I'm not sure they always understand what they are giving up. I certainly didn't.

Its sad that we live in a world where we end up being punished for nurturing. But ultimately we do. And then when we claim ourselves back we are told we are selfish.

Never again.
Not for me. Not for my daughter.
Never again.

And I still don't own a house.

Normal and ordinary

In January I literally fled my family home, with an intense need to escape my old life.  During this turbulent time of transition, I lived in a caravan park, and went to my children's house every day to get them ready for school and later in the day, to collect them.  Twice a week I would stay over, sleeping on a camp stretcher in an upstairs living area.

During this time, Nyah and I looked for a house that would tick all the boxes of being affordable, being big enough to house four children some of the time, and being close enough to access school by car or public transport.

I started university and was living in a swirl of emotions running high with tensions between myself and an understandably very angry ex-husband, trying to find and organise a new home, trying to get my head around academic life and still go to work and care for my children during the agreed time.

I naturally had to sensitively approach the fact that Nyah and I were in a romantic relationship, and to tackle how our sleeping arrangements would work.

Mr12 decided that it would be most appropriate if I slept on the couch when he and his siblings were at my house, and I readily agreed.  I wanted to be sensitive to his comfort levels, being conscious that he is an adolescent boy just beginning to make  sense of issues around sexuality and romance.

I gently probed the other children about what their feelings were about Nyah and I sleeping in the same bed.  Mr10 declared he didn't care so long as he didn't have to see it.  Miss7, who is a perceptive wee thing, said at a later time that she knew the big boys didn't like it, but she didn't mind.  Mr12 had declared that it wasn't ok, and it never will be.

So, the children started coming and I started sleeping on the couch.

Quite aside from missing Nyah, the couch is uncomfortable, and it was cold.  I managed to wrap up warmly in a sleeping bag, but I was certain the sagging frame would soon take a toll on my back.

In a moment of lucidity that snuck through around the anger, my ex had stated that maybe it would help 'give them an open mind' to live with two women some of the time.  In other words, help re-write the hetero-normative script in their heads.

As the second round of school holidays approached, the thought of nearly two weeks on the couch became a bit much.  I was thinking about how I could be sensitive to adolescent boy sensibility, but at the same time not keep the nature of our relationship hidden.

Slowly compromises were made such as sleeping with the door ajar and getting up when Mr12 did.  As time went by these concessions were no longer required, and our own household routines and systems have formed.  The kids aren't allowed in mine and Nyah's room, but they do know that if they wake in the middle of the night they only have to knock on the door (or in the case of Mr5, call out) and I will immediately get up to them.  I will still change wet pyjamas or lie with a child scared of stormy weather.

I think time has passed and trust has been re-established, and there is nothing to fear from mine and Nyah's relationship.

The last weekend the kids were here, Mr12 was playfully acting like he was going to step over the join in the carpet that marks where the lounge finishes and the bedroom starts.  I was making the bed, and pretending to growl at him.  Then we had a conversation about who sleeps on what side of the bed and why - I am on the door side because I get up first when the children are here, and because then I can easily get up in the middle of the night if I'm needed.  Its too hard to get out from the other side, I explained, because the room is so small that the other person has to climb.

As if it was some kind of mental slapstick comedy sketch, Mr12 laughed at the prospect of a grown woman scrambling over another to get out of the room.

Not just the 'ok' he swore it never would be.
It was all just normal and ordinary.

Finding my tribes

Photo credit:www.gaynz.com

As the New Zealand election campaign ramps up, I have, for the first time, begun attending election forums where candidates from each party put forward their policies about specific issues.  So far I had been to a forum on women's issues, education, and this week I went to the only forum in Auckland covering LGBTI issues.
This popped up on my 'events' on Facebook, and at first I dismissed it as irrelevant.  I have been resistant to the idea of being a part of the LGBTI community, because I didn't feel any need to for my own personal reasons, and maybe partly because I wasn't sure I fitted anywhere within the LGBTI alphabet soup.  Books I'd read said to go out and find the lesbians and hang out with them, but as a woman under 40 I wasn't sure if 'Lesbian Games Night' at the local Women's Centre (the only lesbian social activity I could find) was really going to be my thing.

I wondered what 'issues' might be relevant to the LGBTI community, because it seemed to me that many of the battles of the past had been won.

When I was a young Mum, I sought out the support of other people like me.  I found I was always a bit of a misfit amongst my mother peers, who were sometimes older, and mostly more wealthy than me.  However, we found common ground in our parenting styles, and for a long time I was a member of a mother-to-mother support group where I could be with mothers who mothered like me.  We perhaps had very little else in common other than that we had particular beliefs about how babies should be parented.  Often we talked about the solidarity and encouragement we felt from being with members of our 'tribe.'   I have recently left that organisation, simply because I have moved into new stages and my 'babies' are now aged five and over. When it comes to parenting, my concerns are more about education and behaviour than about sleep and feeding.

As I was driving home one evening (I do lots of thinking while I drive) it occurred to me that my tribe alliances were shifting.  I was becoming more interested and concerned about issues that effect different parts of me - issues that are important to me as a student, issues that are important to me as a mother of school children, issues that are important to me as a member of the LGBTI community.  Then it struck me - I had identified myself as being part of a community that I had initially dismissed as not needing.  I don't think it was appropriate to go looking for that community a year ago, but I suppose over time I have grown into it.

I wrote about a lack of hostility that I feel as a queer middle aged woman, so I took for granted that this lack of hostility exists everywhere.  However, it occurred to me that there are still battles to fight.  Adoption law needs overhauling, and transsexual people are facing uphill battles around how they are treated in the health and prison systems and within human rights legislation.  I am not being forcibly separated from my children and haven't lost my job because I'm in a lesbian relationship.  I realised that I take this for granted, but it wasn't always this way.  It is a great credit to activists before me that I can take these liberties for granted - I'm sure they hoped for a world where this might be possible.

So I think its only reasonable to 'pay it forward' so to speak.  I don't have to fight for the freedom to live how I choose, and if dealing with people's assumptions is the worst I have to deal with, then life is good.  At this particular time in my life it might only be weighing up issues in order to choose who to tick on a ballot paper, but I suppose turning up at a public forum to hear what the issues are to begin with is a start.

I learned more than I thought I would.  The visibly awkward right wing participants felt the world was rosy, but the gay/trans/ally candidates from other parties had a different story to tell.  I learned about gender discrimination and heterosexism in sexual health matters, that trans people have to fight to be recognised as human under our human rights legislation, and that things were not as rosy as we think for queer high school students, who still face unacceptable levels of bullying, and schools that are failing to keep them safe.

Afterwards, Nyah and I had a discussion about how these things would affect our children and her grandchildren.  These weren't just LGBTI issues, but issues that had the potential to touch all of both our families.

Children are not islands and it take a village to raise them.  This forum raised issues that could be a concern to me as a member of the LGBTI community, but moreso are a concern to mine and my partner's children and grandchildren.  Is my son going to be taunted at high school for having a lesbian mother?  Why should Nyah's granddaughter be the assumed conduit to keep boys safe from the HPV virus?  What if one of our children or granddchildren is gay?  Will they be safe at their school?  If one of them is actually a gender not aligned with their sex?  How will the world and the law see them?

They are issues for us as members of the LGBTI community.  But they are also issues for everyone.

Rundown of the AUSA Pride Week LGBTI election forum are here.http://www.liveblogpro.com/event/53fec1060e4a85d4718b458d

Marmalade

As Nyah and I set up our new home, part of what we have done is bring in items with stories and sentimental value.  Everything in our home has meaning, and telling our stories to each other has been an important part of our journey.  We embrace reusing and recycling and the philosophy behind buying second hand when we can.

Amongst my treasures is a bag of my mother's and grandmother's recipes.  In this I found a little notebook with the quantities required to make marmalade.  The front yard of our block of flats has a grapefruit tree, so I decided that I would have a go at making a batch.  First of all I gathered some jars.  Some we already had, but I bought some more cheap jars from the Salvation Army.  Many of these jars had labels attached, and it turned out to be quite a performance to remove them.  They were soaked and scrubbed and in the end had to use a citrus oil concoction to remove them.

I explored the concept of labelling in my last post with regards to sexual identity, but finding identity is many faceted.  My recent learning at university has been that the 'sense of self' is never truly established, but is an ongoing process.  That was good to know.  But what I have also learned is that people like to make order of the world, so will label things the way they see them according to the 'rules' that exist in the culture they live in.

Between us, Nyah and I have eight children, and she has eight grandchildren.  With her children grown, she didn't want to 'parent' again, but is happy to share our home with my children part of every other week.  I take care of the parenting in terms of sorting school things, taking kids on outings, putting them to bed, and she offers support by backing up my instructions and actions.

In some ways our family is unusual in that it doesn't fit the socially endorsed nuclear family of mum, dad and 2.5 children.  This model is probably in the minority (a book I read suggested that in the UK the traditional nuclear family makes up only 7% of all family units)  and even our 'unconventional' arrangement has labels.  Statistics NZ would call us a 'non-blended step family.'  Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand defines a family where a parent's new partner doesn't parent as a 'recombined family'  For a while we even struggled with the term 'partner' because our relationship was so new.  There seems to be missing language when it comes to families and relationships.

As our relationship became more familiar to family and friends, they started making labels for us.  Nyah took her granddaughter out for her birthday, and they had a conversation about her father's partner - whom she referred to as her step-mother.  Then she said "You're a step-mum too, eh Nana?"  

My daughter's friend came to play, and concluded that if Nyah and I got married, then Nyah would be my daughter's step-mother, but at the moment they were just friends.

Everyone wants labels for what they are looking at.  I have become a 'lesbian mature student' (according to a family member) and Nyah has suddenly become a 'step-mother' to a gaggle of small children the same age as her grandchildren.  Maybe those labels will work for us eventually, but that's really something only we can decide, not everyone else (other than Statistics NZ, apparently).   But it looks like we have to accept that people will give us labels that suit what they are seeing, not what we actually are.  

The instructions say that once the marmalade is made, the jars are to be sterilised and the marmalade is to be poured into them.

They are to sit for a while and cool.

Then they can have a label put on and the jars house something new.


NB: To date I have not actually managed to make marmalade.  My unlabelled jars sit in the bag on the kitchen floor, and the grapefruit are still on the tree.  Maybe next weekend....

A bibliography of self discovery

I'm quite good at researching stuff.  When it comes to children's issues, mothers' issues, social issues....just stuff I'm interested in, I will read.  I read sociology books for fun.  I'm that nerdy girly swot.  So, when it finally became time to start looking at myself, I started to try to track down every website, web article and book I could get my hands on.  I'm still reading, and I'm still learning things.  And everything is shaking down just as it needs to.  Here is a list of books that I have found incredibly useful in my search for myself...

Outspoken: Coming out in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand - Liz Lightfoot
University of Otago Press 2011
My review on Goodreads is here.  I actually put this book in this post last, but realised that it needed to go at the top of the list, as it was so important.  It was the book that finally kicked any vestiges of my internalised homophobia to the curb.  I initially read it because I know the author.  It may have changed my life.



Living two lives: Married to a man and in love with a woman (2nd edition) - Joanne Fleisher
2011 Lavender Visions Books 
I really recommend this book as it written in a very gentle and optimistic way.  This blog entry on the Huffington Post page sums up her own situation.




Late Bloomers: Awakening to Lesbianism After Forty - Robin McCoy
Writers Club Press 2000
I'm not forty yet, but I found the stories entertaining and interesting.  Many of the stories resonated, and offered reassurance that my experience was not a lone one.  It was one of those books where I saw my life in the pages before me.



Dear John, I love Jane - Candace Walsh and Laura Andre (editors)
Seal Press 2010







Married women who love women (2nd edition) - Carren Strock, Routledge 2008


And then I met this woman: Previously married women's journeys into lesbian relationships - Barbee J. Cassingham and Sally M. O'Neill

Mother Courage Press 1993
This book contained the stories of women living in 1970s and 80s America, where the culture would be very different to New Zealand in the 21st century, so I was less likely to meet the same challenges.  But some of the stories resonated strongly.

Look both ways: Bisexual politics - Jennifer Baumgardner
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007

Remember Us: Women who love women, from Sappho to Liberation - Miriam Saphira (editor) with Heather McPherson and Dr Fran Marno
The Charlotte Museum Trust 2008
This was a great, easy read book about the history of lesbian culture in New Zealand

How To Come Out - Guide for Women Questioning Their Sexual Orientation - Essie Reis
Essie Reis 2012



Coming out and disclosures: LGBT persons across the lifespan - Ski Hunter
Harworth Press 2007
I found this book by chance at my local Salvation Army store.  I have not read it in its entirety, but did read the part about coming out later in life.  There were sections that made me gasp as I recognised my own life in the words before me.



Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire - Lisa M. Diamond
Harvard University Press 2008
At the time of writing, I'd not actually finished this book yet, but it offered up some great potential answers to questions I had about why I'd not 'known' about being attracted to women earlier in my life.





Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal - J. Jack HalberstamBeacon Press 2012
This book was revelatory to me while I was in the middle of the process of questioning everything about my life.  This book presented the possibility of a different kind of normal.


The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: a passionate guide for all of us - Felice Newman
Cleis Press 2004
Once upon a time I wouldn't have confessed to reading a sex guide.  Actually, I never would have read a sex guide.  But you know, if you are figuring stuff out about yourself you may as well cover all your bases.  In all seriousness, though, the byline for this book is 'a passionate guide for all of us.'  If nothing else, it answers questions about what lesbians actually do in the bedroom with ideas that aren't from the perspective of male fantasy porn.


All the reading I have done helped me understand that the patterns of my life are common to those of many women.  I have only listed the books I've read, but there is a lot online too.  I have posted them because this is a list I could have used, and maybe it will be useful for someone else.

No matter what you're questioning in life, I think it always helps to read.  It helps to explore your own feelings and your own past, and also to find what experts say, but I think most importantly, to find out what other people just like you have to say too.

I sourced my books from Amazon (on Kindle), Auckland City Libraries and Auckland Women's Centre.

Alphabet Soup

In July last year I began some serious questioning about the structure of families, relationships, and began to ask some questions about my own sexuality.  My questions began in a very broad context around whether I still held on to my values around long term monogamy and marriage.  The issues around having been in such a long term relationship from such a young age surfaced during therapy in 2012, but at the time were put aside while I dealt with more pressing issues - managing anxiety and panic attacks.  My blog posts about 'finding myself' were veiled while I struggled with movement away from my traditional values systems, while I questioned the conditioning of my childhood, and sought to understand a growing awareness that I might be attracted to women. I began talking to a friend about all the issues I was wrestling with - autonomy, values systems, what to do with my life beyond being a mother, how I was questioning my sexuality.  And then I fell for her.

I read and read and read.  Books about women like me in long-term relationships with men who had fallen in love with women.  I'm still reading, and sometimes closing books in tears from the emotion of seeing women just like me on those pages.  

One of the struggles I have had is with how to label myself. "So, are you bisexual now?"  "People like you up my gay friend quota."  My partner is a lesbian, which probably labels me by association, but I'm not sure I'm ready for a lesbian identity.  I might be bisexual, but my reading has made me aware of the animosity that can be directed at bisexual people...and I just don't know where men fit on my spectrum because I'm not with one now.  The best answer I found was in the work of Dr Lisa Diamond on sexual fluidity.  At least it was a start.  A possibility.  Diamond's research suggests that women can move through several 'orientations' in a lifetime.  That isn't to suggest that there is an element of 'choice' but for those who are not firmly lesbian or bisexual, it may be that they are simply able to move through different attractions dependent on things such as environment, people around them, present circumstances and so on.  It might explain why I had experienced traditional heterosexual relationships (albeit only as a teenager) without feeling any of them were 'wrong,' but rather that it seems that being with a woman is more 'right.'   More and more women appeared in my life for whom 'unlabelled' was their best descriptor.  Women were popping up all over the place who were falling for women after being in heterosexual relationships for many years.  Women who were married to each other but didn't identify as lesbians. A new friend in a similar situation to me was asked if she knew she was gay.  "No more than I knew I was straight." It was a relief to not feel like I had to label myself.

It looks more and more like the LGBT community understands this too.  Looking at the website for OUTline they cover all labels with a kind of alphabet soup.  GLBTTFIQQ - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, takataapui, intersex, fa’afafine, queer and questioning.  Sure, its a mouthful, but it acknowledges that very broad variety that exists on the sexuality spectrum.

I am moving through a process of figuring out where I sit in the world.  A process of figuring out if I need a label, and if I do, what will it be?  My partner appreciates my honesty in my exploration, and I appreciate her not needing me to be anything in particular.

There might have been a time when you needed to 'come out' as something.  But now I can just come out as me, and take comfort in the array of labels I can choose - if I want one.

What we might be...and what we become.

Apparently as people who are questioning come to an acceptance of lesbian/gay or bisexual orientation, they go through a phase of feeling angry about the heterosexism that exists in the world. I felt this acutely after a prominent sportsman came out and everyone applauded how brave he is. People keep saying I'm brave as I reveal that I have left a heterosexual marriage and embarked on a relationship with a woman. And although I acknowledge the comments about bravery are also about making big life changes overall, I felt angry that anyone needs to feel 'brave' about doing this. That the world may be such a hostile place to us that to reveal that you have any orientation towards the same sex is 'brave.' You also come to realise how strong heteronormative and heterosexist influence is. Indeed, it shaped my last twenty years and more.

Looking back, I realise that I experienced same sex attraction in my past. Not as an obvious sexual orientation at first, but more as an emotional connection. When my mother found out about a one off physical experience, she confronted me about being 'queer.' I have no memory of this confrontation, but did write about it in my diary in extremely defensive bullet points. Through my teenage years, I diarised about a desire to connect emotionally and physically with a particular person of the same sex, but much of my diary was also filled with idealism about marriage and babies and houses with white picket fences. Its what I aspired to and what I assumed my life would look like going forward.

The concept of being a housewife was not actually a prevailing social norm. Girls were encouraged to seek careers across the spectrum. There were not old fashioned attitudes about doing only nursing or teaching until you got married. But somehow in my mind I had made marriage and babies my career goal.  I was a smart girl, but I had steered towards arts subjects that I was good at but that didn't seem to have much value in the job marketplace. My self esteem was not great, and I didn't feel competent at sciences, which is where it seemed the careers were to be had.  Somehow, despite all the encouragement that meant that this was not the only option, I wanted to emulate my mother and live a life like her's.

I remember the speculation about whether one of our teachers was a lesbian. This was steeped in stereotypes - an older woman with short grey hair, a deep voice who never wore skirts. This was the only exposure I'd had with the LGBT world (and even then that was only assumed) but it wasn't very reliable because it was not based in fact. It didn't tell me anything about the experiences that exist for women who love women, so being with a woman was still not something that was considered an 'option.'

Around the time of my eighteenth birthday I wrote in my diary with the same level of uncertainty about my future that I expressed on this blog. I said "I don't really know who I am" and that I don't really know what I'll do with my life..." "What I am now scares me, but I can't help but believe its for a reason." Twenty years on I could have written the same diary entry.

I 'ran away from home' by way of going to Dunedin to attend art school. It was in my part time job that I met the man that was to become my husband. I was impressed by his family values. He fell in love at first sight, and I fell in love with the idea of fulfilling my destiny as someone's wife. He courted me properly with flowers and dinner and the promise of a home filled with love. It was romantic and at the time it was right.

He now questions whether I ever really loved him. I can say without a doubt that I did. I loved him with all the capacity for love that I had. But I know that part of what I was in love with was a concept, and a values system. Once I started to question the values and concepts under which I was conducting my life, the house of cards started to tumble. I will always carry a sadness that by escaping that life I broke his heart.  The paradox is that I do not regret the life I led with him, but at the same time feel like that if my world had been different as a teenager, things might not have turned out the way they have.

As I look back on the last twenty years, memories emerge of things that have happened where this latent attraction to my own sex bubbled to the surface every now and then. At the time I never explored it further, probably because the peace and comfort of my life as I knew it outweighed any need to know any more about the hidden parts of me. Some of the reading I have done in the last few months has shown that very often women make changes after traumatic events like the death of a parent, or at the time of major transition, like the youngest child starting school. Both of these have happened to me in the last few years. These life shifts can be the catalyst for a massive re-evaluation and time of discovery.

I was happy in my marriage for a long time because I didn't know what I didn't have. This wasn't anybody's fault. My former husband need not feel inadequate, because this was to do with me and to do with the culture we exist in. There was a huge amount of happiness and security to be found in fulfilling socially endorsed roles and coasting along on a socially acceptable course in life. Stepping outside the norms makes me reliant on my own tools of self examination, self awareness and communication because there is no institution to fall back on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I can now see what was missing. I am so very conscious that the situation that we were in simultaneously suffocated me, but provided him with security.  I wonder if he felt for me what I feel for my new partner.  If that is the case, I will always hold a regret that I had to hurt him so badly to free myself. I can't do anything now other than apply the lessons learned to my future. I have no desire to turn back. Now I am experiencing a completeness and wholeness that I have not felt before, even though I am still on my own journey.

Being with my female partner feels like the most natural thing in the world. I have been very lucky not to have experienced any hostility. However, every now and then I experience a jolt that makes me realise how I am now part of a minority. The IRD officer who helped me apply for Working for Families assumes my partner is male. A guy at the service station asks if my partner is my friend or my sister. The landlord asks if we are sisters or just flatmates (and at the time we did say 'flatmates.')  The woman at the service desk at The Warehouse types "Mrs" into her computer when recording my name for a refund. While the world is not hostile to people in same sex relationships, the first assumption is that you are with a man - and certainly, by a certain age the assumption still seems to be made that you are married to a man.

My children have had their world shaken, and are having to reframe their ideas about family that they have come to believe, too. This has been traumatic for them, but they are managing very well. But in the long run I think this bodes well for the world they will live in, and in some ways I am grateful that they are discovering this now. In a world where homophobia and sexism is frowned upon, but gender role stereotypes and heteronormitivity is rife, my children can see that when they are grown, it will be ok to fall in love with a man OR a woman. That they could live with that man or woman, they could marry that man or woman, they could live alone, they can be what they want for a career, they can choose to have a family or not, and that all of those choices are valid. That they don't just know that academically, but actually see that in practice, and see that it can work.

My hope is that the heteronormative script in their head is rewritten. That they can actually see all the possibilities that exist for them, and not be blinkered by set ideas the way I was. If I could go back to eighteen year old me, I would tell her slow down and allow herself time to explore. To start to do that late in life is painful and hard and likely to hurt people they care about.

It was too late for me. Its not too late for them.

What has also occurred to me since writing is not just the impact this has on my children, but on other families we know.  I had not taken into account that my friends are placed in the position of explaining to their children - my children's friends - about my living situation.  To their credit, they do all treat it as 'situation normal' and I trust them to answer questions thoughtfully and factually.  Yes, it is difficult explaining the choice not to stay with my children's father, but the flip side is that they will see as an everyday thing a female couple who are not doing anything other than living normal and ordinary lives.  The heteronormative script will be rewritten in their heads, too.