The Best Laid Plans.

The thing about making plans is nothing ever goes as it is suppose to, so really the best thing to do is to not make any plans at all. Life will play out the way it is intended to.

One of many challenges we had when my husband started his transition to become a woman, was when and how to tell those close to us, our friends, co-workers and family that the man they knew was going to be a woman. Dana and I sat down together and drew up a game plan for her “coming out”. A timetable of events as to who we were going to tell what when. Naively we felt confident and assured each other that we had everything under control.

Our year long agenda was blown to pieces within 3 months. The discovery of Dana was more of an explosion rather than a neat and tidy chain of events. Our plan did not take into account that Dana’s physical changes due to the HRT drugs was going to be remarkably noticeable so soon. She was rapidly losing muscle tone and her skin color was off. There were changes in mood. Her voice was becoming softer and quieter.

We did not take into account that we would be approached with direct statements such as “I know there is something going on and I don’t know what it is and I’m concerned”. Probing questions and offhand comments were being tossed about among our friends and co-workers which resulted in information spreading quickly throughout our workplaces and community. Information that was almost always incorrect. It was a difficult time and we were not prepared. Many of our friends thought Dana was sick. Her boss straight out asked her if she was dying from cancer. We did not want to mislead anyone into thinking that she was dying from an illness so we had no choice but to be upfront with the direct questioning. We started the process of sharing the truth, that my husband was transitioning into a woman. A process I wasn’t quite prepared to do just yet because I wanted more time to get used to the idea myself. I needed time to adjust to the physical and emotional changes going on in our marriage before I could share it with the world.

The hardest part was that we had to scramble to quickly tell our grown sons before anyone else got to them. We had to logistically get them home for the weekend without alarming them being that they both lived away from home. The main reason we even had a plan was because of our boys. We wanted to make sure we had all our ducks in a row, and be able to tell them when the timing was perfect. Turns out there is no perfect time, yet we were able to get them home together, sit them down and explain to them what was happening.

It was difficult for me to fly by the seat of my pants during this time. I like order which is why I wanted a plan. I wanted a schedule. I wanted to be in charge but the bottom line was that there is no neat and tidy plan in something like this.

So what we did was toss our best laid plans into the garbage and simply take each day as it came. We did not plan ahead because we found out that there is no predicting when you are going to see and run into others. There were times when I would run into an old acquaintance or colleague at the grocery store, and explain to them in the bread aisle or in the check out lane about the transition when they asked how the family was. I fielded a lot of questions from family and friends, including the questions I had no answers for just yet.

It’s been three years now, and most of our world knows that my husband is now a woman. We are no longer the hot topic of discussion in our workplaces and in our community. We are old news.

Yet… every now and then I still have some explaining to do.