Is the Presbyterian Church Harmful to My Health - Part 4

As I have been explaining, God had a surprise plan for me to go to Sixth Presbyterian Church. He went through a transgender Presbyterian minister named Rev. Erin Swenson to make this happen. I realized when I e-mailed Erin about having gone to the church that she was happy about it and that this had been her plan for solving my problems with the Presbyterian Church all along, which, of course, means that it was God’s plan for me. But this, of course, hit me out of left field. I hadn’t prepared for a new church to become part of the plan for my life. I didn’t realize how complicated it would be to adjust to a new More Light church. So I stayed a bit too focused on Erin when other people really weren’t there to make my adjustment smoother. This caused me to think about my past with transgender people and to want to meet more of them.

Well, I just didn’t know where to begin to meet transgender people. So the first thing I did was pull up all the profiles on AOL with the word "transgender" in them. I went through them and found one person not that far away. I was also very interested and impressed with what this person had to say. I saw "her" picture on her homepage. She looked like a man dressed up as a woman. She did not pass as well as my friend in San Francisco, because, as I later learned, she had not yet taken extensive steps to transition physically from male to female. I decided to be very open-minded about who I met, and I decided I knew very little about transgender people. So I decided to not make any assumptions. I also decided that, as a Christian, I wanted to be unconditionally loving and non-judgmental. So I wrote Donna an e-mail and received a very nice reply. We soon became very good friends, even though she was nowhere near as far along in the process of transition as my friend in San Francisco.

Well, at one point, I had decided to write to Erin about my experience with my first friend in San Francisco. I decided that if Erin did not write back to me, I probably couldn’t face it emotionally. But luckily, Erin wrote back with a very nice reply, even though it was not a long one. After some time being friends with Donna, I decided to write Erin about Donna. That’s when I was convinced Erin would decide I was crazy and never write to me again. I thought, "When I tell this minister that I went through the profiles on AOL and picked out a transgender person because I want to meet one, she’ll just be thoroughly shocked, and that will be the end for me with this woman!" However, a week later, I received a wonderful, long e-mail reply from Erin.

Well, at this point, I realized that Donna’s case seemed so much more complex and confusing than my friend in San Francisco. I got to thinking that I need a support group. I suppose I should have looked for a support group in San Francisco when I was going through a transition with that friend. But I was young and had my own problems back then. Now, I really began to feel the need for a support group to help me understand Donna and my need for relationships with transgender people.

I wasn’t sure at all where to turn. I had been invited to join this message board for psychiatrists. Apparently, they thought I sounded like an interesting case and wanted to study me. So I decided to post a message on that board. I explained that I seemed to have this need to meet transgender people, that I had met a couple of them recently, and that I needed some support in order to understand them and interact with them in a sensitive manner. One dear person responded, and after thoroughly psychoanalyzing me, gave me a page of resources. I decided to go through PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), since I had always had a good experience with that group. They were affiliated with TransFamily of Cleveland. I found out I could join a support message board through that group. I also realized Cleveland was not that far from Pittsburgh. So I logged onto www.transfamily.org and joined the support message board available to transgender people, family, friends, and supporters.

To be continued…