I’ve been thinking about faith and what it means, and I have come to see faith as an act of self-love. Here’s what I mean. Having faith means believing that something will happen; for example, I have faith that my material needs will be met, and so my actions fall in line with that belief. I act on that belief, and I know that I will be able to do what is necessary to make ends meet, to fulfill my responsibilities, meet my obligations, and so on. This belief is, at its root, a kind of trust. So often, we think of faith as a trust in something outside ourselves, that God—or Universe, or Buddha, or Allah—will take care of me. I think it can be fruitful to see faith, rather, as a belief in ourselves. It is acting on a belief in my ability to be in harmony with the world in such a way that brings about the materials I need in my life. It is this alignment of self with world that intrigues me. For it amounts to an act of self-love. It is a confidence that the creative and motive force of the world moves through me, that I can manifest what I want or need, that I can trust myself to respond to the creative force in me to manifest my best possible life, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I don’t mean this to sound Pollyannaish. The faith I am talking about isn’t naively putting a positive spin on everything, rather it is having a trust in oneself to be able to make one’s way, even in the difficult times, especially in the difficult times. And this trust is a kind of love, isn’t it? One doesn’t really need faith when things are going well. It is in times of distress, struggle, disappointment and trial that we need faith. I don’t know about you, but when things get rough, like right now through this whole Covid-19 mess, and when I realize that transitioning doesn’t make all of life’s problems go away, that I need faith more than ever. And for me, this amounts to loving myself, to maintaining loving fealty to that guiding voice that has brought me this far, that has helped me get to the mountain and has given me the strength to climb it.
If I treat myself with disdain, if I blame myself for whatever challenge is before me, how can I possibly surmount it? I have to believe, to have faith, that this too has meaning, that the inevitable valleys I must cross have a purpose. Faith as a transaction of self-love allows us to take responsibility for our trials as well as our joys. Faith is the ability to keep believing in oneself and one’s rightful place in creation.
When I first came out, there was so much energy, so much contained feminine being that yearned for expression, that when I was finally able to express it, there was overwhelming joy. Each day was like a miraculous gift as I felt Kay gain presence and reality. It was easy then to have faith, to believe what I was doing was the right thing, to be able to shoulder the loss that came with the gift of my new life. I was no longer afraid. I didn’t fear being judged or rejected or being alone or dying for that matter. I was filled, replete, content, certain.
I suppose it is a common enough to mistake this flush of newness with eternal joy, with an erasure of all one’s human troubles. I really felt I could do anything, so full of vitality was I. Then, things shut down, literally. And, slowly, over the last several weeks, the reality of all I have lost has hit home. It comes in waves. In my shelter-in-place loneliness, I have moments where it is unavoidable to feel the grief that obviously would come when one loses one’s spouse of almost thirty years, when one loses all the accumulated wealth and treasures from those years. So, I cry. I cry for the terrible loss of a love I thought would last, a love I wanted to last. I cry for the memory of those times when I felt so connected to my partner that she was my home. And, she was.
Now, I have to look inward for home. I have to fall back on that faith, that love of self, that belief in my own internal guidance, that voice that speaks to me in dreams and in my music and my art and the poetry of my own voice, in the happenstance of my life. I have to believe in myself. It really is all I have. I used to say that I was only as successful as my last victory—I always thought it was way too easy to go from hero to goat. And, on that score, not much has changed, except now it isn’t about how I am perceived by others, it is a question of how I perceive myself, the way I judge myself when the flow of joy ebbs, as it is ever want to do. Simple physics: what goes up must come down. I may never feel that joy I felt when I first came out as Kay ever again. Okay. Like everything else in this life, our joys are transient. They are like shifting sand. Yet, even as things come into being and pass away, I know I won’t feel this grief and sadness and sense of lack forever. I know myself, for I have been shown to myself in glorious ways I never imagined. I am worth loving, worth having faith in, for the binding force of creation moves through me, and the power that brings all things into being courses through me. And, really, the best part of being down is I get to go up, again.
Be good to yourself.
Kay out.
Transgender Transcendentalism 