In earnest

When you remove work from your life palette you are necessarily forced into reflection. Suddenly you are faced with what identity beyond profession means and whatever unresolved aspects of your previous life remain come knocking loudly at your door. This all the more true when you have adult children.

There is nowhere to run and some can face a crisis of what to do with themselves. I can understand it for if you did not have major interests outside of work it can hit you hard. In the West we invest so much societal energy within the framework of what we do for a living, that it can obscure most everything else.

As older transgender people it can be even more difficult if there are unresolved issues from our past. We may have been living a hybrid lifestyle which worked within previous confines but now confuses us after constraints are suddenly removed. What had seemed entirely satisfactory before no longer necessarily is.

All this to say that the true cleanup work begins in earnest.