The Trans Test

Interview with Runa

• One day he heard me say “he” when talking to his sibling about him, and that was it. I was out. He caught me, and I had failed the trans test. I lost my son. The end. – Runa

• She was willing to feast upon ME! My health. My vitality. My fertility. My womb. It's a figure of speech, but the truth of it couldn't be more plain…She by her actions was in truth a saleswoman dressed up in white priestly medical robes. - Runa

---

---

I’m not quite sure how to introduce this interview.

There is so much going on here, so much being shared, so many different threads.

When they talk about “the destruction of the family”, that is exactly what they mean. It’s not a metaphor. It is a literal objective.

The Queering is multifaceted. In this story we are allowed to peer into the most intimate moments of but one of its facets.

With thanks to Runa.

---

This is Interview No.28

Unbekoming Interview Library

---

1.      Can you describe the initial symptoms you experienced that led you to seek medical advice, and what were your feelings during that uncertain time?

In the winter of '22-'23 I began to experience arthritis in my knee. This was not unheard of, as I had had some before for a few years, but in the crossover of the year it grew in intensity until I was having trouble sleeping.

The biggest problem was when I began bleeding heavily early in the new year of 2023. It seemed like it started with a bang. This was not my menstrual blood, as it was very heavy. It did not hurt. I could feel large globby clots as they would leave me.

I remember that evening rushing to the bathroom with every release, seeing the water seem to fill with blood. The huge masses 2-3 fingers wide and then the bright red dripping, as though I were a constantly leaking faucet.

I have a bad habit of just wishing things would go away, disappear. Besides, it was bedtime for my child, and I did not want a good night’s sleep to be disturbed. Still, I was wondering whether I should be rushing to the emergency room. I called a nurse and was given the option to go in, but for some reason I didn’t feel that it was clear that it was what I should do. I do recall she said I’d need an ultrasound which would not happen in the emergency room anyways. I suppose I thought it might be a terrible way to pass the night and not do anything for me, and why disturb my family?

I thought so many things back and forth, minimizing and magnifying the situation in turns. I imagined bleeding out in the night should I fall asleep and so be unable to notice. Maybe I was dying? Maybe that was grandiose to think that. My arthritis was already making sleep difficult as well. I stayed awake, monitoring myself.

I stayed up at my child’s bedside and wrote letters to the most important people in my life, imagining that I should tell them what I must, in case things could go too far before I might realize it, and then it would be too late. Why had I not said these things before, when I had time?

I stayed alive longer after that, and so wrote my own obituary, which is now hilarious to me. I was quite sincere in putting into proper words the truth of my life. I thought even my closest family would miss the mark completely, and so I set about putting my imagined death into the right perspective.

2.      What motivated your decision to go directly to a specialist, despite the long wait, instead of opting for immediate care in an emergency department?

While I kept bleeding, I seemed able to persist and function somewhat. I have an immense capacity to cope, I suppose. I can endure. I kept the emergency room in my pocket, but figured I’d attempt to go directly to someone more likely to be able to offer more insight. The earliest appointment was two months out, and I could always go to the emergency room, I was told.

I live in a rural area. The local medical options consist of big business medical chains with specialties accessible an hour’s drive away. I already have learned that doctors have not been very helpful in the past, and it seems they are beholden to business and insurance restrictions and bs bureaucratic practices. If I felt like it were a financial option, I would see an independent doctor with openness to natural options, but I seem to reside in a somewhat financially ascetic lifestyle. So, big box medicine that takes major insurance it was.

3.      How did the physical symptoms you experienced, such as heavy bleeding and extreme arthritis, impact your daily life and mental well-being?

There were many days that I could not leave the house. I had to be able to rush to the bathroom in order not to suddenly dirty my clothes. Menstrual pads could not contend with a sudden rush of blood. There was also anemia. I felt like a vampire had fed on me, leaving me drained and only half alive. The arthritis was so bad that I could only sleep briefly in a kneeling position draped over a high tower of pillows, after which I’d awake in pain. Then I would walk around the house researching what could be wrong with me on the phone. Upright and walking relieved me of the arthritis, and kept me from wishing I could sleep. I could not even sit for long. I tried to do as many routine things for my young child as possible, and I suppose having that urgency to parent kept me from giving in to the massive drag of the problem. Children make you do things.

Was I poisoned? Was I dying? What could I do. I felt very responsible to do something for myself, as my research into the kinds of mainstream medicine solutions to a variety of possible causes were not options that I was attracted to. My health emergency demanded of me what attention I could give to it.

Some years ago my father had died of cancer, and in the months before he died a documentary series had been released called The Truth About Cancer. I had attempted to apply some of my learnings to him at that time, but he had been unable to swallow. For myself, the best I could think of was to attempt some of the more accessible methods that I had learned from that series.

I had all kinds of supplements. I had experience having done cleanses before. I was thinking and thinking and trying anything that could not hurt.

I recalled in the documentary hearing a man, Jordan Rubin, founder of Garden of Life health supplements, talk about forgiveness and how important it had been to address these kinds of entrenched negativities. I was working virtually with a therapist and was trying to unhook myself from overwhelming negative emotions related to prior traumas.

I also recalled cancer survivors who were grateful to the cancer for revealing to them where things were not good for them and giving them the opportunity to change their lives for the better.

I also have had a lifelong autodidactic movement practice. I have relied my entire life upon cultivating my own vitality, shaping my emotions and perspective, basically addressing just about anything, through dance and movement. I couldn’t do that in my usual forms while so unwell, but I sought with the same perceptiveness and personal language that I have created since childhood.

I would also pray that I could be so fortunate to be one given the opportunity to change and do better. I prayed for the opportunity to live to be of help to my children. I prayed for the opportunity to live and answer what callings were meant for me to answer in my life, to serve. I prayed secretly, because I wanted to have a direct and true experience of prayer, not mediated by a church or any witness. I have had a contentious past relationship with the church. I now pray in private.

4.      Your story includes a significant personal challenge regarding your son's gender transition. Can you share how you initially reacted to your son's announcement and the emotions you navigated through this period?

Around Christmas time my 17 year old had an anxiety attack and in a fit of emotion revealed to me that he was a woman. He was so distraught that I just held him and did not comment upon this very surprising announcement. He was not rational and needed reassurance and comfort. I figure when it comes to emotions, it is not always the story given to the emotion that is important but the feeling itself. So I addressed the feelings and remained watchful of both him and myself regarding the explanation he had given. What could it mean?

He had been wanting to be tested for adhd recently, getting like there was something wrong with him. He had also been depressed, particularly since lockdowns and other life events. I really took notice when he proclaimed (in the days after the anxiety attack) that he no longer needed adhd testing nor therapy nor any other supportive plan we had in the works because the problem was entirely due to being a woman. Being a woman was the reason and solution for everything.

I was shocked. He was on the verge of turning 18. In his entire life he had been so clearly a boy. He was physical. He was not social in the way of most girls. He was interested in toys that do things and in doing things. His fantasy play had always been to be a boy. He had spent a lot of time in very accepting environments where children were allowed to self direct their fantasy play without adult judgment. I didn’t think, if he had been girly, that it would have been repressed. He was always expressive and compulsively truthful. He could not keep secrets and instead was always agitated to force disclosure of anything that would normally be considered worthy of being a secret. He was a romantic who fell in love with girls and women repeatedly through his youth, even as a toddler! It just didn’t make sense to me, and I was worried about him.

That is just my reaction, but, upon much reflecting, I did see a formidable confluence of factors which have helped me understand how he could come to this idea. This would require an entirely other article, but the factors include things like: the drastic effects of locking young people down in 2020 and after; living life online with its disembodiment and self creation; access to porn and sexual fetishes and becoming oneself a sexual fetish; the augmentation of spectrum characteristics by effects of lockdowns and pandemic psychological disease; unresolved trauma; disorientation of isolation and lack of in person socialization; the natural need for individuation and finding and forming oneself as a young adult; trauma and particularly trauma within family relationships; the no-future nihilistic perspective offered to many youth; the introduction and societal marketing of the “solution” of gender identity...

5.      You mentioned employing the Socratic method and listening as your approach to understand your son's perspective. Can you explain how you applied these methods and the outcome?

My son is very sensitive to being coerced, forced, or manipulated, as am I. Also, 2020 had been fruitful for digging into a rift between us. When he started going to a religious but progressive school in an attempt to be able to go to school and be with people, he got a very strong social message about the right way vs the crazy way to view and relate to the pandemic. Upon calibrating himself to that and to a host of smartass YouTube factcheck takedowns, I became a discredited antivax conspiracy theorist for him. More than that, he was seeking to prove me finally and definitively wrong. So there was an element of vengeance there as well, which is also part of the unresolved problems of his childhood that he holds me responsible for.

Like the covid politics, gender and sexuality had ready-made factions that were being expressed aggressively and divisively. Around the issues of covid, he was easily triggered, and so I had learned that almost anything I might say could potentially flip him like a switch into a reactive state in which it would be very difficult to relate. I knew that I would need to engage him in service to his own mind, whose workings he accepted much more readily. He desperately needed a path, but being given it by myself or by helpful online armchair diagnosticians is a dangerous proposition. How to interest that mind in testing and reflecting?

So, he was excited to tell me about being transgender. It was new to me as well. He did have special terms, a kind of transgender trademark language where there were both new words, but also known words that didn’t and seem to mean what I had been accustomed to thinking that they meant. I could see his state of excitation in wanting to lay it out for me as a precise and complete world. I would ask questions to try to find out what he meant, and how he fit things together.

For example, he said he was a woman. How could he tell? If he was truly a woman, why did he need to change to be a woman? So, when he changes himself to be the woman that he is, what will that be like? What will he do or say or look like? What is the difference between being a woman and being a man with whatever listed attributes? If you are really a woman, what does it mean to be seen, perceived, or not as a woman? Why is that important? What if someone doesn’t see you that way? What if they lie; is that OK?

I would just ask and ask, and he loved to talk. He was also very excited about me getting to know the truth he had found. I still had to be careful with my questions, because if he thought I was trying to lead him or use them to make a statement, he would shut off.

We had built a habit of watching movies and shows together, as we both love the intricacies of stories. I tried to be curious about the issues raised in these stories that seemed to have similar patterns to the issues coming up in the transgender dynamic. It was an indirect way to try to access thinking without triggering a shutdown.

Still, it was very difficult because there were so many triggers that could derail conversation and our relationship. To be fair, there were many points of contention from our parent – child relationship which were unresolved and about which he remained very angry with me. There was a difficult divorce many years ago, an unhappy step-family situation, and of course the socially approved censure promoted for those on the wrong side of covid doctrine. All of these unresolved issues seeded triggers like mines in a minefield, and, unfortunately, because we struggled to find a direct way to address those wounds, they tended to show up everywhere. Unreconciled suffering, pain, anger, betrayal, are real transformational ills. They somaticize, as is likely with my ills. I cannot but wonder that my son’s transgender transformation attempt is meaningfully an attempt at reconciling his own suffering.

Reflecting, it is possible that an explosion sufficient to destroy our relationship was near unavoidable. There was that energy of revenge. I had been unforgivably wrong as a mother in his estimation. So, even though we could start on neutral ground, or attempt to keep him safely exploring his own thinking, my presence would sooner or later remind him of unsettled bad blood. I wasn’t a neutral facilitator for him, nor did I have the chance to serve as only a loving mother. I was part of the problem.

I really struggled not to poison the cue. This is to say, taint a healthy question and his curiosity around it with the bad feelings he had related to me. And on the converse, sometimes he really wanted to be angry with me, but then I could see him succumbing to the part of him that really did feel at home with me.

Many months after he excommunicated me, he made contact around a bureaucratic necessity. He slipped up and happily talked to me for maybe twenty minutes before the rise in his enthusiasm reminded him to follow through on his promise to have nothing more to do with me after my failure to “affirm” him.

6.      The term "parental trans test" is quite striking. Can you elaborate on what this concept meant to you and how you feel you 'failed' it according to your son's expectations?

My son’s proclamation of being a woman came with an already set ultimatum. I noticed that I began to title it to myself as the “trans test”. He listed to me quite clearly that he expected me to:

• use his new name (and never ever reference the old),

• refer to him with she/her pronouns,

• agree in advance to support any medical treatments he chose including hormones and surgery, and finally,

• I must “see” him as a woman.

I now know that these are standard tenets of affirmation.

He told me that he was willing to be gracious, and these terms were the easy bare minimum to expect. Anyone could do it. Alarmingly, he also told me that anyone who did not do those things would be a transphobic bigot, someone who hates trans people, and on par with being a racist. Racist is the worst that a person can be.

What struck me immediately was the impossibility. As a still responsible parent, there was no way I could just sign off on drugs and surgery. Also very striking was the mandate upon my perception. I thought, how can I possibly control my sight, and my perception? How does that make sense? If he were to know I was lying about perception, as many even properly behaving people surely must do, would he consider that a right thing or a wrong thing?

I cannot purposefully lie, at least not once I see it clearly that that is what resides in my choices. It just feels wrong. I cannot get it out of my mouth. It is reverse gagging. I can lie with a wink, but not about something which was clearly held as so important to him. He considered it sacred. Being a woman was equated with being at all, so, either I see a woman or I don’t see my son. I just cannot make it palatable to lie about that which someone holds to mean everything, existence itself. I cannot lie to agree with things that are physically harmful. I cannot lie about something when to do so would be to consent to the idea that a pronoun is more important than one’s own family. Talk about praying to a fake god!

Yet, I tried. I really did. I tried to imagine how wonderful it would be to lie to him.

“Yes you’re a woman. Yes, that is what I see. Yes, I’ll sign you up and won’t ask questions...”

I would get to talk to him. I’d be able to offer the support of feeling loved in a purely cozy way. We could still extract deep meaning together from movies about superheroes. We could keep working out together. We could cook. I could laugh at his comedy routines. He’d call me if he was in trouble. I could still try to ask questions in the hopes that his own mind would pause and think. I could say, yes I agree, and let’s look together, like all trans people must do, at the pros and cons of all of the choices of which you are the master. There are so so many good reasons to lie. It’s worth lying, just to even get to truly SEE him, even if he tries to cover and cut and condition and tell himself that it is a woman that the liars see in him. The fantasy of lying my way to him is attractive to me, even in this moment. My son is just a fantastic beloved person. It is so unnatural to be restrained from reaching out to him.

I couldn’t do it. I avoided stepping on mines as long as I could. I referred to him directly with the pronoun “You.” I knew I would only make it so far before I’d be caught at playing noncommittal. One day he heard me say “he” when talking to his sibling about him, and that was it. I was out. He caught me, and I had failed the trans test. I lost my son. The end.

And then the bleeding was apace, and the arthritis was over the top.

7.      Researching medical conditions and potential treatments became a significant focus for you. How did this process influence your perspective on healthcare and the available treatments?

I like to research, and I am very demanding of myself to try to understand and to understand on terms that are valid to me personally. I am the highest authority in my own life, except a higher power, but, I don’t expect a doctor to be the highest authority. It is my life. The doctor is like my consultant, but I often don’t know whether the consult will be helpful until I see whether it has integrity, whether it bears weight.

But, I was honestly desperate. I couldn’t even consult with a doctor in a timely way. Considering I was seriously confronting my own death, I had to inquire and attempt what I could. I didn’t expect to be saved, though, if saving were needed, that would be acceptable. But, I also knew that I could also be harmed, even as I could be saved, and only I could make that choice. Institutional iatrogenesis had been something that I have been studying for years.

8.      You express a strong preference for natural treatments and a skepticism towards medical intervention. What experiences or beliefs have shaped this viewpoint?

It’s everywhere. My son had arthritis at two, which was maybe a reaction to a shot, or coincidence. He was in a children’s hospital on and off for months. Not once did a doctor say or do something that actually helped. Even his diagnosis, juvenile Idiopathic arthritis, was merely a description of his persistent symptoms. He was poked frequently by anyone who wanted to poke him. Different doctors kept coming to do another and another test. I realized they were students getting trained on my kid. I started asking them what the test was for and how the results would affect treatment. My kid would pass out in terror and pain at some of the tests, and me having to hold him forcefully and try to calm him. When they answered that the test would not change the course of treatment at all, a furious spark started up in me. I started to say “No”. Every time the kid would manage to fall asleep in spite of the pain, they’d come for a blood draw to wake him up. I said, “how can he get better if he’s not allowed to sleep? You do not need to do this.” They can affect a bedside manner, but it doesn’t mean that they care, at least, not in the way that I care. They are not so stupid that they cannot see what they are doing. I expect more from all of us.

There are so many reasons to distrust. My grandfather died of a rare cancer which was tied to a botched surgery. My grandmother experienced depression after losing a baby and was locked up and shocked. My mother had a dutiful colonoscopy for which she was given fentanyl, and they discharged her while she was vomiting uncontrollably. She got the “flu” every time she took the flu shot until she finally stopped taking it. My uncle had a botched back surgery for which the surgeon never took responsibility. Then he got the covid shot, developed heart trouble, died in his sleep unexpectedly, and then my mother was talked out of getting an autopsy because “it would only reveal what we already know about his health.” I have too many stories about that shot and people I know. Look at the birthing industry. The standards of care and regular practices are not good for mamas and babies. I don’t understand how people that I see, family members, who are clearly harmed, still claim that they must listen to the doctor. It’s the same with schools, the justice system... What is really in practice happening?

9.      The emotional connection between your health issues and your relationship with your son is profound. Can you describe the moment you realised the impact of your emotional state on your physical health?

When I was bleeding, drained, unable to sleep, yet also grieving the horrendous loss of my son, I had an epiphany. My son was so angry with me, was trying so hard to make me understand how my choices had hurt him. I wanted so much to hear him, understand him. I felt responsible for his pain, his anguish, and the suffering that had made him vulnerable to what seemed to me to be clearly a delusion: the idea that he is not acceptable as he is and so must damage his body and health in an attempt to be himself. I felt guilty. He blamed me. I remembered so many times seeing him affected by something, and trying to help, but seeing that my efforts did not succeed in helping. And now he wanted me out of his life because of what I did wrong, or failed to do, things which a parent is meant to attend to. He was punishing me, and, wanting to be close to him and recognize my part, I agreed inside that I deserved punishment. I actually had a death wish! It doesn’t mean that I didn’t also have a life wish, but, how can I be available to heal and live if I am an agent in my own destruction?

10.  Forgiveness and self-acceptance play a crucial role in your story. How did you reach a point of forgiveness, and what practices or thought processes helped you?

When I saw in myself the death wish, it was one of those sleepless nights. I knew with full clarity that I must be 100% committed to living. No muddled grey area. I don’t know if it is exactly forgiveness. I know I didn’t manage to do something that would truly help at some crucial times in my son life. I AM responsible. It does matter. I was wrong. I would time travel and change it if I could. I will admit it to anyone. But, I cannot change it. And I cannot give any energy to punishing anyone, and not myself, over that. Perhaps it is reconciliation. I am reconciled to what has happened and my part in it.

I have a grown child and a young child, and I will be available for them unless it is beyond my ability to do so. Any voluntariness in me is for living, for giving service that I am suited for, made for, called to. I don’t know if that is forgiveness, but it is a freedom. Reconciliation so as to accept and say yes to my life and its substance. It is I hope a more mature kind of responsibility. It is also humility, because, to say yes to being a parent and being alive is to accept that I am capable of failing, and even WILL fail at what is most important! And that is not the only part of what life is about. You can’t abdicate your life just because you made a mess of it, because what of the good? What of those of yours that are beloved?  I was never in control of everything either. I am not an anti-God whose mistakes are prime movers which require me to remove myself from the world entire.

I took that death wish to my therapist and we did some EMDR¹ ping pong over it that same week. My bleeding, after two months, reduced to mild bleeding within days.

11.  Your encounter with the gynecologist and the progression of the suggested treatments seemed to be a turning point for you. What were your key takeaways from this experience?

The next week after vowing to give my all to living, I finally had my appointment with a gynecologist, the first doctor I’d see after the bleeding began. I had researched a landscape of potential causes of the bleeding and the standards of care for them. I read up on hormones, embolization, surgeries, scraping the uterus, and hysterectomies (though I did not research that much, as it is not the first in line of actions) .... You can find studies to see statistically different side effects and complications, success rates, infection rates, and so on.

I have not had much success in meeting doctors who actually make informed consent an option. I have great difficulty finding doctors who seem interested and inspired about their field of practice. Why are so many not curious or passionate about their field? Why do they answer open-ended questions as though they just wish to close the questions and end the inquiry? I don’t think that is normal for anyone whose mind is awake to the work before them to behave as though the practice of it provides them no nourishment.

Here is what I had written prior about the encounter with the gynecologist:

I recorded my meeting with the gynecologist and was determined not to prejudice her communications and to just listen and ask questions. If I were to jump in with all of my prior research and thoughts, how would I ever know with whom and with what sort of institution I was dealing? I wanted a chance to see and discover what was there.

So, the ultrasound showed nothing, she said. First she talked about taking hormones, just like I had read. Then she talked about doing a biopsy. It would be such a minor procedure that biopsy. I could really just come for a moment, with no disruption at all! They would barely intrude in my uterus. And actually they would just go in there and take a little piece to check out. They would just go in there and just give a scrape around to remove the lining. It would just be a D and C. And really it could be scheduled for this very next week. We could schedule it this very moment.

It sounds a little strange, like the plan just kept getting modified with every moment that she kept talking, until she was essentially describing the procedure sometimes called an abortion: D and C. She really talked like that! Within minutes she went from nothing to a minor something to a much bigger something! If I hadn't read up on so much prior, I wonder whether I would have missed that progression and thought she was merely clarifying one procedure. Instead, her talking sleight of hand turned nothing into a very big something.

And then I asked her about possible side effects, complications, and how likely they were. And she LIED! For example, the rate of infection she said was miniscule like a few nothing percent, but in reading studies, I knew it was far more than that!

And then, she actually explained that this kind of procedure is their "bread and butter"! Wow! She meant to be reassuring because, hey, they do it all the time, but I am thanking God that I am being allowed to see what is in front of me. She was willing to feast upon ME! My health. My vitality. My fertility. My womb. It's a figure of speech, but the truth of it couldn't be more plain.

So I listened and wrote notes and secretly recorded. Inside, I was so relieved. I didn't have to wait for a doctor to save me. It wasn't realistic nor credible. This lady wasn't ethical. She wasn't up on what she was doing. She wasn't curious about healing the body. She by her actions was in truth a saleswoman dressed up in white priestly medical robes. She didn't realize it in that moment, but she would not be buttering her bread with me!

After all of my research into the standard care, the typical progression, the hand-in-hand way the medical institution would match paces with insurance to take untold numbers of women down this path —all of that I called to myself “the hysterectomy train.” Another term: “the hysterectomy pipeline. “ That is where continued treatment goes, and since then I learned from your unbekoming substack about a very interesting book on female castration by Naomi Stokes Miller. This is one pattern aspect of medicalization that concerns me the most: the way that one thing leads to another, and especially if one thing uniquely sets up the next thing, making it probable or sometimes necessary, such that it feels important to me to have some sense of awareness of the end at the beginning.

I think that giving up on the doctor as savior was the second crucial piece to healing, symbolically. Reconciliation and commitment to a life worth living had been followed by an incredible shift to the better. After this appointment I basically stopped bleeding.

12.  You've highlighted a moment of revelation regarding your desire to live and the impact on your health. Can you share more about how this shift in mindset influenced your recovery?

It is really a symbolic puzzle that can only be solved by making sense, fitting the truth, and being worthy of bearing the weight of a life. I just realized it actually has some pattern kinship with another experience I had. Here is a digression.

When I was a youngish child, maybe 8 or 10 thereabouts, I fell into a frozen lake. I was all by myself and right in the middle.

As frozen lakes are a common endemic danger in the area, children are often warned and hear many stories about the dangers of thin ice. I had seen on the television a number of dramatizations where a child would fall through the ice. Someone would pull them out. I think I recall even a helicopter flight. I certainly recall a story of a child whose heart stopped for what would normally be an unsurvivable amount of time, but, due to the preservative effects of the cold, the child was successfully revived. I was aware of the threat, but, perhaps it was still just a story to me, even as I found myself the protagonist.

So, I yelled at force, yelled and screamed. The houses on the shore showed no sign of having heard me at all. The air even swallowed my screams, which were not so enduring and potent as I had imagined. They hardly carried. There was no movement anywhere. I had even yelled for God, but, the air was as still as though it had never known my sound.

To my surprise, despite being a confident swimmer, the cold was entering me already! So confident was I in my skill set swimming that I had even immediately removed boots and gloves upon falling through, in order to swim more capably.

Was it possible that I could die? It had honestly never occurred to me. It did occur to me then. I had better do something myself, came into my mind.

Placing my bare hands upon the rim of ice marking the hole through which I had fallen, I attempted to lift myself. I was also quite strong and capable at lifting myself.

But I did not lift myself. Instead the ice broke quickly at my attempt. And again. And again. And then I could not even feel my fingers. They were dull carrots. I could die.

And then somehow I lifted myself. I don’t quite remember, or maybe imagine just an uprushing. It seems almost not possible.

I walked home on my bare feet, thinking I’d surely come back and pick up that sodden discarded glove cast next to the hole at a later time. And I survived.

Here’s where it is relevant to the time that I somehow stopped bleeding to death.

What is the meaning of this story? How can this be understood?

I refuse to say, ah well, it is just that I happened to break the ice until a thicker piece supported the adrenalized lifting of my weight. Maybe that is true. But it is not true by a truth of any significance to me and in any way worth my living. The story that holds life together and makes it traversable must be worthy - worthy of, in this case, bearing weight.

So, quite possibly something in scientific verbiage stopped my bleeding. Surely it is so. Even I want to know what it was. I do not wish to insist upon meaning that finds itself untrue in the narrative languages that I DO use to parley and divine mystery of truth to both myself and to others. And yet, I cannot live my life by material meaning alone.

So, I puzzle and puzzle. I tell myself a story that I got out of the lake by taking it finally upon myself to do so. Later, upon challenge by others, I have recognized that it is also worth my life that I may have emerged by the grace of God. That also bears weight.

When I got rid of the last vestige of me clinging to the old bit of hope for the doctor saviour, that which had been assigned to the fulfillment of that myth was freed to aid me to live. And, like the lake story, maybe I was freed to be saved by a grander and more mysterious source. Certainly, the stories by which I effect the outcome myself do not entirely fit against the verity that I know all too well my very severe limitations. I know it is perhaps a story, the stories I offer to the puzzle, but I love the story like I love my life. I will place my weight upon it and walk about trying to do what I am to do.

13.  The relationship with your children is a central theme in your story. How has this journey impacted your family dynamics and your approach to parenting?

I do not grieve the loss of my son as I did before. Now, to counter that, I have had a few wake-up-weeping dreams regarding my son since then. And yet, I also had a lovely dream in which I sat beside him and we came to hold hands. What I mean is that I do not live with the same heavy weight that pulls me ever down. I don’t have the same pain of trying to pay by dying for the mistakes I’ve made as a parent. If anything, I will pay with my life by keeping on as best I can offer.

I hope for my son that he finds the worth of his life and hopefully not be beholden to pay for the mistakes many have made. I do not wish for him to be a sacrifice for the mistakes or misdeeds of others, but perhaps we are all sacrifices somewhat, and it is something more to reconcile, the unwarranted suffering.

I love my son. I love him more than before, because now I do not have to spend myself in a negative focus upon myself. I can think of him and love who he is. I can hold vigil with hope for him. I can bear with this unfinished story and hope that I may yet have a chance to know him. I’m available to be surprised, and I’m ready and listening for whatever might be right for me to do. I can feel sincerely happy to think of him, see his photos, imagine what he’d say. He is the most wonderful and desirable that I can possibly know a person to be. He’s my son.

And I am increasingly clearer than ever that parenting my younger child as well is just an incredible work that is also worth everything. I am just so grateful I get to be a part of this, and I expect there is much that is worth living and worth giving life for.

14.  Looking back on your experience, what advice would you offer to someone facing a similar constellation of personal and health challenges?

Well, my way that I am may be different than yours, but I feel as though a friend to you, as we travel in many ways alike.

Well, I gave my younger child a very interesting name, which I will not share, but it amounts to a beautiful and very pertinent prayer. It means:

Do your best, in the way that you are suited and well-made to do so.

Ask for and release yourself to grace, because nothing to you is guaranteed.

Expect, much like an expectant mother, that something good is coming — something so good that it is better than you could yourself imagine.

My son’s name (which I also shall not share) is also insightful:

God is teaching you. This teaching is like a light that reaches for you.

Fight this fight that is yours. Fight it fully.

---

Thank You for Being Part of Our Community

Your presence here is greatly valued. If you've found the content interesting and useful, please consider supporting it through a paid subscription. While all our resources are freely available, your subscription plays a vital role. It helps in covering some of the operational costs and supports the continuation of this independent research and journalism work. Please make full use of our Free Libraries.

Discover Our Free Libraries:

Unbekoming Interview Library: Dive into a world of thought-provoking interviews across a spectrum of fascinating topics.

Unbekoming Book Summary Library: Explore concise summaries of groundbreaking books, distilled for efficient understanding.

Hear From Our Subscribers: Check out the [Subscriber Testimonials] to see the impact of this Substack on our readers.

Share Your Story or Nominate Someone to Interview:

I'm always in search of compelling narratives and insightful individuals to feature. Whether it's personal experiences with the vaccination or other medical interventions, or if you know someone whose story and expertise could enlighten our community, I'd love to hear from you. If you have a story to share, insights to offer, or wish to suggest an interviewee who can add significant value to our discussions, please don't hesitate to get in touch at unbekoming@outlook.com. Your contributions and suggestions are invaluable in enriching our understanding and conversation.

Resources for the Community:

For those affected by COVID vaccine injury, consider the FLCCC Post-Vaccine Treatment as a resource.

Discover 'Baseline Human Health': Watch and share this insightful 21-minute video to understand and appreciate the foundations of health without vaccination.

Books as Tools: Consider recommending 'Official Stories' by Liam Scheff to someone seeking understanding. Start with a “safe” chapter such as Electricity and Shakespeare and they might find their way to vaccination.

Your support, whether through subscriptions, sharing stories, or spreading knowledge, is what keeps this community thriving. Thank you for being an integral part of this journey.

1. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a psychotherapy treatment designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. Francine Shapiro developed EMDR in the late 1980s, and since then, it has been widely researched and implemented as a treatment for trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), among other conditions.