Love matters

I’ve been reminded this past week about what I love and what I find discomforting living out in my community.

This past week I went to FilmOut’s screening of Lady Valor, a CNN documentary on Kristin Beck’s life since coming out.

I noticed relationships. I saw some of her experiences with her family of origin after coming out, and it was the mixed bag many of us experience. She saw some acceptance; some rejection; some complex reactions, some love mixed with misgendering … coming out to one’s family of origin is such a hard thing.

I saw how her relationship with her ex-wife and her children were strained. I saw Kristin on screen own how she failed her ex-wife, and how she failed her children, and how those failures played out in her current relationships with them.

Her two sons currently aren’t speaking to her; I had that experience of no communication with my children as well. In fact, I still don’t have a relationship at all with one of my three children. But as for the other two I wanted to somehow communicate to Kristin that times change, and where she doesn’t have a relationship with her children now she very may well have one in the future.

I saw tears. I saw her tears over her losses in her relationships. It’s love that was missing and present that left me with my eyes welling at parts.

So from watching a documentary about another, I went this weekend to being filmed in a documentary about San Diego’s recent Trans* Pride and March. The filmmaker organized a meeting of as many of the organizers who could make it to discuss aspects of the barbecue and march.

Personally, I really wasn’t planning on being part of the organizing committee of the Trans* Pride and March, and really didn’t want to be part of the planning. But, for the last two weeks or so of the planning of the barbecue and march I volunteered because I saw they could use the kind of help I could offer.

About a dozen people from the planning group gathered and watched raw video of the barbecue and march. Listening to the trans activists in the group, most closer in age to their twenties and thirties than to my fifties let me see that the trans community’s future is in good hands. They have brains, dreams, drive, and a love for their community – it’s an incredible thing to see.

Ending my week, I was watching a friend of mine have her life crash about her. She’s a trans public figure who was shown to have texted some awful words to another member of the community. My friend has a reputation of having a bad temper and saying things she later regrets. Well, the person who was on the receiving end of the horrid words screen shot those and made the words public.

The words were horrible. I know if words like those were sent to me I would have fallen apart. I know that because similar words were screamed at me by my ex-wife 25 or so years ago and I did fall apart inside.

Yet knowing that, as a well-known figure in the late 2000s I’ve lashed out and said awful things I shouldn’t have. I’ve had to humbly apologize and ask for forgiveness from those I wronged, talk publicly about what I was going to do to try not to engage in bad behavior again, and then follow through with those actions I planned. Some never forgave me.

The question I faced this weekend was one of sticking with a friend and helping her move forward, or breaking away from her as someone who failed too badly to forgive. For me, it was actually an easy decision. I decided to pay forward the grace I was shown by friends when I failed myself and my community a number of times. As someone who’s had people miserably fail her, and someone who’s miserably failed others, I know how far grace can go to better bad situations. Going forward, I see love for both victim and victimizer needs expressing.

It’s been an emotional week. What I saw though reminds me that love matters. Yeah, love matters.