Visualizing the Future

When I look back over the last 18 months one of the challenges, I remember having, had to do with visualizing the future. Brooke was traveling for work, and we were talking on the phone, she had be working through actives in “Queer & Transgender Resilience Workbook”. It had asked her to visualize herself in the future, with her gender fully affirmed and living as her true self. The goal was to use as much detail as possible. She was explaining the activity to me and telling me she had written she pictured us golfing together at our local golf club that we like to go to, she was wearing a cute Lululemon golf skirt and shirt, we were laughing and having a great time. She was so happy to talk about it and I wanted to be supportive, but a wave of sadness overcame me. I started crying and couldn’t talk about it. It took me a couple weeks before I was able to process what happened. Thinking back, I believe I was grieving the loss of what I had always pictured our future to be. It wasn’t that the new picture made me sad or wasn’t great, but I still had to say goodbye to the other picture and in that moment, it made me sad.

I have always struggled allowing myself to feel my emotions. It is something I work on in therapy. In some ways shedding those tears was a good thing that helped me move forward.

I’m happy to say we have golfed a few times since Brooke affirmed her gender. Maybe not with the perfect Lululemon outfit, but she still looked pretty cute in my opinion.