As I write this, I am sitting in an observation room at GW University.  Glass wall, headphone monitors and all.  It’s the speech and hearing department and this is a vocal evaluation, but I am not the vocalist.  Nicole is being put through a series of vocal exercises and speaking patterns through which they will assess her current (male-ish) voice and then she is cleared to begin a 10 week series to help her transition to a more female voice.

I’m sitting and listening to a voice that I know so well.  That I have heard every day for more than 10 years.  I hear her normal patterns and I hear the new-seeming softness in it that I associate with the transition (although maybe it’s always been there?). I hear her navigate the instructions with her normal mix of uncertainty, thoroughness and simplicity.  In this setting I’m aware of how her voice may be sounding to others, how they are hearing her cadence, pitch, clarity and how they will go about assessing that.  I’m also very aware, as I am often in my teaching and conducting, of how personal our voices are – so intimately connected to our identity.

This change is going to be fascinating and, I think it will also invoke many emotions – in us both and in those around us.  It will be as much a symbol and constantly present indicator of this transition as anything and may even be the most present.  I wonder how I will feel about that?  I wonder how she will?  And I wonder what the process will be like for all of us to adjust our ears as we adjust our eyes and still know that this is the same person that we’ve known and loved.

I’ve been feeling (and thinking and talking about) loss and grief on many levels and certainly the transition is one of them.  In addition to this blog, we used our video blog (Two2Transform is our YouTube channel) to talk about navigating these feelings of loss as a couple.  It’s distinctly present, but so hard to put a finger on and impossible to reason with.  But it also feels like it’s something we are (and need to) move with and through.  I wonder if this voice change will spark a different feeling of loss or, it seems very possible that it will spark feelings of getting where we are going.

This getting where we are going is definitely a balancing act.  I know that my current struggle with depression (yes, we are calling it that and it’s appropriate, but I’m not sure how I feel about all that) and my level of stress has Nicole wondering if she should slow down the transition.  And I see why she would wonder that.  But I also have the instinct that forward motion (and perhaps faster motion) would also be helpful to me in some ways.  I don’t want to rush or avoid feelings or ignore things, but I also am so wanting to get further down the path and be able to see what this change will look like and feel like.  I feel like I need that in some ways and delaying it is more stressful.  Of course, it may be that my head and my heart are perhaps not in agreement about this and that is something to explore a bit.

Oh dear, she’s making promises that she’s sure that I’ll understand what they are saying and I’ll help her figure it out.  Which I will!  And it’s that sweet combination of trust, deference and trying.  I hope I can help her in the way she wants/needs.

*** Hours Later ***

Well, I got some insight about some of the emotions that could spark around this!  The scheduling of these sessions are such that she may not be able to do it this semester while her new job (!!!!) gets established.  This was so disappointing to me that I was pretty quickly in tears.  I guess I really do want or need to feel further down this path and the thing is, that is not my agenda to push.  And I think that my fear of the future and her fear of the future are wanting to affect the pace of change in opposite ways right now.  Or this is still my over-developed want/need to be helpful.

Ah!  Time to put it to bed for today, I think.  It’s just another piece in the puzzle.  Our change-down-to-our-toes, shaken-to-the-core puzzle…that came with a different photo on the box from the pieces inside, so now we’re plaing without a map!