Sweet Sister

I am old enough to have had close intimate relationships with a few people over several decades. Dear and special people whose relationship with me has survived the shifts and changes of my life. People that I love deeply but have fallen out of touch with as our lives have diverged energetically or geographically. I have begun to intentionally touch and cherish those relationships in memory, and to get back in touch to renew when opportunity presents itself and my energy allows.

One such person is my big Sister A. We met 31 years ago. She is Godmother to both my children and was present at both their births. We have shared work and ceremony, study and creativity, births and parenting, trials and joys in our lives. I have been a catalyst for change in her life and she has been a steadying force in mine. I have sought her advice and shelter in her embrace, and we have loved each other through several reinventions of ourselves. A. is one of the finest humans that I know and I am deeply grateful for her presence in my life.

My gender is complicated and my identity is still evolving. For this writing I will sum up to the current state which is that I was born female and presented that way for most of my life despite discomfort and dysphoria. Fortunately our world has changed and there is more room, better understanding and new vocabulary. Since I last spent time with my Sister A., my expressed gender has changed to align with my truth. I am non-binary to trans masc, androgynous to masc presenting. I use ve/ver/vis or he/him pronouns and I go by a new masculine name, Leo. I am in many ways, a different person than I was when last A. and I saw each other.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit my Sister at her home in the mid-west and to spend a couple of days reconnecting with her. The hug on the curb at the airport was all it took for both of us to know that all the affection and connection was still there. We know each other and are connected outside of the bounds of linear time and physical space. That hug felt inexpressibly good. I’m crying again remembering that moment.

She called me by my new name in the present and referred to me by my dead name when recounting the past. That felt right. But A. really struggled with my pronouns. After apologies made and accepted and talking about it for a bit she was able to articulate what was going on. She told me that Leo is a new and different person, that she want to get to know the me that is now, but that she never got to say goodbye to her sister Lillith, the me that was.

It was such a profound insight. It took some time for me to take it in and to consider what to do.

Lillith is still inside Leo of course, but she was frequently unhappy and experienced a lot of trauma. She was never truly fully me. Leo is stable and has built a new life. Ve/he is largely happy. A. knew and loved Lillith though and felt as if in many ways, that her friend had died.

So I shed my masculine talismans, ruffled my hair, rubbed my face and closed my eyes. I brought Lillith back so A. could talk to her and say goodbye. It is hard to describe how that felt, whether I peeled the Leo layer off or donned the Lillith cloak again. Both. It was a profoundly intimate act inside a relationship of deep trust and affection. I could only do it because I knew that A. would keep me safe. It was hard.

We Sisters held hands and talked. We cried and A. said goodbye to Lillith. She welcomed Leo. And yes, experiencing the energetic shift did make a difference in her ability to use my correct pronouns. The hardest shift was how to refer to me inside our relationship. ‘Sibling’ just didn’t work, didn’t have all the resonance of Sister, and we originally bonded in a profoundly feminine space so ‘brother’ didn’t feel right either. So we agreed, at least for now and until we discover something better, A. can still call Leo her Sister and that is okay.

The experience of being Lillith again, of reconnecting with my female identity is still processing for me. I’ve been pretty fully Leo for years now and tucked her and her pain away. I had been leaning into my masculine identity but this experience has reminded me that that I truly am non-binary and that gender is not just performative, it is a deeply intimate thing. I think that A. will have a role in helping me heal and integrate that part of myself.

I am so grateful to be reconnected to A. I got to spend the weekend with her big close family of children and grandchildren. I watched her be the benevolent matriarch she was always meant to be, and I got to be the unconventional Auncle to her now adult boys who have known me most of their lives. Those were wholesome lovely days. I hope to go back before too long and have promised myself that I will stay in better touch with her. We are family.

She is my only Sister and I love her very much. I am so grateful that she loves and accepts me.

Long relationships can build deep and abiding intimacy.