In Which I Buy My First Bra, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

In Which I Buy My First Bra*

by

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

bra selfie

 

I did something I am very proud of today: I got measured for my first bra and then bought one. I went to Victoria Secret because I heard they measured you for free. I was extremely nervous. When I got there the store was jammed. People everywhere. I had called ahead and told them I was coming and that I am trans and wanted to buy my first bra, and so they were expecting me. Their other customers weren’t though and I got LOTS of stares and a few snickers (no, not the candybars–the little laughs). When the worker saw me she introduced herself (Sam) and asked if I’d like to be measured for a bra and I shyly told her yes. OK, she said, how about right here? HERE! I freaked. No, not here in the middle of the store….I can’t do that. Of course, having never been measured for a bra I assumed I had to disrobe and all……but anywho she was great and showed me to the dressing rooms and had a young lady named Cat measure me. After I was measured Cat sent me back out to pick out a bra. Two young ladies, Sam and Josyln helped me find one and some extenders and then I went back to the fitting room. There was a line this time and I got oodles of stares then, but Cat treated me with great respect and sort of hovered around me as, well, a guard. Thank goodness I didn’t have to wait too long and once I tried on the bra it fit perfectly and I cried right there in the fitting room. This was a huge step for me. Something I have always wanted and I loved it. The folks at VS couldn’t have been nicer. They, without a mistake, used female pronouns for me the whole time and called me Jennifer. The price of the bra was way out of my league but I treated myself anyway for my birthday next week. Anywho, I have always hated what I used to call my excessive “man-boobs”—I’ve had them since I was young and figured it was some sort of freak accident. I would never take off my shirt in front of anyone to go in a pool or anything and I always wore extra baggy shirts to try to hide them. Not anymore. Now I love them. They are MY boobs—a woman’s boobs. And I am proud of them. And for any of you who think this is all TMI, feel free to unfollow me. This is my journey and I am not ashamed to share it with you. I want this being#transgender to be normalized and humanized. This is the real deal. The everyday life of a newly realized woman. And frankly, I think I f-ing rock. Thanks for reading. Love ya’ll.

 

 





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*Originally published as a note on Facebook


Conversations with the Goddess, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Conversations with the Goddess
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

frost goddess

 

 

 

I asked the goddess
How may I worship you?
Pleasure, she answered,
Pleasure yourself and others.
Do you mean sexually? Because I’m talking
About worshipping you—how do I praise you,
Adore you, honor you, and offer myself as a sacrifice to you?
Pleasure yourself and others, she said, and take that
To mean any form of pleasure you wish,
And know this: I do not want or need your worship.
If it makes you feel good to show reverence
For your creatrix, then show it to my creation.
If you want to honor me then honor yourself and those around you;
Honor pleasure—your own and others. If you want to adore me
Then adore yourself and others, if you want
To praise me then praise yourself and others,
And if you want to offer yourself to me
Then offer yourself to yourself by living your most precious, winged truth,
And then share it with others.
Forget the idea of sacrifice. That is an old, tiresome idea.
Giving and receiving pleasure needn’t be sacrificial.
They are sacred, but not sacrifices.
I lose nothing by loving you or from shining light for you
All day, every day. Throw out those old notions
Of worship and sacrifice—toss them to me, let me reshape them as bliss.
Then see me in the mirror and in the eyes of others,
See me in the movements of every tree and ocean,
And every spinning planet; feel me in every kiss and caress,
Every breath and note of music, every drumbeat, and clap of thunder.
I am the goddess. And I am yours freely
Without condition, without catch, without cost.
Forget offering me your head. You need it.
Offer me nothing. Keep it all. It’s yours, and then,
Dear child, pleasure yourself and others,
And rejoice in the rituals of delight that are both heavenly
And earthly by my design.

 

 

All donations go to the costs of my transitions.  Thank you for your support.


 


 


Trying to Focus on the Ceiling Up Close in the Half Light, By Jennifer Angelina Petro

Trying to Focus on the Ceiling Up Close in the Half Light
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 
Looking up takes practice.
One doesn’t focus the eyes
So easily right off the bat,
Your eyes fight straining
So they don’t go all crisscross.
Give in to the white space however
And all manner of things emerge.
You begin to see colors,
And shapes assemble, and feelings
Of possibility and anticipation
Slowly build in your mind
Until finally you’ve fashioned a dream
To live in all day every day.
Of course your eyes eventually do go crisscross
And everything begins to blur,
And you wonder how long you’ve been
Staring at a ceiling so close to your face,
And then you wonder how you got up there,
And then you look down and just make out
Your assigned form lying there sleeping with blankets half off
Revealing just how frighteningly vulnerable
We all are when surrendered to the dark waves of living unconsciously,
And shivers run through you,
For you are doing just that up here
And everywhere you go,
And so you snip the chord
Binding you to that body
Which sends you fluttering through the ceiling, the attic,
And out into the cold, January night,
And you wonder why it is so windless,
And you wonder why you are so tissue-thin
When you feel so full,
And you wonder what unseen currents
Are bearing you, and you wonder where
And when it will end, and what your final form will look like
When you land in the arms of the moon.
And when she turns you over to kiss your face
And swathe you in caresses of light, you will wonder why
You ever waited so long to filter through the boundaries of your life
And become your fiercely awake and joy-receptive self.

 

 

 


 

 

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This Being Transgender is My Greatest Gift, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

This Being Transgender is My Greatest Gift

by

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

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This being transgender is my greatest gift.

 

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When I think of all I have been through,

 

 

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And how far I have come,

 

 

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And far I have yet to go,

 

 

playful energy

 

I am filled with a playful energy,

 

 

living real life

 

Because I get to play at living real life,
I get to learn to know myself
In ways most people cannot imagine,

 

 

sexy me

 

I get to be myself,

 

 

sultry me 2 sultry me

 

In ways people only dream of,

 

 

new life 1 new life2

 

I get to live a new life,

 

 

love myself

 

And learn to love myself
In ways I’ve only dreamed of.

 

 

my heart

 

My heart sings this day,
For this being transgender
Is my greatest gift.

 

 

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So watch out

 

 

here i come

 

Here I come.

 

 

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I’m not stopping for anyone.

 

 


 

 

 





All donations go to my transition.  Thank you for your support.  <3

Reflections on Feminine Spirituality and My First Christmas Conscious of Being a Woman, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Reflections on Feminine Spirituality

and My First Christmas Conscious of Being a Woman
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

divine mother kirtan pix

Dear Friends,
I wish you all the happiest of holidays–safe, warm, and love-filled.
I am have edited this piece with a new title and a paragraph at the end that should have been in there from the beginning.

I want to also add a trigger warning for some brief, erotic content. It seems I have turned a few people off with my teenage visions of Mary and my adult visions of bliss with my Beloved. It’s interesting that erotic images for the Beloved have been around since before the Song of Solomon–but most of them between either a male beloved and a female lover or vice a versa. There are not many lesbian spiritual images for union and oneness so perhaps that is why my descriptions seem so strange to some. They are my truth however and not shared with the intent to offend. So read on if you dare, and I hope your day is filled with light. The story of the birth of divinity is as old as the earth. And yet for me the real story of Christmas is Mary. She is the anointed one. She was the one strong enough to say yes to the Divine within her and then bravely share the fruits of her womb with the world.

 
Mary Chistmas! Love, Jennifer

 

 

Reflections on Feminine Spirituality

and My First Christmas Conscious of Being a Woman
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

For years I loved the story of the little baby king of the universe being born in a manger in a city whose name means, “House of Bread.” I loved the idea of this king of all being manifested as holy innocence—the greatest power of all. I loved how the animals—the wisest of all—gathered around to seek him with their marble-brown eyes. I loved how time stopped and the whirling of the earth paused when he was born. I loved how shepherds came to visit him with lambs draped across their shoulders. I loved how the entire story was steeped in light and yet I could not escape the foreboding and foreshadowing of what was to happen to this king of light some short thirty year later. And over time I began to hate the story.

 

The idea that a supreme being would sacrifice his only child to atone for his own mistakes is profoundly disturbing, whether that child chose freely to accept this mission or not. The idea that the actions of people were so depraved that they demanded the brutal killing of “god’s only son,” is barbaric. The story is perverted to me. It is an example of masculine energy gone awry.

 

Interestingly the past several years leading up to my discovery that I am transgender, I found myself drawn closer and closer to Mary in the nativity narrative. The more I read books about her and wrote songs to her the more I remembered how I loved her more than her son when I was growing up. I would stare at her in the many pictures and statues around my house and in the Catholic churches I went to. She fascinated me with her fiat—with her yes, with her beauty, her grace, her oceanic blue robes, her womb full of spirit-seed. I felt horrible guilt imagining her nursing her child. I felt like the worst of sinners the more I could not move my gaze from her beautiful face and chest during mass. I felt unredeemable when I imagined bathing her with kisses, and bound for hell for wanting to touch her there. All these years later I finally know why.

 

My soul has given birth to my true self—I am a lesbian woman–a revelation born from the womb of myself–and even though I am wrapped in the sweetest innocence and sense of discovery and wonder at being a woman—the circumstances around the revelation—the medical symptoms surrounding my womanhood leave me with a deep sense of loss—time lost, opportunities to live and love as a woman—to love a woman as a woman myself lost. No sooner was I born when the knowledge that the body that swaddles this woman is not traditionally feminine—it is a man’s body—came rushing in. This knowledge grieves me to the core of my being (my three sons not withstanding). It is my fiat to the holy mother. It is her will that this is so, and now I must release my womanhood into the hands of a transition that will take years of sacrifice.

 

Yet there is cause for rejoicing. Innocence has been reborn in me. I am approaching fifty with the soul of a young woman in her twenties, and the heart of a teenage woman, and the spirit of a little girl all of ten. And I have never been so happy. And as I bloom (a word and image I have been using in my writing for decades) more and more into myself as a woman the more the idea of a masculine deity becomes foreign—alien—tiresome.

 

I know about yin and yang and the thought that the divine encompasses the opposites—that the world we live in is a world of duality—and yet I no longer accept this sphere of opposites as the ground of being for the divine. It is true of nature—seed and ground, sperm and egg, but the force behind it all is mother—is Creatrix—is the goddess. All things are born from her womb; all things arise from her and suckle at her breasts.

 

Mary—mater—matter—mother–she is the goddess I love–the earth as mother, the soul as feminine—my soul as feminine—my soul as woman. The more I journey into myself as a woman the more I recognize the goddess as the prime force behind and within all things.

 
Who provides her with seeds? In the story of advent, the shadow of the holy-spirit sought Mary out for she was pure—without sin—desirable—she was woman. And I see this shadowed spirit to be of her own being covering herself with herself, and a short time later she is found to be with child. To me this is the image that she is self-generating—she is the goddess of parthenogenesis. She is the goddess of the virgin birth because she can generate her own offspring in her own womb. This is not to invalidate the masculine, the wonderfulness that is a man of wisdom, grace, power, beauty, talents, and magic. Nature needs the masculine, and the masculine is, in itself, holy. The divine Creatrix however has no need of this force to exist. She doesn’t encompass the opposites—she transcends them—she bleeds together darkness and light creating something altogether beyond these things—she gives birth to the flow of time and imagination. She is the source of all and reveals the fruit of her womb in everything we see, touch, taste, hear, smell, intuit.

 
Like a good mother she raises her children to be free and o how she must weep at what so many of her children have chosen to call living. She sings with joy too at the children who choose consciousness and peace, and she is constantly providing mercy and ways out to living with kindness and compassion, bliss and holiness every moment of every day.

 
And so this Christmas–this mass for the anointed one–I am deeply grateful to know what I believe as my truth. I no longer need to believe in a story I despise. I have been baptized with chrism scented with amber and myrrh, with magnolia and geranium, with vanilla and honey, coconut and sandalwood. And as the oil pours over my spirit and seeps, soaking my soul, I am alive as a woman of the moon and the earth. I am daughter of the Mother, the goddess, the Womb of All. I am the daughter of the Muse, the lover of the Wild Woman, the beloved of the Lover of All, and I am full with the fruit of my womb—children born from the shadow of my spirit—poems, songs, innocence, adventure, passion, wonder, and self-acceptance that I am honored to mother into the world. They are my gifts to myself and as long as you are willing to accept them, they are my gifts to you.

 

And speaking of gifts—thank you to all of the powerful women in my life who have befriended me over the years—especially recently. You are my guides, my stars, my shepherdesses leading this lamb home to her moon-lit fields and her moon-lit flock, and the moon-lit arms of her Beloved.

 
Blessed Be, Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 


 

 

All donations go to my transition.  Thank you for your much-needed support.



Be Still No More, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Be Still No More
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

 
Enough of listening for a still, small voice,
Enough of “Be still and know,”
Stir me on the inside with resonance,
Move me on the outside with kisses,
Sing me your guidance, o goddess of wisdom,
Sing it out loud like unmistakable thunder,
Shout your love from the great, strong winds,
Declare your presence as you shake the earth with dancing,
Enter my cave and shed your garments,
Uncover my face, remove my mantle,
Ask me your questions with your breath on my breasts,
Enough of this stillness, enough of gentle whispers,
Let your revelation ravish my soul like a storm.

 

storm clouds

 


 

 

 


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Thank you for helping me be on the outside what I am on the inside.


Winter Solstice by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Winter Solstice
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

frost

 

 

My life thinking
I was a man
Froze into one long
Winter solstice;
During the darkness
Of beards and switch blades
I moved through time asleep,
During the endless
City-silencing snow
Confused relationships
Shattered like ice-laden branches,
During the deep cold of addiction
And orgasms dissociation in the ceiling
Provided momentary relief
From this mist-filled body,
In the frost-shawled grass
I stood barefoot to see
If I was alive, and when it snowed
I would drop and make flocks
Of angels to see my imprint
In wings and a dress,
Little did I know
This solstice was a Bethlehem,
Little did I know
My spirit was ripe with child,
Little did I know
Herod would have killed me
By mistake,
Little did I know
Light grew in the womb
Of my soul,
And with each lengthening day
More of me crested
From the dark bush of the dark mother
Into the world of melting snow,
And mother darkness
Became my heaven
Swaddling me in thankful,
Earth-scented arms,
And now, as I shed these last days
Of winter,
I find myself
Stepping into my life
Born fully realized
As Ruth, lover of Naomi,
As Mary Magdalene,
Lover of alabaster and fragrance,
As one of the two women
Grinding together
In Luke, only when the night comes
We shall both be whisked away
Scented in the sweetest sin,
Swathed in the most holy darkness,
And carried to heaven’s bed
Where we can bloom a Summer Solstice
Between our oceanic bodies of bliss.

 

melting

 


 

 

Thank you for kind donations.  All gifts go to my transition.