When I left the evangelical part of my religious life I left many parts of myself behind me. I don’t know if this is one of those parts or if it just is an unavoidable part that just comes when you grow up no matter where you do it.

The part I am think of is appreciating people for who they are and not for what they represent. When I was The Good Christian Girl that was all I seemed to appreciate for but more frustratingly it was the different roles people around me succeeded to live up to I appreciated them for. I judged people according to how well I thought they lived up to the role I thought were they primary role in their life. It was very important to me that my partner was the perfect partner, my parents was critically reviewed based on my image of A Parent and how they lived up to that and so on for friends, colleagues, pastors and basically everyone I ever met.

When I stepped away from the environment where I fitted in to a scary place where I was the most unusual person everyone had ever met and didn’t fit any template for how someone should be I could finally step away from my bad habit of only judge people in that way and start appreciate people for just being nice people. In some ways I never got to know my partner, my parents, friends and others until way after I came out. I was mainly interested in such a small part of them.

I just spoke to my parents for a rather long while. I feel so good and re-energized when speak to them nowadays. When I try to get to know them and appreciate them for who they are as persons. They are very nice and likable persons in a way that I didn’t recognize when I compared them only to my model of perfect parents. But honestly? Who want’s anyone to be perfect? The only thing I think a perfect person around me would give me is angst over my imperfect sides. Being an imperfect child to two perfect parents would be exhausting. I very much prefer to be myself along with two nice people that I share both good and bad sides with.

I don’t know if I needed to get away from church to grow to this place but I am very pleased to be here.

Today I yelled to my middle daughter over having Lego on her floor. A perfectly reasonable thing for a six year old to have and I was tired after a week with migraines.

I remembered my father yell with almost the same words to me over Lego parts when I was 6 years and the old me would be freaked out of being an imperfect parent and having a daughter that I haven’t brought up perfectly. This more energy-effective environmentally safe me just feel a very strong bond towards both my daughter for being messy in the same way as me and to my dad for getting annoyed for the same semi-resonable minor things. Old me: Dissapointed, feeling desperately immutable and alone. New me: A part of something big, content with just getting to know people no matter how well or badly I perform.

So I smiled, helped my daugther to figure out a way to store her Lego that fits her way to play with it better than her previous way and then I called my father and chatted for a while.

I bet there are very few people missing old me anymore. If they do they just didn’t know her as well as I did.

Now I am off to sleep and hopefully I will yell less tomorrow. And write less self-absorbed blog post and clean this messy apartment up more.

When I did some treats with my son today I thought about my non Swedish readers and thought I would write a post to you.

Every single Swede instantly knows what is on the photo. It is probably the most common pastry we have. It is made with rolled oat/oat flakes, chocolate, coffee, sugar and butter. Rolled in nibsugar or coco flakes. Simple, delicious and beyond common.

Nowadays most kids know them as Chokladbollar, chocolate balls. But when I was young and to most old people and even in one of my cookbooks from 2001 has the traditional name Negerbollar. Yes. That would be the n-word balls in English. It is not at all strange if a christian lady in her 70’s asks for a couple of n*balls to her coffee. When I grew up it never occurd to me that the name could be offensive. In 2003 a person actually sued a bakery for ethical discrimination (denied though) by calling them negerbollar and since then all people selling them has change the name to Chokladbollar.

Today my daughters had their big first roll call in school. Tomorrow they start school.

Over here kids start school the year they turn 6 in a preschool class that is not obligatory and then the year they turn 7 they start first class. My oldest starts first class and the six year old starts the preschool class. There is little difference besides the legality. I haven’t heard of any kid not starting at age of 6.

Right now I am taking a small break from the mountain of papers and forms we got today. One of the forms is a contract the kids sign that says that they will obey the school rules. Just as last year we will not sign them. The rules are as follows:

*I do my best and tries to be positive

*I do not violate others in word or action

*I respect everyone

*I behave politely and nicely in every situation in school

*I arrive in time and have the right equipment

*I behave in a way that no one is disturbed in their work

*I am careful with our school and keep our things in order

I have such a problem with letting a six and a seven year old signing a contract promising to follow all that. It is not because I want my kids to trash the school or disturb everyone else. But seriously, could you who read this follow all of these rules for a year in your workplace? To always respect everyone? To always do my best? I can try but to sign a contract that I would? I know I won’t do my best every hour of every day at work and will never expect that of a kid. So I am going to keep being the uncomfortable parent and not sign it this year too.

12-15 years ago I read a The Far Side comic strip about some one visiting Sweden and I don’t at all remember the joke but some part of it was that Sweden had a pickled herring for every season. I remember how I thought that was unfair. We didn’t have a special herring for every season. Several of the bigger holidays can be celebrated with the common pickled herring and we only have two pickled herrings that are bound to a certain season and one of them is fermented and not pickled. And we do have at least one big holiday when pickled herring isn’t an obligatory piece of food at the table.

It took me until this year to finally understand that our pickled herring habits made Gary Larson’s joke in The Far Side very reasonable. Most cultures does not have pickled herring to most of the holidays.

As long as I only spent time with other Swedes the omnipresent herring is rather odd. It is just not a prejudice. It really is everywhere. At the roll call today the kids also sang two songs and one of them is a song that every Swedish kids know with the title “Sill i Dill” with sill being pickled herring the title reads pickled herring in dill. When I came home I read the lunch menu(1) for the fall and on it in fine print it says that every time fish is served pickled herring is also served as an option.

Three or so years ago I saw my herrings as a part of the normative sides of myself. Now I have a broader perspective and see how it is something that many people regard as somewhat odd about my cuisine.

*Coming out as trans has forced me to take another perspective on a lot of things. I had to break up with my old faith and church and find new ground to stand on. With the new perspective i learned that the faith that I saw as the normal kind of christianity was in fact a very small fraction of how christianity is practiced.

*I placed myside outside of the standard core family and not until then I saw that most families isn’t just a mom, a dad and their two or three kids.

It is interesting to see how little of the normativity actually is common. But mostly: It just damn fine to grow up and form my own life according to my own likings.

Well, that’s my thoughts for today.

I suddenly feel an urge for pickled herring. Or even better fermented herring. But to be kind to you I fought my urge to put a pic of a delicious herring here and instead you got my son with some chocolate treats I made last week and a photo of a proud mother that lives here with us. I complain with all the work of three kids but she has about 50 young ones right now…

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(1) In our very fine school system all schools both private and public has free lunches for all kids until they end the 12th year of school. It has a very high standard in most places with high demands of nutrition and taste. At our kids school it follows the usual form with a hot meal, a sallad buffe, several kinds of crisp bread (one organic), organic milk and water. For every child under the age of 12 a free breakfast is served if they arrive an hour before the lessons start. No sodas, sweets or such are allowed in school until the 7th year of school.

Me and my partner Noa are having a nice and slow vacation at home right now. This summer is the first one in many, many years we have tried this. We usually only take vacations when we need to travel to some relatives or have other very specific plans. Now we have two week of just hanging out at home.

Today I am this home a bit more nice to hang out in. I am remodeling two rooms. The first the kitchen aka our son’s bedroom*. The old wallpapers were a strange pinkish red with unknown japanese signs on them. They were of very, very poor quality and generations of stains covered them and from the very beginning we all hated them. But not until now, 18 months after we moved in here I have finally taken them on me and as I write a purpleish brown is drying in there.

* This is a 3 bedroom apartment and we have a need of four bedrooms. The part of the kitchen were a table is supposed to be is a bit to small for our family and the many dinner guests we often have so we are right now using the dining part of the kitchen as a bedroom for the four year old son.

The other room is one of our two bathrooms. It is a tiny 13 ft² so it is done with almost no effort and very much needed.

As soon as I am ready I hope to succeed in dragging my family out to the woods and work on our bilberry/european blueberry stash in the freezer. It is perfect weather to work outside. Sunny and beautiful but only 55-60°F.

Well, I have to go back to my rollers before the day is over.

I do love you and I do miss you all! Thanks for all the written messages and all the thoughs you have given me the last months.

I know I am a bad blogger but hey; this is my blog and I won’t feel bad for not following the expectations ohter people set up for this.

I am having the time of my life! I love, love, love my job. My boss is the most decent guy you could meet, we share an office with four witty, funny guys that we get to have fika with two times every day. The summer is all that it is cranked up to be and my friends are really good friends.

This summer is in much colored by the fact that we don’t have any money right now but having a great job and great friends make that a small secondary thing.

Besides the monitary issue there is another cloud on my sky and that is my health. I am so happy being the right person at the right place now but my body seems to need more time to relax and re-charge so it told me to keep the paste down now.

In a week we are gong to have two weeks of vacation and we had some grand plans but we just had to admit that I need to take it easy so now we have nothing booked for that time and I will try to sleep as much as possible and really take care of this body that I worked so hard to get.

Today I decluttered our bedroom. It was something that I probably needed to do many, many weeks ago but besides that I am very happy I got it done today. I have a minor allergy to some kinds of dust and haven’t been able to breath freely for a while so I hope my body will reward me with a good night sleep now.

It is finally turning almost dark in the evenings now. After two months of light it is now so dark in the late evenings that is a point of turning some lamps on. I do love the summer light up here but I do long for a night when it gets really dark so the stars will shine. I think it is about a month left until that.

Bye for now. I hope I wont be as long until next time we see each other.

Hi there, remember me? I used to blog here a while ago.

Spring has arrived in it’s questionable glory. When my sisters in the mid and southern parts of Sweden tells me about all the flowers, the warm weather and the first dip of the year. Unfortunately our spring is a bit more modest and today it included both pea size hail and snow. But there is a lot of green and I think the last snow piles gave up and died a few days ago.

Today we moved from a home office to a very real and very nice office down in the city. Me and (ex) hubby work together but now we get to share an office with another company and get to meet actual other grownups every day! And besides from being adult they also seems really nice and fun people to be around.

This is also releasing a lot of space at home. Two officespaces, my was taking up half of our bedroom and my partner had his own room that only was functioning as an office. I will probably declutter my space and make it more easy to start painting. I haven’t met any creativity in a really long while. But maybe if I made it more accable.

I am sorry I have been so invisible both here and in other places. It is really fun to have an inspiring job with tons of work to do but a full time job, three small kids and a couple of organisations that needs time takes up all of my time right now.

Just a short tip for you who speak Swedish; I am selling my car on Tradera http://www.tradera.com/auction/auction.asp?aid=62335078

I have started to write a few blog posts about the car breaking down but I have work to do to earn money to buy a car :)

Now and then I hear people saying that churches in Sweden always is affirming towards GLBT-people. That is not at all true. Many churches welcome G:s and L:s if they live in celibacy and B:s if they marry and just ignore the T:s.

Today me and Noa got a mail from a woman who saw us on TV. I think I will grow tired of saying that in a year or so - have patience with me. Well; the writer is pentecostal and have a sister called Sara Em who is lesbian and the writer was very supportive of both us and her sister. She sent me a link to Sara’s newly released debut single “Include Me”. It’s about her struggle to be included as a lesbian in the church. Listen to it and realize you have to buy it on iTunes!

Read more on her homepage where there are some links to Swedish media appearances.

This weekend a lesbian woman got baptized in a congregation from the same denomination that our old church were we weren’t welcome as members if I outed myself.

Here is a link to the whole Sunday service and in the beginning she talks about how she felt a need to end her nine year long relationship to her partner to get to know God.  The clip is in English translated to Swedish. The pastor starts out talking for a minute or so. Then Sasha starts to talk and gets really emotional. I really hope she finds God in the special way she think she will by ending the relationship with her loved one. But I do doubt it. I have heard the same story to many times.

For me it seems strange that a loving God would be happier this way. But for me most things seems strange these days.

I might be in the most beautiful place on earth right now. I have forgotten my camera but if I and you are lucky my parents remembered to bring it.

It is a beautiful countryside B&B or more like a mansion on the shore of one of the bigger and more beautiful rivers in Sweden. Me and one of sisters and our families will stay here for two days.

Tomorrow is the funeral for my grandfather and I will meet all my cousins on my mothers side for the first time in many years. It will be the first bigger family event I attend to as myself post transition. It feels really good. It is about time we get to know each other this way. I have great cousins.

Well. That is all for me tonight. My body is punishing me for my eight hour drive I just did.

I am writing this in as I sit in waiting room at the Swedish National Board of Health. I am meeting with their Legal Council today. Waiting room is maybe to nice a name for this. It is the xerox room with some chairs in. A rather small room. The chairs are nice but the xerox machine is huge, makes a lot of noise and it is probably 90° in here.

I drove down from the northern parts of Sweden to the capitol Stockholm two days ago. It is close to 400 miles to drive here. Will drive up again tomorrow.

I came to this meeting an hour ago. First I got to meet dr Andersson who will present my case to the Legal Council. Now I have to wait for them to get to my case.

I am here because I have applied for:

* A legal sex change in the government database

* A name that fits my gender

* Castration

* SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery)

In Sweden all citizens are registered in a national database at our Skatteverket (IRS). Every citizen has a number called personnummer (person number). It begins with the birth year, birth month and then birth day. For me born the fifth of June 1979 have a personnummer that starts with 790605. Then we have the important last four digits. Well, three of them are just to make sure two people wont have the same number but the last one indicate sex. Even numbers for women and odd numbers for men.

This personnummer is the written on your drivers license, in your passport, on your journals, in every database ever keeping track of you like in schools, at work, in most clubs and organisations.

To get a new personnummer you have to do a 2-5 year long inquisition that is lead by a physiatrist. When that is done that physiatrist will approve that you apply for a new personnummer. But to get the new personnummer you need to be castrated and had your SRS. For transmen the SRS is sort of optional but women has to do it. But we can apply for all that at the same time. As I did and that is why I’m here.

In the nearest hour I will be called into a room with the Legal Council and they have already got my papers and read them thru. dr. Andersson has already said that I am genuine and will pass. So this is just formalities.

Oh, thats another thing. Being genuine. That is what it is all about. For a transsexual to get a new personnummer and everything that comes with having paper telling the right gender you have to be “Genuinely Transsexual”. It is classified as a sickness. I have yet to meet a transsexual person that don’t find that term horrible. Are you genuine enough or a bit to false?

So everything you chase for during several years is to get the label genuine put on your papers. That can mess any insecure person up. That can mess any stable person up. Am I genuine enough? Will they see that I’m genuine? If I walk like this, will they discover I’m genuine sooner? Several years of trying to prove that you are genuine enough. The inquisition is made just to find the ones that are not and sort everyone out that has any faults and aren’t genuine enough.

I started my road to this room in may -05. In a matter of minute dr. Anderson will come and get me. We were three people here today. One woman that went in first and came back just 10 minutes later a minute ago. She came back absolutely radient. Now a man sit across for me and looking fairly calm but I guess he is as nervous as me.

Just to be here means your papers are in order. I will pass, I will get everything approved and as soon as the hospital will do my surgeries I will get my name and my identity. But never the less I am shaking and sweating. So much hard work to get here.

Now dr Anderson came and called for the quiet man infront of me. You can hear a couple of seconds before he comes because of a locked door with a code on it. Will it only take 10 mins for him too? I need to go to the bathroom. Should I wait or should I go? Why didn’t I bring my bottle with water? My mouth is dry. The xerox machine just quieted down. I want a cigarette. But I quit. Or did I just run out of them? I haven’t decide. It was a while ago so I guess I have quitted. As most I smoke one pack a month so it isn’t that easy to know when you stop and when you just don’t do it for a while.

The other man just came back. He is glowing like the brightest star. Took him only five minutes.

I just took a photo of myself here in the xerox room. Here it is:

Is it minutes or seconds left for my turn? How will it go? What will they say?

Now I hear the beep from someone pressing the code at the door. It is just seconds…