Tag: #love

  • A Long and Painful Journey of Growth and Discovery

    I’ve always had to battle challenges and adversity far larger than being transgender. In this blog post, let’s focus on the transgender part of my story… I was born in 1971 and grew up in a time, a conservative geographic region, and surrounded by people who never asked me why I was so unhappy and hid away…

  • Suspended in Time

    I’m on vacation! 2 1/2 weeks off work. Thankfully, as of this moment it still feels as if I’m suspended in time. I have all the time in the world. In fact, this is my first vacation since beginning of 2019 that is without stress and anxiety. A vacation without existential angst… even though I’m…

  • Precious Moments

    My just recently adopted, old, toothless partner in crime is teaching me so much about life. About pausing every now and then to appreciate what we have instead of worrying about what we don’t have. About enjoying those almost imperceptible rays of sunshine. Most of all, he teaches me about love. I guess because we…

  • JoJo

    I need to rave a bit more about this cat. It’s incredible to think that, had I not decided to hike from Switzerland to the Mediterranean Sea and, had I not spontaneously decided to stay in Montpellier for a few months, JoJo and I would never have met. I rescued him from the streets of…

  • Dad

    Can I just say how grateful I am for my dad? I mean, I am thinking daily, “Damn, I’m stuck here in Germany in this small apartment without any privacy, camping on the couch in the middle of the room.” True. There are no doors to close, and it’s a small one-bedroom apartment. Nowhere to…

  • A Discounting Mechanism

    Have any of you seen ‘Where’d You Go Bernadette’? I’ve wanted to watch it for a long time and finally got around to it last night. The intro really hit me , which is why I want to share it here with you: “Have you ever heard that the brain is like a discounting mechanism?…

  • Boo, Lara, and Bocelli

    Thinking of this little family today. I found them in a pet store in Macau, in 2010. They had just been rescued from the street. A cat with three kittens. All of them were horribly sick. They had any infection you could think of… cat flu, ear infections, eye infections, ringworm, etc. One of the…

  • That Immortal Spark

    We can only ever find happiness in the moment, can’t we. Nothing ever lasts. All happiness we feel we have attained can be taken away in an instant, at any time, by circumstances, or even by the people we love and have learned to trust with all our heart… Unless we have found that immortal…

  • Isolation with Dad, Cat, and the Fish

    It’s the end of March 2020. A slightly ruffled, disoriented “hello” from myself and Bocelli, my dad’s ever-meowing cat who isn’t quite sure how he feels about me invading their space… How are you all? I haven’t written much in this blog since last December… As stage and production manager on one of the largest…

  • A new decade, a new year

    Here we are. A new decade, a new year…  I am finding myself surrounded by the deep blue sea once more. Amazing how life keeps bringing me back to be either on, at, in, or under water. Ultimately, it is where my soul feels the most at home.  2019 was the worst year of my…

  • Nanala

    Last week, a friend of mine introduced me to a refugee from Pakistan (to protect her privacy, let’s call her Nanala). We had an unforgettable dinner together. From the first moment onwards, Nanala struck me as a self-confident, warm-hearted woman. After a while she began sharing parts of her life journey. Eleven years ago, soldiers…

  • Freedom and Independence

    Freedom and independence have always been important to me. These past few years, I’ve been increasingly reminded of their importance because – additionally to my own constant quest – someone close to my heart has been struggling with claiming her independence after having been imprisoned by religious and societal standards for most of her life.…

  • I Am Liam

    Ever since writing this blog, I’ve noticed how I lose followers when, for a while, I don’t specifically write about being transgender. I guess some people are hoping for specific insights into a trans existence. But what is a trans existence? The truth is – and I can’t stress this often enough – we are…

  • Paralian – Not Just Transgender

    Flashback to 2016, the year Paralian was first published. Writing this book was one of the best things I’ve ever done, even though letting myself be seen to such an extent was also terrifying. Over the last year, life has been so turbulent, I wasn’t able to focus on anything at all. But, I will…

  • Lost in Space

    I love good storytelling – be it poetry, fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, movies, TV series, visual arts, or any other type of creative expression. For the most part, stories engage me when they are about being human, about compassion and about overcoming our shortcomings and challenges. The other month, I watched the (rather kitschy) new…

  • New Beginnings

    Even though I have done it so often and relish the excitement of new beginnings, relocating is always difficult for me. This time around it’s more difficult than ever before. Over the last months, I’ve been maniacally busy tackling the bureaucracy on my side of the world for my wife and I. There was no…

  • Time Traveling

    Just spent an inspiring and heart-warming weekend visiting relatives. In between vivid conversations and laughter, I also took some moments to time-travel through their extensive family photo library. It was wonderful to dive into old family history as far back as 1908. To visually follow the path of my grandma, see how she lived her…

  • Being Grateful

    Lately, life has run away with me a bit. Too many things happening all at once… some of them rather surprising and turbulent. Yet again, I was reminded to never be sure of anything. Everything can change in a heartbeat. We can lose and gain all we hold dear from one second to the next.…

  • When I Found Home

    When I found home… “Our relationship had grown like a table coral – and still did. Tree-like, it fanned out, each tiny branch connecting to others to build a magnificent structure – tough and brittle at the same time. Both of us knew how easily such a delicate formation could break. For the first time,…

  • I Hope, Deep Down You Knew

    Uniting my body with my soul meant breaking the heart of the one person who had always been there for me – my oma (grandma). As the hormones took an ever-firmer hold, I tried explaining to her who I was. Unfortunately, she was becoming progressively more senile. Oma sadly asked for me. Countless times, she…

  • A Story of Hope

    Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance #TODR. https://tdor.info Everyone on this list has lost their lives simply for being themselves, for longing to live their lives as who they truly were. In honor of those who have been taken from us so violently, let me share a positive story with you of how it could…

  • Adoption

    “For years, I had puzzled over being the only dark-haired, darker-complexioned person in our family. My emotional make-up and character didn’t quite seem to fit with the rest of my family either. I had kept searching for similarities between my parents and me, as every child does, and had found none. But my mom Hildegard…