Recreating My Happiness
Let me start by introducing myself to you all. My name is Delia Garner, and all my life I had been a seeker. I wanted to understand why I was here on this earth, what my purpose was in life, and how this thing called "life" worked.
So, at the age of 19, I left home, believing that, in my traveling, I would find answers to my questions, and meet people who might be able to direct me. My travels took me from Texas to Milwaukee, from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, then to Puerto Rico, then back to Milwaukee. While in Oklahoma City, I took a biblical research class put on by the Way Ministry. It was as a result of my taking that class that I ended up in Puerto Rico, because I signed up for an evangelical program put on by the organization which ran the classes. They sent me to Puerto Rico for a year to teach the biblical research by running those classes. This was what they called a year on the WOW (Word Over the World) field. I learned a lot from that ministry, but I still had more questions than answers, so my seeking did not cease.
At age 25, I decided to enlist in the Air Force because I believed that it would be a vehicle to take me to where I would find the person I would marry. Throughout my travels, I got my fill of dysfunctional relationships, and I felt ready for the real thing. I ended up getting stationed in south Florida after my introductory training was completed. Once I got to Florida, I made a list for myself; this list was the details of what I wanted in my husband. My believing was that this was a kind of prayer to God, a specific request which I wrote down. I felt ready to grow because I already felt that I knew what I did not want; thus it was not hard to write down what I did want.
In September of 1978, I was telling people in the shop where I worked that by the springtime I was going to get married. They would ask me who I would be marrying, and I told them that I didn't know, but that it was going to be the right person. They said to me that I must be desperate, but I had a knowing that what I believed was going to take place.
At that time, one of those biblical research classes was being held in the area, and I chose to attend it with Lea, a friend I had shared it with; she were taking the class for the first time. Near the beginning of the class, I picked an empty seat, and sitting in the seat beside mine was this person named Larry. The first time I looked into his eyes, I knew he was the one. I had never believed in love at first sight, but here it was; a calm feeling, and excitement, both came over me at the same time. I didn't want to let on that I felt he was for me, or to tell my friend about him, either, because I didn't want to make the first move and risk scaring him off. I decided that if this was really from God, God was going to have to do it. I wasn't going to tell my friend, or anyone else, that I believed that it was Larry who I was going to be marrying by Spring.
Throughout the class, we would say hello to each other, and give each other brother-sister hugs, but when I went to hug him, I hugged him with the feeling that he was already mine. The class ended after three weeks, and we still had not exchanged phone numbers, nor had I told anyone about what was going on within me.
Then, one day soon after, I was arriving home from the air base. As I was pulling into the driveway, I saw Larry there, waiting at the door. Right at that moment I felt like a 15 year old girl with a crush on this guy; I felt like I was naked, and I didn't know what to do. When I talked to him, he told me that my friend Lea had invited him over, and this is when it happened that we started really talking with one another.
Later that evening, he kept saying that he needed to leave, but he wouldn't leave. I kept saying that if he had to leave, to just go ahead; I wasn't going to pressure him into staying even though I wanted him to. I believed that, if it were true love, you shouldn't have to manipulate or coax a person into it.
Well, to make a long story short, he ended up staying, and three days later he moved in. We were married in March, 1979, and we've been together ever since. Before we were married, we shared with each other what each of us wanted in a mate, and then was when I found out that Larry had been a seeker throughout his life as well.
Soon after we were married, he shared with me that he liked to wear women's clothing, and asked if he could borrow one of my dresses. I said he could and, as I sat watching TV in the living room, he walked in the room with my dress on. He presented himself to me like a little girl wanting to know how she looked. It was a little disturbing, but I decided that it wasn't a big deal; after all I loved him. I told him he looked okay and he went back into the bedroom. I continued to watch TV. He later came out again but this time with his cut off jean shorts. I didn't think much of it. Every once in a while he'd do the same thing. But I never asked why he did that and I wasn't bothered by it. At that time I knew nothing about transgendered people or cross-dressing, even though, in retrospect, I was probably transgendered myself!
The reason why I figure that it didn't bother me was that, as a girl, I was considered to be a Tom Boy. Most of the time I played ball with the neighborhood boys, I wrestled, and did just about everything boys would do. I had no interest in dolls or playing with girl stuff unless it was some athletic type sport. So, I thought, why can't a guy have a feminine side just as I had expressed my own masculine side?
Larry was a quiet and sensitive person; he wasn't pretentious. Those qualities were unique compared to the other men I had met. He had gone to college for 5 years and had been a marathon runner, and was very conscious of his eating habits. He was very healthy; something I had wanted to learn about. He was a graduate plant physiologist, and since I had never attended college (only graduated from high school), I knew he could teach me many things about plants and other scientific subjects.
But what really awed me was what I saw when I looked into his eyes; I saw us going places together, places I would never reach if I were not with him. I didn't see actual physical places; it was going places in our own growth together, places where most people never go. I kept getting the feeling of being at home, of finally feeling that things were right and I could be me.
He also loved God and wanted to be real. So we got into this relationship knowing we didn't want to play games. Knowing that we both were seekers, we were wanting to learn why we were here on the planet and to find out if anyone out there was experiencing the same things that we were. We had not yet started on the path to higher consciousness together, though; we were still on the religious side. Although I didn't know it at the time, Larry had, years ago, studied Robert Monroe's book, "Journeys Out Of The Body", and other books by Edgar Cayce.
As the years went by, we continued working on our belief systems. A few times we attended consciousness workshops, or read a book on the subject, and we would soon begin to dismantle our belief system again and start building on a newer one. Sometimes before we could finish building the new one, the new one was coming down! We discovered many illusions in our lives and worked on letting them go. Spiritually, emotionally, and physically, we were cleaning out what we didn't want in our lives.
Much, if not most, of what we didn't want came from our former family beliefs. We worked on our communication skills, and we would always go back to how each issue related to God and to the love we have for each other. We worked on being honest and truthful. Of course, the truth may hurt, but I am a believer in truth, no matter how much it hurts. "The truth shall set you free." I'd rather live in truth without a person than with a person in lies. Our marriage was based on a foundation of God and his love.
In some of her material, Caroline Myss speaks about tribal power, individual power and symbolic power. The family tribal beliefs were what we aimed to get out of our marriage; these were mostly the ones from our upbringing. We thought that we didn't want to be like our parents. We learned to communicate and to understand each other. We became more than just husband and wife, but good friends as well. We also became each other's therapists, and there was not one issue that we couldn't talk about.
Well, this "honeymoon" of years had to end some time, and so it did. We ended up experiencing a series of tumultuous events in our lives together. Our home got burglarized, then Larry met a woman while on the job who he felt attracted to, so we had to work through that. Thank God he didn't have an affair with her! A few years later, we lived through Hurricane Andrew while I was pregnant with our boy, Slate. Then, there was the aftermath and fixing the house after the hurricane.
So those events and others, both large and small, came and went into and out of our lives. Then came what turned out to be a major turning point for us (we didn't know it at the time); Larry's father passed away. We ended up being in charge of the "estate" (not much value but a lot of "stuff"), which included a double-wide mobile home in Palm Bay, Florida. This event unfolded as the beginning of some permanent life-transforming experiences.
Looking back at those days and years now, we realize that we were also experiencing a tremendous "fun deficit". This turned out to set the stage for some of what was to come...
I have a nephew who is a hair dresser and gay, and he has a partner. Both of them like to go to drag shows dressed as women. This is sort of one of their hobbies and it is a lot of fun for them. But of course, they are considered to be "drag queens" when they dress for a pageant or other competitions.
Well, one year we were in Houston, visiting, and my nephew mentioned that he and his partner liked to go dancing in drag. So we mentioned to him that Larry liked to dress as well but had never gone out in public, except once to a Halloween party.
So my nephew, D.J., proceeded to ask us if we would like to go dancing with him and Ricky while we were in town. We told him that Larry didn't have any clothes with him, and I hardly ever wear dresses. D.J. said that's okay because he had clothes to fit. We got to their apartment and they made Larry up, but he ended up looking like a drag queen which wasn't exactly what Larry had in mind. He just wanted to have more of a natural femmy look; not all that ostentatious stuff. But we went out to a gay club and had a good time anyway. The next year ,we went out again with them, but Larry had his clothes and was ready and he looked good. We all enjoyed this very different experience.
But soon Larry realized he liked being out femmy and wanted to do it more often. He found some folks on the net who also liked crossdressing. For a period of a few months, we would go out of town occasionally, meet some people, and go dancing. All seemed fine to me because most of his crossdressing had been done in the evening.
In the beginning, when we first went out dancing, he would wear wigs, dark stockings (to hide his leg hair), and clip-on earrings. But as fate would have it, he was wanting to shave his legs, pluck his eyebrows, let his hair grow long, pluck his beard out, get different stockings, and plenty of costume jewelry. He had his ears pierced until he had two in one ear and three in the other. He wanted to look more femmy, so he had to have the right make-up and make-up books, along with the right undergarments and fake boobs. I began to wonder where this was headed.
We started attending crossdresser support groups, but we didn't feel they really helped all that much. People were going from their home closets to a bigger closet. They had wives who also felt very uneasy about this whole thing. Some support groups had wives to support the wives of crossdressers, but I felt they also wanted to stay in hiding and keep their husband's "secret" from their children, relatives co-workers and neighbors. I saw fear and bewilderment in their support of their husbands. After all, I believed that, in our society, this behavior was considered to be deviant or perverted. It's been a while since we've gone to support group meetings, and by now they may have made some changes.
For my part, I felt I needed to understand but I didn't know where to find the answers. In the groups were some who would say outright to Larry, "have you ever thought of having sex with other men". Larry wasn't interested in anything like that. But of course I was starting to feel a little afraid, as I began to consider whether Larry was heading to the gay side, still not knowing what transgendered was. When I'd ask him if he thought that maybe he was gay, he would always say no. "I'm not interested in men I'm interested in you".
In one of the groups there was a wide spectrum of people, not just heterosexual crossdressers. From heterosexuals, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals (pre-op and post-op) to intersexed, I was a bit overwhelmed, as I had never thought much about the different kinds of people that now I was being exposed to.
Deep down I felt that this emergence of Larry's femme persona was genuine because there were particular times where he would just break down and start to cry. I asked him at one time why he was sobbing and he could hardly speak. I finally was able to make out that he was just so happy that he was able to be femmy. I felt it meant so much to him to come out of the closet and be free to express himself. Before he began dressing in public, he was very introverted, and it was difficult for him to have fun and dance with me. A paradoxical change had come over him; I was glad for him, but at the same time I felt lost.
We met some men who were married heterosexual crossdressers, and they wanted to take hormones and get breast implants. I was hoping that Larry didn't want to go that far. One crossdresser told me he wanted to get his wife pregnant before he had a sex change, and that was too much for me to handle. I'd ask Larry if he ever thought of taking hormones and possibly changing his sex. He'd reply by saying he had no intention of doing any of those things; that he was happy with the body he had. I was glad because I liked his body; he has a good one.
I began to see changes in him that concerned me, though. Larry is a very intelligent person, but lately he was acting like a teenage girl and forgetting things. I was feeling like I was losing my husband. So by now he was going to work with small earrings, light pink lipstick and nail polish. His boss and coworkers were starting to make comments. Larry had been looking "all male" at work for years, yet now he was slowly turning femmy before their eyes. For me, it was as though my husband was leaving me, but at the same time he was still there. I was starting to panic and didn't know where to turn. I'd get up in the middle of the night, go into the living room and just cry because I felt I had lost my husband. I'd pray and ask God what was going on. What was I supposed to learn from this?
I was beginning to think that I wasn't feminine enough for him because I had been such a Tom Boy and wasn't like those beautiful models you see in the magazines. I didn't care much for dresses either, and pants were more comfortable for me. I felt you couldn't run very well in a dress or in heels if you had to. I'd seen too many movies with women always falling down because they lacked the skill and or they were in heels. I had been looking at my preferences from a logical, practical point of view, a viewpoint which could very easily be described as masculine.
As these changes took place, we started arguing a lot about why he felt he had to go full time in his crossdressing. I wanted to know why he couldn't be happy just doing it some nights where he wouldn't be seen. I kept asking myself what I was afraid of. Sometimes I'd say, okay, do it; other times I'd change my mind. It was during this back and forth with my mind and heart that I knew I was going through a breakdown. What I really needed was a breakthrough. At the same time, I had learned about crossdressers who couldn't even tell their wives, who lied to their wives, and I felt that I was being so much more open.
Then my ego would come up and tell me that Larry was just taking advantage of me. I thought of what people would say or think, and all those other tribal belief systems of society. We told my family and his. Most of my family consider themselves Christians, and I was told by some of them that we weren't welcome in their home if Larry was to go there dressed as a woman. His family is very estranged so it really didn't matter to them. It hurt me a lot that my family could be so judgemental but their response did not surprise me. So I really couldn't pour out my heart to them and expect any kind of sympathy or comfort, since Larry was being considered an abomination. This left me feeling even more isolated and depressed, and I was also going through menopause. Was this a crisis I was going through?
I kept thinking that maybe this was some kind of a dream, a really bad one. I would try to put my hand through a wall or the steering wheel to check if I was dreaming. I knew in reality you can't go through walls but in dreams or when out of body you can. I kept asking myself, how did I get myself in this situation. Suicide wasn't the answer, nor was running away, I had to deal with this head on.
I went to my doctor and told him of my anxiety and my husband. He told me that I was deeply depressed and I needed to go to a therapist. He gave me the prescription drug Prozac, the lowest dosage. The therapist didn't know much about crossdressing; he helped by just listening. Larry and I had started having bad screaming fights; we had never fought like that before. I was glad that we had recently sold our guns because things were getting kind of dicey and I was starting to lose it. I had come to the point in our marriage where I was feeling that Larry had to go for therapy as well if we were going to get through this crisis. None of these therapists knew anything about transgendered people or crossdressing, so they ended up not being much help for us.
I felt bad that Slate had to hear much of the screaming fights we had. I know he was scared and in his small voice would tell us to stop arguing. He would go to his room and come out when things had quieted down. We'd talk to him and tell him that Mommy and Daddy really loved each other but were having a hard time, we would console him and hold him till he was feeling better. I had homeschooled him for kindergarten and he was about to start 1st grade; I thought I'd put him in a private school because I didn't know how long this thing was going to take to resolve, and felt I needed the time to work on it.
Amazingly, Slate seemed never to have a problem with Larry being femmy; had I thought and felt more deeply about the meaning of that, I might have had my answers much sooner. Instead, I just rationalized his response by thinking that he was not knowledgeable about adult society so couldn't see the "problems" I saw.
So I enrolled Slate in a private school which was run by an Episcopal church. At first, after meeting myself and Larry, they said it was OK that he dressed femmy and that there would not be a problem. After they got our money, they changed their minds and decided they didn't want Larry to show up femmy at school at all.
The situation came to a head when they called the police on us once when we were going to see our son perform in a Christmas presentation. They refused to allow Larry in to see his son perform. Of course, the police could do nothing to Larry because he was breaking no law, but they did say that if the school did not want him there and he went in anyway, he would be trespassing. So the school became another problem I had to deal with. I had been volunteering many hours to the school in the hope that they would appreciate and accept us; this event showed that to be another illusion for me.
Meanwhile, Larry would go on the net at work trying to find information about crossdressing to understand what was going on with him. Our marriage was holding on by threads. His co-workers began making comments to the boss, telling him that Larry was getting on the net and wasting company time. Larry was still getting his work done, but one guy had it in for him. Larry was told that he could lose his job if he continued getting on the net and talking to people about crossdressing.
Well, everything seemed to be falling apart before my eyes; marriage, Larry's job, Slate and the school and, if all that wasn't enough, we had used a credit card to put a big sum of money in the stock market, thinking we could possibly get out of the debt we were in, and instead, we were losing our butts. I didn't have a job, since we had decided that one of us would stay at home when we had our child. This seemed like the darkest time yet in our lives together.
Yet, at the same time, I was grappling with what unconditional love was. I was wrestling with whether unconditional love meant that someone could wipe their feet on me, or whether it meant something much deeper. You see, when this change in Larry began taking place, I asked God to show me the meaning of unconditional love. I really wanted to love myself and honor myself, but also love my husband. Meanwhile, everything that was going on seemed like dilemmas within dilemmas.
By this time we had heard of a lady who was a sexologist. Her name was Dr. Marilyn Volker, and she was going to hold a transgendered panel at Lynn University. She had invited any member of the support group to show up and serve on the panel. So we went and found that she had lots of information which made sense; also, what impressed me the most was how she spoke with lots of love and kindness. She seemed to exude unconditional love. But we couldn't stick around after the panel was over. We had our son with us, he was hungry and we were also on our way to Palm Bay to check on the trailer, which was a three and a half hour drive away.
We didn't get to talk with her much until we attended one of her panels at Barry University in Miami. Marilyn offered to see Larry privately as a therapist, and that is when we began to learn exactly what was really going on. Marilyn also talked with me, and she was the one who finally gave me the support I needed in the intellectual area. She educated us on what it was to be transgendered, how this differed from cross-dressing, and I began to understand LariAnn. "LariAnn" was Larry's femme name; he was femmy at home, but not fully femmy at work yet.
We found a church through the net and started to attend. Even going there was a trying time for me, going with LariAnn. We chose that church because they had a mission statement in which was declared that they welcomed, accepted, and cherished everyone. Well, not everyone accepted, and that became another struggle and energy drain for me.
Then one day, I was watching Oprah, and saw Caroline Myss was the guest speaker. I was so amazed to hear her speak that I just drank it all in. I remember her talking about the tribal belief systems and how people are stuck and can't seem to get to the next stage; that stage being the individual moving away from the tribe. She also spoke of how many people in therapy and/or support groups didn't want to do the work to get healed.
Then I knew I had to get her book, then I had to get the next two. What Caroline shared made sense; I had never before heard truth being spoken like that. It was God's truth in practical application. Caroline understood what was going on with our egos and how they played in our lives. She explained the human condition from a spiritual and emotional standpoint that spoke to my heart. I'd stay up reading to 2 or 3 in the morning; I absorbed the books as fast as I could. I learned I could let the anger go and let LariAnn be herself.
But what I didn't do was to go back to the books and get in tune with my own spirit. I didn't go back to practice it because I felt my crisis was finally over. Instead, I started to invest my energy in another direction...
I was learning and gaining understanding about transgenderism from Marilyn Volker. I discovered that gender and sex are not the same thing, and both are different from sexual orientation. Gender is what is between your ears and the expression of your self (masculine or feminine), while sex is the type of body you are born with (male or female). Sexual orientation is which sex you are attracted to. Gender and sex are very often used as though they mean the same thing, which helps people to misunderstand what a transgendered person is. A transgendered person is someone whose sex is not the same as their gender. In LariAnn's situation, the body is male, but the gender is feminine.
The other big misconception I had to deal with was that, if a male wants to dress and/or act feminine, they must be gay. In reality, most gay men have no interest in dressing in women's clothing. The gay men who do are the "drag queens", but this does not necessarily mean they are transgendered. LariAnn is not a drag queen; she simply wants to express her femininity in a natural and "ordinary" way like many women do.
I had shot up like a rocket going so fast that I hadn't checked to see if I had enough fuel for escape velocity. I stalled out and went into a tailspin! The only thing that stopped me from the crash and burn was, I believe, the grace I had in the bank.
What happened was, I had begun to think I had to educate the whole world about transgenderism. I concluded that my job was to make people see the errors of their judgmental ways. I wanted to be up front with people about my husband's crossdressing as soon as I'd meet them, thinking it would be better to be honest then for them to learn of it later. They might think we were playing some sort of bad joke on them. But when I talked to them, and they were resistant and/or judgmental, I'd feel anger. The initial anger that I had felt towards LariAnn now became focused on those who wouldn't accept her. I would take the disapproval to heart and have a pity party in my internal dialogue. I wasn't sure who I was becoming, or where I was. I saw myself being defensive and playing the role of LariAnn's protector or rescuer, and that is how I was behaving.
Only, the more I thought people were being judgmental, the more, in reality, it was me who was being judgmental. I began to feel as though I were just drifting, with no anchor, on the sea of life.
At church, we were putting in a lot of energy trying to help people see that we were honest people. We were trying to be accepted by volunteering for this and that at church. LariAnn served as Treasurer soon after we became members, and I served on the Preschool board for most of the year. LariAnn was also singing in the choir and doing some solos as well. We would help with setting up different programs that the church had going. The biggest thing we were able to do, finally, was to have Dr. Volker do a workshop on transgenderism at our church. The attendance was very good and we felt we had, at long last, provided them with the ultimate educational experience on this subject.
I had quit taking Prozac by then and had told the doctor I didn't need it any more. Larry was LariAnn full-time by now. Through all that we went through with that Episcopal school, we decided to drop the idea of suing the school. LariAnn got the human resources issues cleared up at her workplace so there was no longer a problem with her job being in jeopardy.
A lady at church, Lesli, brought up Caroline Myss in a discussion I had with her. She told me that Caroline had done some audio tapes, and that another lady at church, Karen, had some copies of them. A week later I borrowed those tapes from Karen. I was so glad and thankful that they had brought up Caroline Myss; with all the things that had been going on I had lost my focus. The information on those tapes helped me get my boat going again, get through to the other side and get off the boat. I could have turned my life into a woundology series, but Caroline helped me understand that energy invested in "woundology" wouldn't make for a good return.
Then, one day I woke up and noticed I was calm and at peace. I felt at peace with God, myself and the whole world; it was such a wonderful feeling. So liberating a feeling it was; I also felt very light. Before, I had been feeling heavy, with darkness everywhere around me, as though I were being choked. I had been going to bed wondering if I was even going to wake up the next day. I felt death coming closer and closer until I got so tired of fighting the changes that were to take place in me that I surrendered my life to God, saying, Thy will be done. Even though I had read Caroline's books and felt that my crisis was over, I had read through them so fast that I still had not processed all that she had shared.
But now, as I used the tapes, I began a new process. Things Caroline had shared in her books started to gel within me, and I saw what I needed to do for myself.
Gradually, I started unplugging from as many energy drains as I could. I resolved that I would put the necessary energy into myself and our little family. I also went back to studying the books with more care and diligence. I had learned so much from Caroline Myss's books; the universe evidently saw that I was ready for the next step.
I now realized that I had been trying to control; control the emergence of LariAnn, and trying to control others in how they felt about her so as to try to get acceptance. I had had a falling out with one of my sisters because she wouldn't listen to my heart story. I had to look at what I was doing, and take responsibility. I couldn't blame this on LariAnn because she needed to be true to herself.
With this wonderful feeling of peace, I could now look back and review the choices I had been making, without condemning myself. There came a forgiveness with gentleness, and much gratitude for the lessons I had learned. This was the peace of letting go, of ceasing the attempt to change people. I felt that the parts of my beliefs that were illusions had died. So this, I thought, is what the story of the Phoenix rising up from the ashes is all about!
Finally, after a year of trying to open people's eyes, I was tired of always going out of my way to be accepted. The church was 30 minutes away, and the drives were getting too long for all those extracurricular activities. Besides that, with Caroline's help I was finally getting free from society's tribal limitations.
Through the resolution of these experiences I believe that, with Caroline's books and tapes, she's held my hand spiritually and guided me in my own process of introspection. Yes, it is work, and it is challenging to look at your dark shadows (or demons; whatever you wish to call them), but so well worth it. When you come back out, it is as though you've taken a spiritual bath, and are clean and ready to start life as a new day.
Trusting Divine order instead of human order is really freeing because, once you stop trying to control outcomes, the pressure is gone.
Now I'm taking it more slowly and soaking it all up. I'm actually enjoying life. I get so high on this new way of living that it's hard to shut it down at times. I know I'm on a journey, and I can't tell where it'll take me, but I do know that I'm going to be okay, no matter where I go, as long as I trust in the Divine.
We have a small house that I recently painted inside and out with bright colors and pastels (before this, it was white in some places and dark in others). I have started homeschooling Slate again and we are having a wonderful time together. I have made the effor to make up with my sister. So far she still feels the same way as she did before about LariAnn, but it doesn't bother me anymore. I've got so much more to live for and to experience.
As far as LariAnn, I, and Slate are concerned, we are still together and as happy as we can be. March 2, 2006, is our 27nd wedding anniversary. Life will always have crossroads, twists, and turns, but they are no longer about the transgendered issue. We continue on the path to awareness together and, thanks to Caroline Myss, both of us have the tools we need to speed us on our journey.
I feel blessed and grateful for the moments I have in the present. I have so much gratitude for Caroline and Marilyn for sharing these wonderful riches with me and showing me how to apply them to my life. God Bless you both in all that you do.
Is this all of my story? Not by a long shot; there are so many other details I haven't included, because this is a story, not a novel. Besides, my story is only half of Our Story (the other half is LariAnn's Story. Be sure to read it as well.
I am now more rightly equipped, with all that I have learned so far, to continue on this very unusual, but interesting, journey we call life.