A few years ago, I began a tradition of contemplating what I’m thankful for in the past year. I missed last year, unable to focus on anything other than the disastrous election earlier that month. This year, a year into that disaster, a number of things come to mind easily.

I am thankful for chosen family. My church family. My chorus family. All the people in my life who give me the daily resilience to carry on during a time in which I could be profoundly depressed all day, every day, over the state of our country. I hesitated to say “our country“ because there have been a number of times this past year when I wished deeply that I had been born elsewhere. 

This is sounding so depressing, yet there are so many things in my life that uplift me and give me hope for the future, reminding me, “This, too, shall pass.”

PGMC’s holiday concert is coming up in a few weeks. When I look at the set list of songs we’re going to perform, I’m given great hope by the fact that the same set list could’ve comprised any concert I’ve sung in the chorus since I joined in 2008. Nothing in the politics of the day has changed the exuberant, dynamic energy we will bring to our audience this December. In keeping with Portland’s general reaction to the politics of the day, PGMC is also living the attitude, “We’re here, we’re not going away, and we’re not changing. Get used to it!”

I belong to an Episcopal church. I have come to realize that this denomination perfectly suits introverts. It’s a denomination of introspection, discernment, and quiet grace moving through the world. This extrovert has been very gratified that a number of my introverted churchmates have quietly come up to me in the past year, saying some variation of, “I just want you to know that I support you, and I’m so sorry that your identity is under attack right now.” 

I am grateful there is only one member of my biological family I feel estranged from at the moment. She voted for Trump, and has never changed her view that he was sent by God to save the country and the world. As for the rest of my family, this incident is a good illustration of their attitude…

Not long ago, we had dinner with one of our nieces (on my wife’s side of the family) and her girlfriend. Our niece asked me, “Do you want me to call you Uncle Reid? I call Cristina ‘Aunt Cristina,’ and I just wondered what you wanted to be called.” Her partner immediately saw the potential confusion in that question, and offered clarification, “You mean, ‘do you want to be called Uncle Reid or just Reid,’ right?” Given my trans identity and that I spent the first 40 years of my life living female, this clarification meant that my niece wasn’t asking did I want to be called Aunt Reid. This possibility would never have occurred to my niece, so it didn’t occur to her that there was a potential point of confusion in her original question. 

We all laughed, and I was so gratified that (a) it never would’ve occurred to my niece that I might go there with it because that wasn’t even close to what she had in mind, and (b) her partner understood immediately that clarification was a good idea. 

I am so thankful that there are a number of people in my biological family that I would also choose to be part of my logical family. And I am thankful to have had the opportunity to become logical family to a number of people I dearly love. We will get through this time, family! One of these years, I will be able to write, “We survived and thrived and got through it.“ And, I will be using the past tense.