A Different Kind of Transition
Partners of Transitioning Individuals Lack Support During the Process
By Amanda Waldroupe
http://www.justout.com/news.aspx?id=146TransActive executive director Jenn Burleton compares the process of transitioning one's gender to a circus, with the transitioning person in center ring and spotlight.
Helen Boyd is an advocate for partners of transitioning people and the author of My Husband Betty and She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband, memoirs about Boyd's experiences of first living with her husband while he was a cross-dresser and then as he transitioned to a woman. She likens the experience to standing at the edge of a forest, looking for paths hard to find and difficult to pass through, but nonetheless there.
The partner of the transitioning person is part of Burleton's and Boyd's respective metaphors, but plays a surprisingly secondary role.
