Sun Apr 21, 2013 at 12:11 PM PDT
Her Shiny New Vagina
by laurustina
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/21/1203737/-Her-Shiny-New-Vagina (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/21/1203737/-Her-Shiny-New-Vagina)
Last Sunday, I attended a local production of The Vagina Monologues. I read the monologues back in college and have had a copy on my bookshelf for more than a decade. Still, I wasn't prepared for how it would make me feel.
It had already been an emotional week. I'd finished off my manuscript and sent it out to the prospective agent and editor. Alice's story is now out of my hands and at the whim of strangers which is an unexpectedly terrifying feeling. So when we settled into the second row in the tiny theater I was already emotionally raw.
Which is perhaps why I wept from beginning to end.
I cried so hard that after the show one of the women in the cast came out to hug me which made me cry all over again. I couldn't explain to her, to my mother-in-law or my sister. I couldn't even explain it to myself until later that night.
I wept with joy at the sight of girls and young women in the theater and on stage, shameless, laughing, defending and supporting one another. I cried for the generations of women, in my family and others, who did not, could not imagine such things. I sobbed for my child and those women like her whose bodies betray them, who must fight so very hard for so very long to find some sense of peace.
And because I see the world through the lens of my daughter's life, because I've spent the last two years writing her story, connecting with other trans women and girls, I wept for the silence in the space where another monologue should have been. I envisioned it later that night, heard it in the voice of my friend Ari and knew instinctively that its title should be "My Shiny New Vagina".
I get teary every time I read "laurustina's" blog about her late transsexual teenage daughter.
We lose too many of the young ones. My heart is heavy.
I saw The Vagina Monologues for the first time this past semester at Salem College with my Girlfriend it was very moving and emotional when they did "They beat the boy out of my girl" we both cried and i have to say i will never miss another performance of it