There’s a bit of meta-analysis as well, as I revisit some of the advice I might wish to modify in retrospect and the experience of transitioning, then becoming quite publicly estranged from my own family, while on the job.
2 I certainly wouldn’t recommend it, but it all seemed to work out reasonably well in the end.
3 To be clear, I really do mean
a bit only, so don’t get too excited for gory details.
“My own estrangement was not an act of personal punishment…I would not,
could not, simply take my brother and the rest of our family at their word that their secret strategy was safe or sane and that only people with the last name of Ortberg were entitled to know about it…I heard from many letter writers over the years in ghastly, similar situations, many of them much worse than my own. ‘Keep the secret and we will love you,’ the promise goes, ‘but step outside the family circle and there’s no telling what might happen to you.’ For my part, in my own limited and imperfect capacity as an advice giver, I cannot promise much — I can promise that estrangement is
possible, that it is survivable, and that other forms of relation and kinship and reciprocity exist on the other side. Beyond that, I cannot say for certain; I cannot guess what gains might come to balance the losses for any given person, if leaving will come to feel like a relief or a suppurating wound or something else entirely…but it can be done, and it can even be good. Not
always good, nor
thoroughly good, but one can find real and surprising sources of goodness in it.”
www.blockedandreported.org
