The Frontispiece . . .

My previous life experiences have prepared me for a modestly successful career as a commercial architect. I have achieved much in the 20 years that I have practiced commercial architecture. Many beautiful and useful objects and structures have been conceived and built. Yet for all that I have achieved, there seems the nagging feeling that there is much left to do that will not require the skills that I have previously mastered.

At the mid-points of our lives, many of us critically evaluate and take close stock of what we have contributed to our communities and to the larger society of which we are a part. Most of us will do this wistfully. Often we will quickly, and bitterly, concede that time has passed us by. We will reason that we should stay the current course, our passions spent, and nearly exhausted in a life, which seems now not to elicit the same thirst for learning and kinship that we might once have laid claim to:

Perhaps Tennyson’s Ulysses said it best:

“ . . . Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

The mid-point of my life has seen me finally come to terms with, and in the final stages of surmounting, a life-long struggle to reconcile a sense of gender at times in harsh and implacable conflict with the physicality of what and who I appeared to be. In finding and making peace with myself, I have discovered a powerful voice in writing, and in that medium, this marks the start of a wide-ranging exploration of what it means to be fully human. I find that this effort requires wise and generous mentors willing to add their experience and considered points of view, the “spice” to this satisfying stew one can dare to hope.

Yes, this journey will require as yet unseasoned skills, but more significantly, the journey will test the courage of the storyteller. She is intent on telling the tale with wit, earned wisdom and, if her strength remains equal to the effort, the honesty to describe how one woman came to feel at home in this world and at last home in her own soul.

© 2008 Renée Thomas all rights reserved