Being born transgender I have found that there is so much to forgive others for, from childhood, adolescence and into adulthood, but sometimes we bury painful things so deep, we often forget about them until the day they come back to haunt us and there is nothing we can do but accept that it happened, be sad and breath again.
Life is about overcoming hardships and making the best of things that we cannot change until we reach a place of peace.
I have found my place of peace but this week I have had to look back on the most painful experience of my life, because the morning before New Years Eve at 9.30am in New Zealand my biological father died and being buried 9.30am NZ time tomorrow.
My mother sent me to live with him, a man I did not know and his extended family inFiji when I was 14 to iron me out and make a man of me, for two years I was physically and mentally abused, a kind of home made conversion therapy, I felt imprisoned with no escape – I don’t wish to relive the horror or the pain. But I need to finally accept that this happened.
I am a spiritual person, deeply spiritual in fact and I believe I am visited by my ancestors on both sides of my family, but only by the women.
Last year my father’s Tongan grandmother came to visit me in a vision, she explained that my father’s paternal Solomon Island bloodline had descended from slaves and that incredible violence had been handed down father to son as a result of the injustices and violation of enslavement through blackbirding, history especially a violent history, plays a cruel hand for its descendants.
I no longer feel anguish, or hurt or pain, I have changed my destiny beyond all expectations.
I do however feel forgiveness as I face a painful past and finally lay it rest.
My thoughts go out to my siblings in New Zealand as they bury their father tomorrow, grief is the price of love and for them this is a very sad time. I shall come visit one day soon and they can take me to our father’s grave.
But for now, I shall just breath.
