We are the experts who have come to teach each other and the students who have come to learn from each other. Women offered improvisational personal growth workshops, a discussion about the role models we choose for ourselves as women, a dialogue on dealing with shame and ridicule, a slide show about intersex conditions, an exercise in communication styles, a play one has written about a transsexual woman in the lesbian community. The caring of the staff is palpable, their presence unobtrusive. At each meal, we revel in an abundance of exquisitely prepared food, gleaming with fresh vegetables and piquant with herbs. This weekend is a time of healing, of self-acceptance made possible by the acceptance of others.
Some women finish songs and poems begun years earlier and left conclusionless until now.
The most amazing thing, and yet so simple it takes us all weekend to notice it, is our silent acceptance of each other as women. The diversity of our womanhood is powerful indeed. We are transsexual women, newly to many years postop, and nontranssexual women. We are women with penises who don't want surgery, who look forward to surgery, who are just beginning to think about surgery, who can't have surgery. We are women who live as men all or part of the time.