Thursday, February 17, 2011


While visiting my mom in Texas, we made our nightly runs to the bookstore, imagine that...I work all week in a bookstore and then when I'm off of work where do I hang out? In a bookstore...So while scanning the gender studies shelf, I came across an interesting book titled Dear John, I Love Jane edited by Candace Walsh & Laura Andre. There is a forward by Dr. Lisa Diamond author of Sexual Fluidity which I bought a couple of years ago.

The Dear John book includes 27 essays written by women who have left a man for a woman. They are all true and honest stories, some will make you cry, others will make you wish for that first experience again, the excitement, the newness, the scary yet inticing unexplored territory of the first time.

Dr. Lisa Diamond's book Sexual Fluidity was a book I picked up when I was trying to understand my attraction to women, my transition from being married to falling in love with a woman. My family is open and accepting, my mother is a professional artist so diversity was a part of my upbringing and I even have an aunt who is a lesbian so there was never any shame surrounding homosexuality. I was curious how my preference could just change at the age of forty. No warning, no latency, never thought twice about it. Maybe I was so busy from such a young age raising kids, fulfilling familial responsibilities that I wasn't aware of my sexuality. Somehow, having children so young must have paired sex with pro-creation or something. Diamond's book explained a lot about the female's sexual fluidity and although it was extremely scientific, it did give me some sense of normalcy in regards to my experience.

In Dear John, I Love Jane, I found first hand tales of women falling in love with another woman. These stories aren't all happy and certainly some end very sad yet they are true and that is what I look for in writing, honesty and truth. Funny enough, one of the essays is an excerpt titled First Date With Ann from a book written by Meridith Maran that I read in a religion class I took at SMU back in 1996 called What It's Like to Live Now about a woman leaving her husband for a woman. I didn't even think anything about it when I read it at the age of 29, guess I was too busy trying to graduate with two young children and a husband to relate to her story. Guess I didn't have time or energy to think about sex lol...

I highly recommend this book for all women and men as it can give some insight into the struggles involved with a woman discovering her attraction to another woman. It isn't an easy journey. She suffers from hurting those she loves, her husband, her children, her family, the other woman and mostly herself. I know first-hand the guilt that comes from waking up so to speak from an unfulfilled marriage. Once my eyes were opened, there was no going back and the thought of the harm I caused to those that loved me was excruciating. I made the choice to love myself enough to get out. Some women in these stories didn't take the leap. Some didn't have the support. Some did. Some left for another woman. Some left for themselves. The best word to describe all of these women that shared their stories with the world is BRAVE...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I can relate. A lot of parallels here to my own life.