Month: May 2025

Aries North Node

~ Karin ~ Leave a comment

Another lens I’ve been exploring to make sense of my journey—both with feminism and my son’s experience as a trans boy—is astrology. I’m new to it and still quite a beginner, but one concept that really resonated with me (thanks to a reading from fellow blogger Linda) is the idea of the Moon’s nodes.

The South Node represents where we come from, what feels familiar and comfortable. The North Node points to where we’re headed: our direction for growth and personal development.

In my case, I have a Libra South Node, which means I’m naturally comfortable playing the role of peacekeeper and making compromises. I often prioritize harmony, sometimes at the expense of my own needs. But my North Node is in Aries, and that calls for something very different. I’m meant to stand up for myself, speak my truth, and pursue my own goals, even if it means upsetting others. It also means learning to express my anger in healthy, direct ways and putting my sense of self before relationships.

Loving myself, in this context, also meant learning to trust my own inner knowing.

Looking back, I can see that life placed me in situations where I had to show Aries qualities. As a woman in a patriarchal society, I was pushed to assert myself. And as the mother of a trans child, I had to protect and guide my son, even when some people in my family and parts of society were against it. I had to speak up for Finn when he couldn’t yet speak up for himself. And in order to do that, I had to stop caring about whether it would make people uncomfortable.

Did I disagree with my husband? With the psychiatrist or the high school principal? Then I had to say so and be willing to deal with the backlash.

It wasn’t easy, but I now see that this path—this repeated call to stand firm, to speak up, to lead with courage—is exactly what my Aries North Node is about.

(If you’d like to find out your own North and South Node placements, you can use this link: Calculate your Moon Nodes.)

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Channelings: The Deeper Story

~ Karin ~ 2 Comments

In November 2016, I received a channeling from someone who had blogged on WordPress and was beginning to explore his channeling abilities.

At the time, Finn had recently come out as trans, and my mind was full of questions. Was this real, or just a phase? What was the deeper meaning behind it?

His channeled guides said it was most likely not a phase.

Okay, good to know, I thought. I was already leaning in that direction myself. But I was getting so much pushback—from my family and from the school. And Finn’s coming out had been so sudden. Up until age thirteen, he had presented more like a typical girl. All of it made me question my own beliefs.

The channeling also said that transgender people are courageous and that they come into this world to shake up the norms. I could believe that. Facing this much friction from a society that isn’t ready takes a strong soul with a lot of courage.

Later, in the summer of 2017, I received another channeling from someone else. This time, I asked about the origins of my rheumatoid arthritis, which had started right after Finn’s birth. The channeling revealed a number of things about past lives, soul contracts, vows, beliefs, and more. It also said that Finn and I had shared several past lives together.

One of those lives, I was told, was directly connected to his trans journey.

Twelve lifetimes ago, my father was sick. I made a soul-level promise to heal him. We spent time together and enjoyed each other’s company until he died.

He wanted me to inherit everything.

But because I was a woman, I could not. I was left poor, completely at the mercy of others. I had given up my own life to help him, and in the end, I was left with nothing.

The channeling said that the father from that past life is now Finn.

It also said that I carry a karmic desire to help my child heal. At the same time, I carry a fear, perhaps even a deep certainty, that doing so will cost me everything. This echoes the past life, where I sacrificed everything for my father and was left with nothing.

The message tied this old pattern to a lingering feeling of being at the mercy of others or of illness itself. According to the channeling, that pattern was now ready to be cleared.

While my RA did not improve after the session, I found the story compelling. It gave context to the anxiety I carried: that if I supported my child on his path, I might lose something. At the time, my husband had a few choleric outbursts about the whole “trans thing,” and I didn’t know how to respond or whether our marriage would survive. There was a constant sense of friction in our family.

Eventually, my husband came around. He accepted Finn as a boy. And our marriage did survive. But it was a rocky road.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

The Courage to Be Ourselves

~ Karin ~ 5 Comments

I believe that we are consciousness going through many incarnations. And we plan our challenges before we arrive in each lifetime.

In a previous post, I wrote about three separate astrology reports that all pointed to Finn coming out as trans. That convergence felt like confirmation—that this part of his path was planned. It helped quiet the guilt I had carried about using progesterone gel during my first trimester, and the persistent, painful question of whether the medication might have somehow caused it. But it didn’t tell me why Finn was trans.

There was more. Subtler signs came through my inner voice.

Before I started this blog, while still wrestling with my resistance to coming out of hiding about my spiritual life, I asked why I needed to write at all. I kept receiving gentle nudges from my guidance. And then, one day, I heard my inner voice answer clearly: “To give back to her.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand. The message referred to my older child, whom I still believed to be my daughter. It would be more than two years before Finn came out as trans.

At first, I didn’t understand. What had my child given me that I needed to return?

Shortly after his birth, I developed rheumatoid arthritis. It was an unpleasant and difficult period, but it became the start of something unexpected. My search for healing led me to homeopathy, which in turn opened the door to a spiritual awakening.

Was that his gift to me—the catalyst that put me on this path, one I now felt called to share through my blog?

Or was it something deeper—something about living with authenticity? About daring to be yourself, unapologetically?

I had experienced things that didn’t fit within a strictly materialist worldview. Lightbulbs would burn out when I was angry. When I felt deeply at peace, small wishes would often manifest almost instantly. These moments, strange as they seemed, became part of my reality. And when I finally gathered the courage to come out of the spiritual closet and write about them publicly, perhaps that helped clear a path.

Maybe by stepping into my truth first, Finn could later step into his, with equal courage.

That may be the thread that binds our stories: the shared journey of being yourself, unapologetically. For me, it was feminism and spirituality. For Finn, it was being transgender. This felt like another piece of the puzzle, another insight into the deeper why behind it all.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Looking Back and Trying to Make Sense of It All

~ Karin ~ 3 Comments

It’s time to look back over the journey. Why did this happen? Why did I have a transgender child?

There’s no definite, provable answer. But there are layers—layers of possibility, layers of meaning.

One possible explanation is biological. I’ve wondered if my use of progesterone gel during the first trimester of pregnancy had any influence. Could that have contributed? Perhaps. But children can be female-to-male (FTM) transgender even when no progesterone was taken during pregnancy. Still, I couldn’t help but question whether this hormone had some role, especially considering the noticeable rise in FTM transitions in recent years.

Another layer of meaning is harder to quantify but just as compelling. I’ve come to see Finn’s transition as intertwined with my own journey through feminism. For years, I carried a burning question: What is it that makes people grow up into men and women? Behind that question was fury. Why did it seem that smart, assertive men became more respected and desired, while smart, assertive women were labeled “difficult,” even unlovable?

What really makes a man a man? Is it biology? Or is it upbringing—what society teaches us?

In a way, life answered my questions by sending me a transgender child. For the first thirteen years of life, Finn behaved like a typical girl. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed.

The most profound revelation for me was this: beyond genes and hormones, there’s a neural structure in the brain that plays a role in gender identity. If that brain structure is male, then the person feels male, even if their biological sex says otherwise. (More details in this post about the neurobiology of transidentity.) I hadn’t known this. It was the missing link for me. And crucially, it belongs to biology, not psychology or mental health. That distinction mattered.

The second big realization came later: once transgender men start testosterone and develop a deeper voice, society reacts. They gain respect, but often lose intimacy. A deep voice commands authority. People interrupt them less. They are taken more seriously. But they also lose something—those close, sisterly bonds with women who once saw them as one of their own. Now, they’re perceived as men—and, sometimes, as a threat. This article shares more details about what trans men experience after they transition: https://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/

There’s no single reason for what happened. Many forces are at work—biology (genes, hormones, brain structure) and society (its expectations, assumptions, and norms). All of them matter. All of them shape a life.

So, the progesterone gel or the connection of my feminism journey and Finn’s trans journey are two aspects (among many others) I pondered when trying to make sense of it all.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Top Surgery

~ Karin ~ Leave a comment

By the spring of 2023, Finn was ready to schedule his top surgery. He had to consider that he wouldn’t be able to attend university for at least two weeks, so he chose a time slot when he wouldn’t miss critical events like written exams or important lab work.

The hospital was located close to where we live, and I could visit Finn with just a one-hour bus ride—something I was deeply grateful for.

The surgery went well. We visited Finn twice in the hospital, and after three nights, we were able to bring him home.

At home, he needed some assistance, as he couldn’t lift his arms above his shoulders. Fortunately, I was working remotely during that time and could help whenever he needed support.

The healing process took several weeks, during which Finn was unable to continue his usual dance training. But he recovered steadily, and I felt nothing but relief and gratitude that the ordeal was behind him and that he was healing well.

Before the surgery, even though his breasts had been small, Finn had always felt uneasy exposing his chest in public. After surgery, with a body that looked and felt more aligned with who he is, he felt confident going swimming and visiting the sauna.

Looking back, I thought about all the people who told me to wait—that “it’s just a phase.” I remembered the email from the psychotherapist who described Finn’s desire to remove his breasts as “highly autoaggressive.” She compared his experience to anorexia and proposed a form of treatment that involved forbidding his transition and helping him “tolerate his sadness.”

But it wasn’t just a phase.

And the desire to remove his breasts wasn’t autoaggressive—it was affirming, healing, and right for him.

With this surgery—nearly seven years after Finn came out in the summer of 2016—his transition was complete.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.