About the Project
This project began with a list of questions:
(For queer people) is your lens on marriage equality smudged or broken after divorce?
Are the battles faced in family court different for queer and trans people?
Some of us looked to marriage as a way to legitimize and/or normalize our lives. Did divorce change this?
What lessons about queer identity do we discover through divorce?
To the End Project aims to explore the full depth and breadth of divorce and relationship breakup narratives from queer, trans and nonbinary people.
My Story
I went through a hideously difficult divorce in 2020. At the time, I did not understand nor would I allow myself to comprehend my faulty thinking on marriage. Through lots of therapy and self reflection I had come to a realization… I had dissolved into an identity as a husband that was ill-fitting.
My marriage was born from a desire to feel protected and seen. I received protection in the form of a loving partner, health benefits (which I desperately needed) and as a way to protect myself from my own transphobia. Though I felt held by community and friends throughout my life, whose stories often reflected my own familial struggles, I had a deep well of loneliness and self hatred brewing inside. My identity as a husband wound a tight blanket around my heart, covering me with the thinnest fabric against my inner struggles with my mental health, and deeply entrenched feelings of rejection and inadequacy.
Throughout the divorce I experienced my ex as cagey and deceitful. I began to realize I was divorcing someone I didn’t know. Had she become someone I couldn’t trust to be thoughtful or caring, or was this the person I had been married to all along?
To read more about my divorce, pick up the book and read my essay in To the End.
I have published two other anthologies, From the Inside Out (Manic D Press) and Trans/Love Radical Sex, Love and Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary (Manic D Press).
I hold a Masters in Social Work from San Francisco State University. I teach in the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a small private practice.
The Salon
To the End Salon is a peer to peer resource for divorce and romantic breakup support. The salon has been running for over 3 years, with over 400 people on the mailing list.