I am not sure which gift that you want me to explain. I assume I am still mostly in the pre-programmed answer stage. 🙂
My family consists of: Me, (I’m 37), my husband Noah (42), my daughter Shanna (10), my son Orion (8), and my daughter Jennabeth (1). Orion is trans and has been asserting his gender since he was 2. I am grateful that he has always known himself so well so that we don’t have to go through the stress of harming him through misgendering him for a long time.
My husband has what is essentially an academic fellowship studying the Ruby programming language. He is paid to sit at home in his underwear doing deep math to help save corporations millions and sometimes billions of dollars in processing time Because he can do this anywhere and living in the SF bay area is so expensive we are on the search for a place that will fit our family better. Noah is probably autistic with ADHD too but he really doesn’t want to be diagnosed at this point in his life. He grew up in a small Texas town the son of generational wealth. His area had no services to offer and he was smart enough that he got out at 17 to go to Carnegie Mellon University and he has rarely gone back since. He is just queer enough that he can’t donate blood ever again but it isn’t a big part of his identity. He’s supportive, silly, hard working, and thoroughly convinced that both of us get one chance in this life at a happy family (his parents were what I consider low key abusive–they were emotionally cruel but there wasn’t name calling or hitting or any sexual assault) and if we mess this up we are doomed to shitty surface relationships forever. We are both very committed to helping one another be better people.
If you want to know more about my background the absolute fastest way to learn about me is to read about my childhood (https://gumroad.com/l/no_secrets). I would very cheerfully send you a free copy if you were interested. I also blog *extensively* at www.krissygibbs.com. My childhood was off the charts bad with many physical traumas and tons of emotional abuse along with tons of sexual abuse. When I have to tell clinicians about my background most of the time their mouths drop and I cannot count how many people have blurted out “You should be dead.”
But I got out of poverty and abuse. I’m not always the nicest person on the planet. I can definitely be a bully. I try very hard to squash that impulse but I phrase it as “I am nice as long as I can be–then I will be effective.” I have had many different jobs: retail, food service, house cleaning, theatre tech, library tech, nanny, and I worked at every education level from preschool to college. My sweet spot was working with gang involved teenagers. Give me an emotionally disturbed teenager and I’m a truly gifted teacher. I understand that they are reacting to things that have happened to them and I am both highly empathetic and very educated about trauma. I am good at helping kids feel better about themselves. I am still in contact with many of my former students and they tell me that I help them love themselves. I sure wish I could do the same for myself. Ha.
My daughter Shanna is arty and a reader. She has ADHD too and the executive function issues that got me beaten as a child. She is also dyslexic which we treat as a super power. When she was evaluated at Stanford they said that she is absolutely in the best learning environment and if she were to be put in school anytime soon she would probably develop emotional issues. She is hitting puberty now and just starting to deal with big mood fluctuations. Most of her childhood she has been absolutely beamingly happy. I spend a lot of time wondering how such a happy person came out of me. She is joy personified most of the time. This is starting to change and develop complexity and that’s ok too.
My son is prickly and unsure of himself. He is somewhat dysphoric about not having a penis and he spends a lot of time complaining that he wants to be 5 again because being 8 is too hard. There are too many expectations. People don’t let him scream and be wild anymore and he’s really not happy about it. Being in Japan is exacerbating this for him because he is in the 98% for height and here he is as tall as most adult women. People do not look at him and perceive a still-young child. He gets frowns when he acts like the little kids and that bothers him. I struggle with Orion because he has this personality trait where if everyone gets 1 scoop of ice cream he will tantrum because *he* should have gotten 2. I don’t understand where it comes from and it really bothers me. I don’t think I am always as kind with him as I should be because this trait hits so many emotional buttons for me. He has been in therapy the longest of my kids because I wanted to make sure that he had as much support as possible through his transition experience. We have been up to UCSF periodically since he was 6 to track his development. His therapist told me that I should always expect him to be at least a year young on emotional development and that is helpful for me. It doesn’t help his overall stability to be so developmentally slow combined with being so large.
Jennabeth is a delightful baby-turning into a toddler. She’s still nursing and not quite walking. She’s by far the easiest of my babies and we are thrilled she is here. The four of us decided as a family that we wanted one more family member before we conceived. We had to do a vasectomy reversal to get her, she was definitely not an accident nor a surprise.
We are traveling partially because we are following my husband to his work conferences. In 9 days he presents at Ruby Kaigi here in Fukuoka. This is his 5th trip to Japan and the rest of our 1st. Next is Scotland because my childhood best friend is there and we will be staying near her family for a couple of months so I can get to know my “nieces” and I can see my friend. Noah will be bopping back to Minneapolis alone for a week before joining us in Scotland. Then me and the kids will be heading to Portland for a few months to renew passports while Noah does a conference in England the week after we need to come back to the US.
After Portland there is a conference in Bangkok in September and I’m over the moon. Thai massage is the best for my physical issues and it only costs ~$4/hour in Thailand. We will be there for my birthday and that feels glorious. We stay in Thailand until going to Taiwan in December to visit another long-time friend.
Jennabeth Debonnaire is named after Jenny (in Scotland) and Debbie (in Taiwan).
2020 is still entirely unplanned. We want to try New Zealand and some country (still deciding which) in South America porque yo hablo español. I actually feel like an idiot in most countries because as soon as I leave the US and I encounter other languages I start speaking Spanish. heh. I have studied Hindi though I am not proficient enough to shop in a grocery store. I can effectively use Spanish to work with customers in a store. I spent most of my first 12 years bopping around southern California in hispanic neighborhoods.
From kindergarten through grad school I attended 32 schools. I feel like a professional new kid. My children have never been to school. I knew I wanted to homeschool 10 years before I had kids; that’s why I pursued teaching and worked at so many different levels. When I was dating I would explain on the first or second date that I had a few mandatory criterion for a partner: they had to support home schooling, they had to be non-religious but very tolerant of religion, and they had to be anti-circumcision. I found the right partner. heh. He also cooks. But that was a bonus.
We are a very enmeshed family and that has good and bad points. Some of the bad points are that I work myself utterly to exhaustion and I struggle to have boundaries with my kids. I prioritize their wants over my needs to the point of hurting myself frequently and then I am bitchy because I am in severe pain and I’m exhausted. It’s not good. I could use help trying to set boundaries without getting to the point of freaking out.
Our plan is to travel this year and next. We want to settle somewhere by the time Shanna is turning 13 because she wants to go to high school and I think it is wise to enter a community before that happens. She turns 11 in May so we definitely want to settle somewhere early 2021.