This is the story of how Emery Walters became whom he was supposed to be.<br><br>I knew I was male at an early age, something that was a societal no-no in the 1950s and still is in parts of the country today. Burying my male identity, I strove to be the best woman possible. But after raising my four wonderful children from two debilitating marriages, I found myself alone and nearly penniless. That was when Emery asserted his identity.<br><br>Life became better with the shift from female to male, a third marriage, and a wife who, herself, transitioned from male to female.

Some Fine Day

I edited (and wrote) the SFL newsletter for two years. Copies of this can be found in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection of the Hatcher Graduate Library, at the University of Michigan, which has since added several of my other books. My work, including some recent books, is also in the Counter Culture Collection at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. I’ve never looked back at those newsletters, fearing they are terrible, not wanting to see ‘how much my writing has improved since then.’ Thank you, former self, for finally standing up for yourself.


Maybe it was because I’d been working as a volunteer probation officer for the city of Southgate, and how I’d been seeing people get in trouble for being stupid as well as for being guilty. It had also given me a sense of importance; no, not that so much as value, and of belonging to a community I had chosen, with people who had the same principles as I held myself.


Chapter 25