Sharon's Page

By Sharon Bussert

Sometimes I find myself wondering who am I and how I got into the midst of this crazy life…Forty years old, 5 grown kids, a husband who became a wife. Fortunately I was blessed with a sunny personality and a positive outlook, and they see me through pretty well.

So, a bit about me…I’m 40 years old and I live in London where I’m working as a writer, but the story starts a bit further back. I met my future husband, Josh, when I was 22 years old and had just graduated from university. I worked for an aerial surveying company making topographic maps and in my spare time I worked on writing. My real goal was to be a writer, but map-making paid the bills. Back then I figured that in a few years I’d get some cash saved up and move somewhere really interesting. Instead I married Josh and ended up doing a lot of interesting things, all while still living in Indiana.

Our first big adventure began with the marriage itself, as there were 3 children who came along with Josh. Instant family! At the same time we decided to go into business for ourselves and within a year of our marriage I was working only part-time and we were counting on our computer business to support the lot of us. Sometimes that plan worked and sometimes it didn’t go so well, but we stuck with it. My thoughts of being a writer took back burner to my thoughts on where I was going to get the money to feed the kids, and I threw myself whole-heartedly into computers.

Life back then was a mixture of complete wildness when the kids were all around and peaceful time together when they were with their mom. After a few years we decided that peaceful wasn’t for us and we adopted a couple more kids. Betsie and Germaine joined our family in June, 1994. I was 28 years old and a mother of five kids. I looked ridiculously young and as the kids reached their teenage years I was regularly mistaken for one of the kids. I thought it was funny, but I think Josh sometimes got tired of having to explain that I was his WIFE, not his daughter!

For years we had dreamed of living in Europe and we talked about it from time to time, but the logistics seemed impossible. Our house was bursting with teenagers and the computer business had grown to the point that both of us needed to be there full-time just to keep it under control. I woke up one morning and realized that MY dream, to be a writer, was completely lost beneath the dirty laundry, teenage attitude and employee’s and client’s problems. And though I was only 35 I suddenly felt like I would one day be old and would never have done what I wanted with my life. About the same time Jess began to feel like she was going to miss out if Josh didn’t face up to being transgendered. So we were on to new adventures!

I started writing again, articles at first and then I began writing a novel. The kids started graduating from school and we realized our computer business wasn’t going to pay for college, and Josh started seeing a counselor to “figure out what was wrong”.

After much soul searching we decided to sell off our business and move on in life. At the time it was a heart-wrenching decision, but in hind-site it turned out to be a great idea. Josh took a job working for a much larger company and suddenly earned enough money that I could stay home. So I finally got to be a writer! (In between keeping up with the laundry, homework, shopping, chauffeuring, etc.) Life seemed set on cruise and I was ready to put my feet up and relax a bit. For the first time since we had married we were free of financial worries and as kids began moving out our household settled down.

Then Josh told me he wanted to be a woman.

When he first told me I don’t think it really even registered. I knew he’d been seeing counselors and I knew he was really depressed, but when he told me his “big news” the only thing I remember thinking was ‘Oh good. The counselors figured out what’s making him so depressed. Now they can fix it!’ Well, I didn’t really understand that they could fix it; I really thought they’d help Josh learn to deal with the disappointment that he was born a man. You don’t hear much about transsexual people when you live in the middle of Indiana, so I was completely ignorant of exactly what he was telling me.

As he kept going to counselors and he kept talking about wanting to be a woman I eventually started to pay more attention. I went with him to meet the counselors and I realized that Josh wasn’t the only person in the world who felt this way and that sometimes people do “make the switch”. I told myself that Josh would never do that though, because once you have a wife and kids you are a husband and a father, and you just can’t change that. My little self-deception lasted about 2 minutes because as I began to read and learn more about transsexual people I discovered that all sorts of people actually DID switch genders. Or maybe more correctly I should say switched their body to match their gender.

As I was coming to terms with Josh’s news and the thought that I might someday have a wife instead of a husband our kids finished growing up and Josh and I got the opportunity to live another dream. He found out about a transfer within his company that would base us in London. In hindsight I think Josh was a few brain cells ahead of me on the transitioning idea and he saw the move to London as a good opportunity to explore transitioning in a more accepting environment, away from the prying eyes of the conservative Midwest. I just thought we were moving to Europe and that was so cool!

In April 2004 Josh moved and I joined him in early June, after finishing the packing and settling the kids into their new lives. We had thought of taking the youngest 2 with us, but in the end the charms of Indiana won out and they both decided they didn’t want to move, so when I joined Josh it was just the two of us. We quickly discovered that in London people pretty much mind their own business and care very little what anyone else is doing, and that opened up the opportunity for Jessica to begin to emerge.

We had agreed from the start that our exploration of Josh being transgendered needed to be taken slowly. Neither of us wanted to sacrifice our relationship, so we moved cautiously. Jess occasionally went out, but she only went to “safe” venues that were advertised as being for transsexuals and transvestites. A few times I went along with her, but I found it hard. I was gradually coming around to the idea that Josh might transition, but I didn’t want to live my life in “special” clubs. I wanted to be free to go wherever I wanted. Of course Jess wanted the same thing, but she didn’t actually pass all that well and she attracted unwanted attention. We spent many months in this “holding pattern”. We weren’t moving forward to transitioning because both of us were unwilling to accept Jess if she couldn’t pass. Maybe that was unfair to Jess, but we were in agreement on it. Jess didn’t want to exist if it meant she would always attract unkind comments and unfavorable stares.

And then we found out about Dr. “O” and things really started moving fast! In December Jess began looking into facial feminization surgery. When she found Dr. Ousterhout’s clients and saw the results she suddenly felt like she could hope. The two of us didn’t discuss facial surgery until sometime in January because our kids were over for Christmas and they still knew nothing about Jess. As soon as they returned to the U. S. someone hit the fast forward button. We decided to go ahead with transitioning and Jess scheduled a surgery date for late March. That gave us two and a half months to accomplish all we needed to do—tell employer, tell family, tell friends, find the money for surgery, and come to terms with this in our own minds.

It was a terribly difficult time for me. Though I supported Jess I felt like I was losing my husband, and there was no one to support me. Jess did her best, but it’s not always possible for the person who is causing the hurt to fix the hurt as well. I know she didn’t mean to hurt me, but that doesn’t change the fact that she did. Without a doubt I can say that supporting my husband through transitioning has been the most painful and difficult thing I’ve had to do in my life.

In February we scheduled a quick trip to the U.S. so we could talk to our kids and family about Jess’ transition. I was hoping that after other people knew maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone, but the opposite happened. We got a lot of support and people were accepting, but almost everyone missed out on realizing how much we needed them. Time and again friends and family felt the need to talk about how this was going to affect them or how upset they were that we hadn’t told them years ago. Within a couple of days all we wanted to do was go back to London so we could get away from them all and I felt like I was not only losing my husband but the support of my family and friends as well.

In fairness to our family and friends, I do understand their reactions. Almost no one in Indiana understands what a transsexual is, and we did spring the news on them. The fact that we had been dealing with this for years and had finally come to a resolution we believed we could live with doesn’t change the fact that they were being told that they were seeing Josh for the last time. Across the board people felt like they were losing Josh (as did I), and I don’t think any of them at that time had an understanding of how painful this all was to Josh. People felt like Josh was “getting everything he wanted” while the rest of us were losing someone. Over time many of them have been able to see that Jess wasn’t a choice Josh made any more than a person with a visible physical deformity could “choose” to treat it or go through life crippled.

It was really difficult. I was terribly sad because I felt like I was losing Josh, but I knew I was doing the right thing in supporting him and I was confident that we would be okay after he transitioned. But I hadn’t yet found the words to explain to people why I felt that way, and my inability to voice that properly made people think I was being “forced” into this by Josh. Eventually I found the words I was looking for and wrote a letter to try and help others understand how I felt, and I believe that letter helped them. You can read it here if you are interested.

-Sharon