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Fresh Air

Diana Goetsch's Long Journey To Living As A Woman

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.434.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Diana Goetsch grew up in a time when she didn't have the language to help her understand what it meant to be trans. The poet chronicles her later-in-life transition in the memoir This Body I Wore. "I felt that the universe owed me 50 years as a female living this way," she explains. "That's crazy, but it's this sense that I wanted more life."

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

0:02.7

In 2015, my guest wrote this.

0:06.0

My life broke down two years ago at age 50,

0:10.0

though it was broken all along.

0:12.1

I seemed to be a well-functioning man named Douglas Gatch,

0:16.5

a teacher who taught at Stuyveson High School and various universities,

0:21.3

a poet with award-winning collections,

0:23.8

a dedicated meditation practitioner and instructor.

0:27.8

Previously, I'd been a concert jazz dancer, a restaurant cook,

0:32.0

a varsity athlete.

0:33.9

At the same time, I was depressed and had been for decades,

0:38.4

with no family, no partner going through life alone.

0:43.6

One other thing, I longed daily to be a woman.

0:48.3

That's my guest Diana Gatch,

0:50.0

reading from her blog Life and Transition,

0:52.4

that she kept during her period transitioning to life as a woman.

0:56.9

The blog was published on the American Scholar site.

1:00.2

Now Gatch has a new memoir called This Body I War

1:04.2

about what it was like coming of age and into adulthood

1:07.0

in an earlier era when she didn't have the language or knowledge

1:10.7

to understand what it meant to be trans.

1:13.6

Gatch also writes about her decision to transition

...

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