In this second entry of News columnist Iden Crockett’s “Ask a Transperson” blog, Crockett answers several questions on her experience with the physical and emotional adjustments related to gender transition, including surgery, hormone replacement therapy, sex and physical intimacy and effects on family members.

This is the inaugural entry of “Ask a Transperson,” a temporary blog by News columnist Iden Crockett intended as a “space dedicated to answering your questions” about what it means to be trans — from Crockett’s perspective. In this entry, Crockett answers: “Can you explain the variations of meaning for the term non-binary?”

“Love is the center point from which we chart all other human emotion. We owe it to each other, and to ourselves, to recapture and appreciate anew the great gift it is to be able to give and receive love.”

The new year is upon us. A time for reflection and, for many of us, resolution. This is the time for getting to work on being our “best selves.”

“It was exhilarating for Iden that first day that I stepped out into the sun. At last, my suffering was over. At last, my pain was behind me. Or so I thought.”

“I have many stories. Every paramedic does. “War stories,” we call them. Some we tell over and over to anyone who hasn’t heard them, and anyone who has.”

“Before he was an artist, before he was a husband, before he was a father or a grandfather, he was a Blues Man.”

“Humans are strange. Is there a creature that craves novelty more than a human? Or one more fearful of change? Is there another animal as fundamentally paradoxical as a human?”

“This month will be my second time celebrating Pride as an out transgender person and this time I want to see more than just a momentary gathering of little rainbows.”

“I didn’t know what it would be like to raise my children as a transgender woman, but I was pretty sure it would be awful.”