Kathleen and Tricia Russell reminisce on more than 30 years of marriage.
Kathleen Russell keeps a photo of the man she married on her desk at work.
Katie, as she is known to friends, is pictured in the 2008 image with her vibrant red hair cut close to her round face and friendly blue eyes. Embracing her is a cleanly shaven, blue-eyed man. He rests his right cheek gently against her hair.
Naturally, time has taken a toll. Their hairstyles have evolved and her makeup is different. Both faces show a few more wrinkles.
Yet the smiling faces forever etched in that photo were largely the same — at least until July 23, a defining moment in their marriage.
Katie’s spouse, Tricia, traveled to Boston for six hours of elective plastic surgery that day: a forehead reduction, tracheal shave, hairline advancement, brow-lift, jaw contour and cheek implants.
Tricia Russell, 58, came out as a transgender woman in 2012, and every change during her transition tested her marriage to Katie. The cosmetic surgery meant she finally would shed the last physical clue of her appearance as male.
The day after Tricia’s surgery, Katie sat at her desk at work. The 54-year-old nurse practitioner stared at the photo and began to weep.
The couple’s 34 years of marriage were marked by the ever-changing dynamics they always tackled together. Now, feeling abandoned, to whom could Katie turn?
“The person that I would most talk to about my distress is the one causing my distress,” she said, her voice shaky before she paused to regain her composure. “It’s just one of those surprises in life. You don’t expect stuff to happen as it does.”
Just a week before, Katie had spoken affectionately of their past, especially when remembering the sweetest moments. She smiled as she recalled how they met.
Katie was a freshman, working in the library at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, when the person she would marry three years later walked into her life.
“There was this one person that kept coming to the desk and asking for things, bringing them back, asking for things, bringing them back; it was a little annoying because I would hope that I would get some homework done.
“That was him — her. Sorry,” she said softly as she quickly realized her gaffe.
Katie then reached to lightly touch Tricia’s shoulder.
“We’re still working on pronouns,” Katie said.
After introducing two daughters into the world, the Russells’ relationship morphed and grew with a move to Jacksonville, the addition of two sons, the care of Katie’s ailing father and the sale of their home as the nation’s housing bubble burst.
Then came the announcement that Tricia, once a father and husband, no longer would live as a man.
For Katie, Tricia’s coming out was more than a personal decision. She said it has placed a strain on her marriage, and she constantly worries about their four grown children.
“There’s been a lot of grief and loss. It’s like their dad has died and nobody knows it,” she said. “Nobody knows that my husband has died or that their dad has died. You’re grieving silently.”
All of Katie’s feelings — sadness, despair, love and confusion — are quite normal, said licensed local mental health counselor Kristie Overstreet, who often works with the transgender community. “That’s very common for partners to go through this to feel that. It’s definitely not an all-or-nothing [and those] same type of feelings can happen with family members,” she said.
As transgender individuals gain visibility and acceptance, one of Katie’s abiding concerns has been the lack of support for transgender parents’ families. She believes that she and her children are caught in the shadows.
NOTHING ABOUT HER HAS CHANGED
A week before the operation, Tricia and Katie walked to the pier once more at Marywood Retreat Center in Jacksonville.
They sat next to one another on a bench facing west. Golden light danced across their faces as the sun set in the distance. Years ago, they brought their children to this same spot.
Tricia’s slightly graying hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She is wearing mascara, pink lips, a red pendant necklace and floral pants.
“I don’t feel any differently about Katie than I ever did,” Tricia said. “I love her with all my heart. I don’t ever want to be away from her. I love to be with her. I’d love to be with her always, but she didn’t change. Nothing about her has changed.”
Katie smiled, then said, “I’m a little chunkier.”
Tricia said the first time she saw Katie was in a study room and not the school library as Katie recalled.
“So how would I have even known to go into the library and ask repeatedly for items I wasn’t even going to use?” Tricia asked, glancing at Katie sheepishly. “Because Kalamazoo College published a little booklet of every freshman class — and it had pictures — I was flipping through it the year she was a freshman. I saw her picture and I thought she was really beautiful.”
That face stuck with Tricia and kept popping up in unexpected places in 1978, and Tricia schemed for a few stolen moments with her crush.
Tricia’s purposeful pursuit slowly waned, only because Katie was falling in love.
“And then we were almost inseparable because, like, we’ve always been friends first. We were always good friends. We like to do a lot of things together, enjoy each other’s company. That’s the way it’s always been,” Katie said.
When the two met, Katie’s last name was Cooke. Tricia was a junior, whom everyone knew as Patrick Russell.
On Aug. 21, 1981, Katie and Patrick were married just outside Detroit in Katie’s childhood church. The couple remembers the day as a hot but joyful one with 21-year-old Katie dressed in a long white gown. The fabric was too hot for late August, but the dress still was a success since the bride had finished sewing it just the night before.
“You looked beautiful,” Tricia told Katie.
TRICIA FACES HERSELF
“Beautiful” is a word Tricia used frequently to describe Katie, but rarely was it used to describe her. Perhaps the facial-feminization surgery would change that.
The cost of surgery was covered through a self-funded health care plan that made paying for it simple. But Tricia’s decision to go through with it was difficult. Tricia knew it would break her wife’s heart, but what about her own suffering?
At Boston Medical Center, Tricia rested in a hospital bed with her eyes swollen shut, voice muted and in pain. Her head was wrapped in bandages that crossed her forehead and ran the length of her face. A few days later, she would move to a hotel room, still only able to eat through a tube. She hoped the swelling would recede soon to allow her to open her eyes.
The pain only would intensify.
When Tricia met with her surgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, for a postoperative consultation, she managed to smile at her reflection.
“[Her] problem is not knowing who she is,” Spiegel said before the surgery. He works with all types of patients, including transgender women. “The problem a trans woman has is that other people who see her don’t know that.”
Michelle Russell Miller, Tricia’s younger sister, snapped a photo as her sibling gripped a small handheld mirror,
“I’m so happy for her,” Michelle said by phone. “It’s not going to change her life as much as she thinks, but it will be an authentic projection of what she feels like.”
Michelle was playing caretaker for Tricia during her week in Boston. Out of the six Russell children, Michelle and Tricia grew up the closest. Michelle remembered when their father chastised Tricia for wearing long hair and nails.
“Around adolescence, she just withdrew from the world,” Michelle said of Tricia. “I never understood it, and I don’t think she could discuss it because it wasn’t mainstream then. My father and my mother both knew something was very different. My father thought that [with] being hard on Pat, something would change.”
It never did. Michelle said she felt as if she had gained a sister in 2012; she called her Trish, short for Tricia.
“For 50 years, Trish was my brother. I always knew that there was unhappiness there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. [Tricia] didn’t discuss it with family members until about three years ago. Then everything made sense,” Michelle said.
THE RECKONING
Tricia still needed several weeks to heal from the procedures, but it was time to say her thank yous and goodbyes and return to Jacksonville.
It was time to face Katie.
Could this really be considered a reunion? Katie said she didn’t know if she would recognize Tricia.
“It may be an ending,” Katie had said days before Tricia’s return.
She had loved the face of the annoying junior from Kalamazoo College; that love had grown with time. Katie said she continued loving that face even when Tricia began wearing makeup. That face was the last physical reminder of her husband.
Katie knew Patrick never would return. Tricia was here to stay.
“I was always Tricia,” Tricia said.
As a child, Tricia used to pretend to be sick to be alone. She needed “me time.” It was risky, though.
It wasn’t safe to reveal that her “me time” was needed for her to express her true self — the person the world now knows as Tricia, a name she derived from Patricia, which was a variation of her birth name.
“My family and everything around me was telling me I was a bad person, that I was a freak, that I was sick, disgusting,” Tricia recalled.
Her “me time” would continue into adulthood and into marriage.
THE FIRST TIME
Very little had prepared Katie for parenthood. Her body had changed after she had given birth, and she was always felt tired. But at least she had the support of her husband Pat. One night after nursing their son, Katie slipped downstairs to ask Patrick to come to bed.
And there was Tricia.
Katie, as Tricia recalled, was devastated.
“I was nauseated. I was crying. I was shocked. I think I was hyperventilating,” Katie said.
“I felt very trapped because I didn’t know what to do. He was wearing one of my club dresses. I couldn’t fit in it anymore because I had just had a baby. I’ll never forget that because when I went to work I couldn’t tell anybody,” Katie said
“She was going to leave,” Tricia said.
But she didn’t.
“I didn’t tell my wife because I believed I was going to shake this out my system,” Tricia said.
There would be no more dressing like a woman, Tricia told herself again and again. She once tried to quit cold turkey, using a secret calendar to mark the days that passed without her “me time.”
That lasted two weeks.
Every few years, Katie would find Tricia, who each time would convince Katie to believe something other than what Tricia knew to be her truth.
“I spent half a century trying to convince myself I wasn’t transgender,” Tricia said. “I don’t want to be someone different. I just want to be me.”
Before Tricia left for Boston, Katie said she was grateful to reminisce on the pier.
“It’s hard, though, because this was something that I wasn’t really aware of over all this time,” Katie said. “So we were married with my understanding of what my marriage would be,” Katie said.
But Katie’s reality is that she is not homosexual and her spouse is a transgender woman.
Katie believes she and Tricia will be intertwined for eternity, but dreams of a future with her beloved husband have died.
“I understand now. What I do hope is that because we are parents we will continue to co-parent our family and that we will remain close and still be soul mates and we’ll just see what happens. That’s all I can …”
Katie sighed, never finishing her sentence.
Tricia picked up where Katie left off.
“That’s all I can ask for. I can’t have expectations. I love her with all my heart as I always have. But I’m not a dumb person. I’m a pretty smart person. I get that I have completely upset the apple cart. And I can’t have any expectations,” Tricia said as her voice grew weak.
“I haven’t been very good at it, but I’ve always wanted her to be …” The word ‘happy’ is inaudible, but Tricia mouthed it out.
Tricia leaned forward, trembling as she dropped her face into her hands and began to sob.
“She deserves to be happy,” Tricia whispered. “I always wanted to be the person to make her happy, but I get that everything has changed. And I still want her to be happy.”
Katie glanced at Tricia then stared into the distance.
The sun occasionally darted from behind the clouds and cast golden light onto the women’s solemn faces.
LOVE IS THE EASY PART
Before Tricia’s homecoming, Katie put down a month of rent for an apartment on the beach. She told herself she needed her own space to relax.
A week later, there was Tricia, still in pain after surgery, at the beach apartment, and Katie was feeding her soup. Katie said she couldn’t leave Tricia alone. She knew there was much to discuss, but Tricia still couldn’t really speak.
“The surgery left me far more weakened, in pain and with physical dysfunctions that I ever imagined possible,” Tricia wrote via text message Aug. 8. “All my focus and energy right now are going into just getting better.”
Tricia said the uncertain future of her marriage was a burden that weighed heavily on her. She had lost 20 pounds after her surgery, and then she landed in the emergency room twice for paralysis to her vocal cord.
With the couple’s 34th wedding anniversary Friday, hardly anything has been settled.
Overstreet, the licensed therapist, said quite often there cannot be quick resolutions for couples dealing with a spouse’s transition.
“For a lot of people, this issue has nothing to do with love,” Overstreet said. “Love’s the easy part. Love’s there all day. It’s ‘if we are going to be able to work through this and continue to connect the way we want, or not.’ ”
Katie and Tricia still have navigating to do within their marriage. Together they will map out whether they will continue to live as spouses.
“When you love someone, you give your life for them. The soul that is there needs to be taken care of and I’m not going to try to do anything that’s going to cause him distress,” Katie said, perhaps unaware of another slip of the tongue.
This story can also be read at jacksonville.com.
Chloe Herring 