Now That I'm A Man, What Do I Do With This Painting Of Me As A Bride?

On the outside, I was a 19-year-old girl entering my first marriage under the Mormon Church. Inside, I was struggling with gender dysphoria. How have you handled your memorabilia that no longer fits?

Hello lovely people! Happiest Saturday to you!

Can I just take a moment to heap praise upon Corynne, one of my major partners in crime here on AJPT? You couldn’t pay someone to care as much as she does, which is as much as I do, about every detail on this site, which is good because she doesn’t get paid (just kidding -barely).

This business is at an interesting stage because everything we take in from you generous and wonderful paid subscribers goes right back into paying those of you who write here. So it is a nice little self-sustaining literary ecosystem. But no one is getting rich off of it - YET (AJPT is happily on track to follow my past start-up ventures in a way that should benefit all of us, including you - from not only your article fees, but the screenplays that will be optioned and the book deals you will secure and the products you will be heaped money on to endorse, also not forgetting your billboard modeling work, album sales, sold-out ticket revenue, OnlyFans, Substacks, etc etc etc).

So be extra nice when Corynne is helping you get the elements together for a piece you are writing. Readers can also thank her in the comments as much as you thank me. (You can shit on me as much as you want, actually - I have been doing this for 35 years and I appreciate and use all feedback and it doesn’t bother me. Except when it does and then I tell you and it always works out.)

This probably makes you think that something happened with Corynne just now to spark me to write this, but it didn’t. She is just on my mind because it is a Saturday and she has two young kids (and a husband, but I would not know what it is to deal with one of those) and yet she took the time and built this beautiful post for you to read. So let’s all appreciate her - and our regular (but not regular) writer Will, of course.

I love you all just as much.

Jane

This is the original bridal photo my mother-in-law commissioned to have painted. It was taken in Thanksgiving Point, Utah in the Spring of 1999.

By Will Cole

Wrapped up in a flattened box, hidden behind my home office door, is a commissioned painting of me as a 19-year-old bride from my first marriage. Owning a painting of myself feels posh and a bit egotistical. That’s only part of why I’ve never hung it up in the 21 years I’ve had it.

Another part of it is that as soon as he saw it, my (ex)husband said, “Oh, we are not hanging that up.” I'm not entirely sure why. I think it was his insecurity ...but he also was just a jerk.

In lieu of displaying it in my home, I’ve moved it from the basement to a storage unit to a closet. I’ve also tried to find the artist in case she’d take it back, but I only have a first name and maybe the first letter of her last name?

What do divorced people do with their marriage artifacts? What do people do with relics of a complicated past?

It feels complicated to me for several reasons. One, the painting’s origins via my former mother-in-law, Becky. After some initial daughter-in-law/mother-in-law awkwardness (most of it because my brain hadn’t fully developed), I had a fantastic relationship with Becky.

She would often call me during her long commutes; we’d chat for hours. As a grandma to my son and his cousins, she was unbeatable—hosting sleepovers, filling their bookshelves (she was an English teacher), asking for their “help” baking and in the flower bed. She and I were especially close in her final few years before cancer claimed her. Thankfully, my son has nothing but fond memories of her in the seven years he knew her.

She’s been gone longer than I'd known her. The painting below is the last thing I own from her.