A Path Less Traveled

By Jenny Jae Cory

A Path Less Traveled is a thought-provoking true story that transitions beautifully between Jenny Jae Cory's personal journey and some of the larger societal issues that face the transgender community today. This book shares it all in the hopes of making a difference in what seems like a harsh and cruel world for transgender people. It is a very courageous account of someone trying to live an honest and true life, whatever the consequences.

The book follows Jenny, from a shy boy who didn't like to talk to an awkward teenager to a career in retail, a brief encounter with politics, and a destructive Facebook post. She takes one path after another, trying to find her true self and establish a good reputation, only to tear it all back down. Jenny realized that being transgender had the ability to destroy relationships with family, friends, career, and literally force her to rebuild a new life all over. She knew making so many hard decisions would change her life like never before, turn everything inside out, and nothing would ever be the same.

The one thing that remains the same is that Jenny is the same person on the inside that she has always been, the same person who spent twenty-six years with the same company, trying to make something of herself and keep the local Ben Franklin Store open in her hometown for generations to come. The same person who gave others a chance to prove themselves, even hiring a convicted felon once to give her a chance to turn her life around. Jenny is the same person who loved someone who would continue to hurt her over and over again, and the same person who even though her family thinks she doesn't love them, does with all her heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662480744

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A Path Less Traveled

Jenny Jae Cory

Copyright © 2022 Jenny Jae Cory

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

Covers by Katilia at Shutterstock

Edited by Jenny Cory

The opinions expressed in this book are solely the thoughts of those involved in its writing, and are in no way meant to replace a professional’s opinion or counsel.

ISBN 978-1-6624-8072-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8074-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

I dedicate this book to all my deceased grandparents who I wish I would have taken more time to spend with before their passing. The untold stories I never heard and the memories I never shared lost time forever. I’m thankful for the time I was able to spend with them, but they’re in my heart for all time. Harold Cory, June Cory, Ken Johnson, and Alice Johnson, I miss more than I can ever explain. I hope wherever you are, you have peace.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who has stood by my side while I transitioned into the person I am today. I’m not going to single anyone out as what most acknowledgements are supposed to do. Those of you have been there for me; you know who you are. My friends are few and far, but those who do take the time to be a part of my life, I thank you.

I’m most thankful for my family and the time I’ve spend with them throughout my life. At a time I took them for granted and wasn’t there for them as much as I should have; I regret that. I’m thankful I was able to move back to Towanda to be with three of my grandparents before they passed away. The years I’ve been back in Towanda, I’ve experienced more loss within my family than I can bear.

Life at times can be very difficult to deal with. I’ve found some peace over the past few months as I’ve started to get my life back on track. The most important thing a person needs is someone to be there for them, whether it’s friends, family, or a robot. Someone to share our feelings with, counsel us, and care for us. We all need somebody in our lives to give us meaning; this is why it’s so important to just be there for each other.

For me, loneliness is one of the greatest burdens a person can endure, but when we reach out to others who are struggling, we make a much stronger community when we are there for each other.

Lastly, I want to thank all of those who have transitioned before; it’s your courage who inspired me, giving me hope I could one day be the person I felt inside. It takes one person to forge a new path, giving others the opportunity to look to someone who have gone before them, knocking down barriers, and building bridges for others to cross.

Foreword

I think we all have our own amazing stories of the challenges and obstacles we’ve had to overcome to become the person we are. For me, my story is one of fear, self-loathing, and relationship failures—all while trying to find my way in my life’s journey. I’ve always worried about what people thought of how I looked and how I presented myself. I’m not sure when that started in life, but I know it’s been there as long as I can remember. From a shy boy, who didn’t like to talk, to an awkward teenager to a career in retail, a brief encounter with politics, and a destructive Facebook post. I’ve taken one path after another, trying to find myself and establish a good reputation—only to tear it all back down. This is my story in my words of dealing with the different directions my life has taken and coming out as transgender woman in rural Northeast Pennsylvania.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning, Back in 1975

Well, I just had to start with that, which is a nod to the rock band AC/DC. They had such a lasting impact on my life. If you know me, you know what AC/DC means to me.

So I was born on April 25, 1975, to Bonnie and Kevin Cory in the rural town of Sayre, Pennsylvania. I had a fun childhood, and I don’t think I would change anything from my years spent with my family. I grew up on Lanning Creek Road in Wysox, which is a very rural part of Bradford County. In my younger years, I was very lonely without living close to any other kids my age.

When I was about six or seven, I wanted someone to play with for I didn’t like being alone, something that would follow me throughout my life—the fear of being alone. So I made a sign that said, yard sale, and put it down at the end of our driveway. Yes, the long driveway that I had to trek up and down to get to the school bus every weekday of the school year. I planted my sign down at the bottom and hoped that some mom or dad would show up with a few kids in their car for me to play with. Needless to say, that scheme fell apart after the first car showed up, and there wasn’t anything to buy along with the trouble I was in for placing the sign there in the first place. Regardless, I longed for someone to play with, being isolated on a long winding road snaking its way up through the hills of trees and corn fields.

I came from a very humble background and my parents worked very hard at providing for their family, which grew by one more in 1980 when my baby brother showed up August 1; but the age difference of five years didn’t allow us to connect, and our different personalities became hurdles for us to become close. The sad part is my brother and I never really connected, and to this day, our relationship isn’t a healthy one with both of us heading in much different directions as we became older.

My earliest memory that I can remember that I might be a bit different from other kids my age was when I was about five or six. I tried on an orange life jacket, and it made me feel very different than I had ever felt before. The experience was so powerful; I can remember the feeling to this day. It was the standard orange jacket where it fastened around your front, and for me, it gave me a feeling of having breasts, which I instantly felt awkward thinking the people in the room with me were looking at me funny. This is a feeling that would follow me well into my adult years with a feeling I never fully understood until much later in life. Remember, I grew up in a time without the internet and sources for information for me consisted of the library and an encyclopedia at my grandparent’s house. I ignored my experience along with my feelings, keeping them deep inside; something I’ve done with many urges throughout my life.

One life-changing event I endured was the time I was molested as a child by a teenager who was about seven years older than I was. I can’t remember my exact age, but I was about seven or eight at the time and was going through one of my many loneliness periods just wanting someone to play with. I remember walking down the road from my parents’ house to my grandparents’ house, who weren’t home at the time. My other grandparents from Monroeton took in two foster children, and one of them came up to my house in Wysox for something I can’t remember. I walked down the road, talking, trying to get him to play in the dirt pile near a pine tree in my yard with my matchbox cars. Once we walked down behind my grandparents’ house, he told me he would play if I would put my penis in his mouth and pee. Not knowing any better and just wanting someone to spend some time with playing in my dirt pile with my cars, I did as he requested. He didn’t end up keeping his end of the deal, and I never told anyone about this until I was in my late teens at a camp out with my friends. I told my friend, Rich, about it along with my brother, who had recently come out to my parents and was telling some of the issues he had growing up.

I was pretty shy in school, and I stayed away from sports or other activities requiring throwing of a ball and the constant drive to compete with the nagging fear of being ridiculed for underperforming. I felt like I had trouble connecting with other children in my grade unless they were female, and mostly at recess, I kept my distance from other boys, except for the few I could relate to. I was also a thinker and would try to come up with the most efficient way to complete tasks to make less work for me to do in the future.

One example was when I was about eight or nine, my job was to carry wood up onto the outer porch and stack it, making it easier to bring inside when the fireplace was running low. Well, that was my job every Saturday morning, which I didn’t do after school when homework had to be done and I was afraid of the dark. After missing the first hour of my cartoons on a Saturday morning, I started planning how I could stack all the wood on the porch, missing one Saturday’s worth of cartoons to give me the rest of the Saturdays free. I decided to take a Saturday morning and work all morning and carry up as much wood as I could, stacking a giant pile on the porch. By the time I was done, I had enough wood up there to last two months or almost half of the winter. There was so much wood, I got into trouble for not considering the weight nor how much room the wood took up on the porch. Regardless, the plan worked, giving me all my future Saturdays labor free.

Labor wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with coming from a very humble background whose family tree can be traced back to the Salem witch trials. My Grandfather Cory would tell me ghost stories when I was young about how he thought his grandmother was a witch; stories that would creep me out to where I couldn’t sleep at night and try to sneak into my parents’ bed. As my grandfather told it, his grandmother told him once not to go sledding for he would become badly injured. Needless to say, he ended up tangled in a barbwire fence, getting cut pretty up.

There were other stories he would tell me causing many restless nights trying to sleep, causing nightmares and many long nights not only for me but also for my parents. Not long after he passed away in 1999, my Grandmother Cory started tracing our Cory family tree back to the late 1600s. The first interesting fact she came across was our last name was misspelled on a birth certificate around the time of my great-grandparents, mistakenly dropping the E from Corey. Okay, so my name is now Cory without an E. I can live with that. But what came next was amazing to say the least. The farther she went back, the more she found, and this is the probably the most interesting part of my family tree—the Salem witch trials. She traced the Corey name back to Giles Corey and Martha Corey, who were accused of witchcraft. Giles was tortured for three days to make him confess of witchcraft, which he never admitted to.