Full title: "Just Because My Husband's A Woman...: Marcy's side of the story". The book is a response to Marcy's wife book titled "Getting Back to Me: From girl to boy to woman in just fifty years" by Scottie Jeanette Madden.
When we think of storybook marriages, we often imagine two people whose love endures life’s challenges unshaken, wrapped in an aura of fairy-tale perfection. For over twenty years, that is exactly how friends and family saw Scottie and Marcy Madden. He was the husband Marcy had always dreamed of: passionate, romantic, spiritual, generous, funny, loving, and even skilled in the kitchen.
After three failed marriages, she had finally found her match, the partner who seemed to love her with the same intensity she loved him. But as with so many fairy tales, there was a twist.
One morning, Scott came out to Marcy as transgender. Her “perfect husband” revealed that he had always been a woman trapped in a man’s body. For Marcy, this revelation was not simply a fact about Scott, it was an earthquake that threatened to shatter the foundations of her identity, her marriage, and her sense of self. How do you continue to love when your entire framework of love has been upended? That is the question at the heart of Marcy Madden’s deeply moving memoir, Just Because My Husband’s a Woman…: Marcy’s Side of the Story.
The book functions as both a standalone account and a companion to her wife Scottie Jeanette Madden’s memoir, Getting Back to Me: From Girl to Boy to Woman in Just Fifty Years. Where Scottie’s book traces her lifelong journey of self-discovery, repression, and eventual transition, Marcy’s book offers the partner’s perspective: the shock, the grief, the struggle, and ultimately, the resilience required to stay in love with someone who is changing in front of you.
When I interviewed Scottie for The Heroines of My Life, I was struck by her storytelling philosophy. “I have always used the term storyteller,” she told me, describing how her mentor Gerhard taught her to push every medium, whether clay, gold, or film, toward its fullest expression. That same dedication to immersive storytelling shows up in her book.
Yet, as powerful as Scottie’s voice is, Just Because My Husband’s a Woman reminds us that every transition is not just one person’s story, it reverberates through the lives of those closest to them. Marcy’s memoir insists on that truth. It is her attempt to reclaim her own narrative in a story often told through the lens of the transitioning partner.
Marcy writes with sharp honesty about the moment her world turned upside down. Her husband’s coming out forced her to confront not only her partner’s gender but also her own assumptions about womanhood, sexuality, and marriage. Was she still a wife if her husband was now her wife too? Could she remain in love with someone who no longer fit the image she had cherished for decades?
As if these questions weren’t enough, Marcy was simultaneously battling ovarian cancer. Her book captures the excruciating emotional tension of facing two life-altering crises at once: the fear of losing her husband as she knew him, and the fear of losing her own life. What emerges is not despair but determination, a “dark night of the soul” navigated with intelligence, compassion, and wit.
What makes Just Because My Husband’s a Woman more than just a memoir of struggle is its ending. Marcy does not simply survive her ordeal, she emerges with a stronger, more authentic marriage than she ever thought possible. By confronting her fears and interrogating her own assumptions, she learns that love is not limited by gender. Instead, love is tested, stretched, and ultimately deepened by honesty and courage. In this way, Marcy’s story complements Scottie’s. Together, their books form a duet: one voice telling the story of becoming, the other telling the story of staying. Both accounts are necessary, and both affirm the same lesson, that love, when rooted in truth, can endure even the most seismic transformations.
Scottie and Marcy have spoken publicly at universities, town halls, and community events, often engaging audiences with their “binary game” that exposes the arbitrary gendered messages we all grew up with. Their willingness to share, to laugh, and to challenge assumptions reflects the very spirit of Marcy’s book. When I asked Scottie in our conversation about the broader landscape of trans storytelling in Hollywood, she lamented that trans people are still often relegated to supporting roles. But in life, as in literature, Scottie and Marcy prove that trans stories, and the stories of those who love trans people, are not side plots. They are central narratives of resilience, humanity, and love.
Just Because My Husband’s a Woman is not just a memoir about one couple. It is a mirror held up to every relationship that has been tested by change. It is for partners who feel left behind, for spouses who wonder if love can survive transition, and for anyone who has ever faced a seismic shift in the foundations of their life. Marcy’s account is raw, vulnerable, and ultimately uplifting. It proves that even when identities change, even when love feels threatened, the bonds forged through decades of devotion can not only survive, they can flourish.
When Scottie told me, “I had resigned myself to running out the clock on my life, be the best dude I could, and earn my true womanhood in the next lifetime,” it broke my heart. Her courage in finally choosing authenticity is remarkable. But Marcy’s courage in choosing to stay, choosing to walk through fear, illness, and uncertainty into a new kind of marriage, is equally remarkable. Together, their books remind us that love is not static. It evolves. It demands patience, forgiveness, and sometimes reinvention. And when it survives, as it did for Scottie and Marcy, it becomes something even more powerful than the fairy tale: it becomes real.
Available via Amazon
Other related sources:
Post a Comment