About Grace Coventry
Hi! I’m Grace Coventry. To get the bio bits (as opposed to the tender bits) out of the way first, I am a transgender woman. I transitioned genders in 2017, at the age of 54.
I live in Baltimore, and I currently work as the Head of the IT Services Division for the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), in Baltimore, MD. STScI performs the science operations on behalf of NASA for the Hubble Space Telescope. We also perform both the science and mission operations (in other words, flying the damn thing around in space, a million miles from Earth), for the James Webb Space Telescope. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Yes, my employer is exactly that freaking cool.
Also a major win: this the first time in my decades-long and ethically doubtful career in IT that I have been brought on board as a professional Head. Wouldn’t you want to be a professional Head? I am still learning the ropes with respect to the requirements of professional Head-ness, but it’s already clear that I need to raise my game as it concerns hair care.
I am originally from Canada. This may explain why my lingerie drawer contains some warm but disturbingly unattractive undergarments.
I happen to be new at a lot of things recently. As mentioned above, one of them has been mercifully discarding the hideous loafers and belt buckles that the Other Gender often wears in favor of some rather tasteful sling backs and skirt suits. Really, does gender transition need a better rationale than that?
That’s not the only thing in my life that is rather recent and quite unexpected. In the last few years, I have begun to write personal essays. A lot of them. Many are in the comic voice you may detect in a number of the postings here, and others are more reflective. My objective is to become a published writer, and I am only beginning this journey.
Another interest that has developed in the past few years, since I joined STScI, has been amateur astronomy, and in particular astrophotography, both of individual objects in the sky, as well as landscapes featuring the Milky Way. These topics are explored in posts on the SpaceGrace page, including posts from my Instagram feed devoted to this subject.
Speaking of social media, I’m also starting to become active on a number of platforms. I now have accounts on Facebook, Medium, and Bluesky. If you’d like to connect with me professionally, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
So, that’s the 411 on yours truly. If you’d like to know more about moi, feel free to ask me a question using the Comments section below, or the form on the Contact page. Except maybe questions about my tender bits.
About GraceSpace
So, what exactly is this online temple to the glory that is me about, exactly? (The URL is gracecoventry.me. Does this somehow surprise you?)
I suppose the obvious answer is to say it’s about my take on a very wide range of subjects, as evidenced by the menu titles, but I imagine most bloggers would say the same. In the Writing section, I’ll share news about my progress to become a published author. I’m already girding my enticingly attired loins for that particular journey.
More generally, I think GraceSpace is about finding opportunities in our lives to live in joy, in whatever form that may take for each of us. Of course, I can only write from my own perspective.
There are lots of ways in which I am finding these experiences now in my life, as you can probably observe just by looking at the menu headings for postings. Your list undoubtedly looks different, but perhaps there is common ground in how we describe what joy feels like for each of us.
For myself, the greatest experience of living in joy began in 2017, when I chose to transition genders from male to female, and to finally live as who I have always been meant to be. This blog, or indeed any of my writing, would simply not have been possible until I discovered my authentic voice in this world.
Your journey may look very different, but I believe many of us are in transitions of one form or another in our lives to become our better and kinder selves, and there are often many joys to be found there. I hope you share some of yours as comments.