What a question…right? All of us most certainly have a different but yet oddly similar answer to the question. Along the way here on the blog we have created quite the niche with transgender women who have decided to complete their gender transition later in life. A commitment such as that requires quite the sacrifice. Often we have to give up long time family ties losing beloved former friends and family who refuse to accept our new authentic selves.
Photo from the
Jessie Hart Archives
Along the way, we had to learn our own ways what it meant to enter a new and very foreign feminine world. I know in my case, often the whole process was terrifying. It occurred to me I was giving up years and years of effort to be a person I never really wanted to be. I know none of that sounds different than the path you followed. Other examples include time in the military and the time and effort you had to put in to grow up fast as your transgender self. After all, we didn’t have the benefit of a mother, sister or peer group to aid in shaping our new world. For me it was very difficult to learn I would never be able to recapture a past as a girl I never had. As I write many times, I was guilty of trying to dress as a teenaged girl stuffed into an oversized male body still loaded with testosterone.
By living my mistakes I learned how to become my unique form of transgender woman. More than likely many of you did also. Many of us are fortunate to have been shaped by the cis women around us. For each disapproving…
