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i remember when i first realized that i wasn't like my brothers, that i was like my sisters. it seemed like a delicious secret but .it didn't take too long for that delcious secret to become a nightmare. By age 5 i prayed that God would make me a girl (i still do). From age 8 until i was18 i dressed in my sister's clothes daily. It always felt soo right to be wearing girl clothes and always i felt calm, the only time in my days when i did feel calm. Until was 11 i thought that i was the only one like me. At age 11 I read about Jan Morris and for the first time i thought that maybe i wasn't alone. When i turned 18 the impossibility of being me was overwhelming, everyday all day i would see other girls and ladies and feel the pain of not being able to be openly like them. i became angry at being trans and even hating me being me. In the next years i ran from me fell in love, got married had 4 children earned 2 degrees all the while hating the best part of me and always when i would pause i would feel the same pain of not being me only every day every year the pain grew worse, it still does. For those of you who are young and hesitating to transition please do whatever it takes to transition. You can run from being trans but it won'ty go away. YOU CAN"T RUN FROM THE BEST PART OF YOURSELF no matter how hard you run or how faryou run. Please don't be cowardly like me and find yourself at 59 years of age hurting soo badly because you need to be the woman you were born to be. May we all love the person we are and be willing to do what it takes to be true to ourselves everyday of our lives. i fear that for me it probably is too late but there are some wonderful things that have happened to me. My maternal instinct makes me an outstanding special educator and i now have grown to love the girl i am. To any who might be reading this, please know that you and i are friends whom i haven't met yet. i will love you forever.

Hi all, So I wanted to throw this out for discussion - I've been thinking recently about the term "transition" as it relates to the trans community. For starters, I hope nothing that I say here will suggest that I think everyone needs to use the same terminology, particularly for their own experience and journey - it's our story, it's our terminology! But in a broader perspective, I have some concerns about the term "transition." Transition is defined as "the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another." Put simply, my fear of it's general use, with respect to trans-identified people, is that it perpetuates the narrative of being born X and "transitioning" to Y. In my view, I was NOT a man who transitioned to a woman, I was born a woman with some wrong parts. My "transition" therefore was essentially a medical correction along with a change in my personal presentation. And of course that does reflect a transition, so the word works. The problem is that there is an entrenched history of believing that we were born one gender and changed to the other - and I think that the term transition is linked to that narrative. Perhaps it's time to look for a new word, or stop using the word entirely? I think back over my process and wonder if I could have gone without it - in what circumstances did I need the word? For people who knew, I could say that yes, I'm getting some medical support to correct some things, and I'm working towards living my authentic self. The "trigger" in this case was discovering that my field placement location uses the initials "CGHT" (cross-gender hormone therapy) for HRT that is being prescribed to trans-identified clients. I'm working on that issue, but I realized the big problem I had with it is that it reaffirms that same narrative with staff who see and use that terminology - I DO NOT take "cross-gender" hormones. I am by no means sold on all of this, it's a thought I've been having and wanted to share and see what others in the community think xoxo Chrissy