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I think we need to clarify a point here though - being trans does not mean that one was "born" a different gender. I was not born a male, I was born a female with some wrong parts. There are differences of opinion on that fact, but I think it's generally safer not to suggest that trans people were born one gender and "changed" into another.

Over 20,000 views of my site. This count is mind boggling. Maybe I can be a good influence to those I impact. Dawn Added - this is all me - wearing a sports bra and a nice running outfit - Showing two early photos to now - Can anyone see why I might be first seen as a woman now? This photo represents the best of how I feel and look today. I have changed quite a bit since I joined this site. Lost weight, longer hair, pierced ears, some breast growth, smooth small and shapely muscles, beard gone. I have reshaped and modified myself as much as I could with out going through extensive surgeries. Now much more feminine in body I am and much more aware of my being transgender. I love it when I look and feel like a woman. This is where I am and I think this is where I will remain. I expect I will take a few more steps toward physical and inward beauty. (Ask me) Thanks to all of you who have positively critiqued my photos,logs and blogs. I love and respect to all of you - Dawn

When I say it is all me - I mean the breast and hair growth is real. I am wearing a shaping sports bra with normal padding. So neat as I do not have to wear breast forms any more. Dawn

I've been gone a long time, I'm sorry! Got ​really sick, found multiple causes, and started addressing them. One of them was our diet, and Nikki and I are living on the DASH diet as best we are able to right now. It's hard when you are staying at someone else's house (our repairs and slave labor to the house should be done tomorrow, and it should be listed within the week. That took FOREVER!). It helps that Nikki really loves my cooking, and has been visibly on the same page with me when my mom started trying to sabotage our efforts to get healthier. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's been a struggle while we're staying here. I can't sell that house and buy a new one fast enough. My mom needs me to stay sick and not be able to improve my health and life so that she can keep telling everyone that all her weight and diet induced illnesses arent' her fault. And when I started getting better, so started the pressure to each junk food and salty things again. I resisted though, and Nikki has been great backing me up. It's kind of empowering to realize that I don't have to turn into my mother, that I CAN be successful after all without bariatric surgery (which I was ready to sign on for, but my insurance doesn't cover, and neither did my savings account!) and hopefully will continue to succeed going forward. (If you have hypertension issues, and want to address them without medication in a real not-creepy-anti-science food culty way, I can't recommend DASH For DUmmies enough. It explains how the science works, the research that went into it, how to shop, set up your kitchen, and a variety of starter recipes). I'm still taking my meds, but doctor thinks she's going to take them off once we're back in our own home and the stress of dealing with my mom is removed. I'm a bit stressed out. Nikki has been really great working on the prior issue I wrote here about about not backing me up and being on my page. I can't say enough how awesome he's been about it! I'm not sure I would have been able to deal with the last four months of illness and mom crazy if I still felt all alone like I did back then. I think I'm flirting with depression, and maybe had slipped quietly all the way in for a while when I really sick, but the dash changes having improved how I feel dramatically on a day to day basis is helping me climb out of it. ​So we have our eye on a house if ours sells and no one else snatches it up, but if they do, there'll be other houses. ​I'm sorta stuck on a fireplace, so I did my due diligent Bree researches how to safely own and operate a fireplace. I have learned a great deal about wood, chimneys, laying out the wood for a fire, storage, how to tell a good wood supplier and chimney cleaning profressional from a bad one, and I'm ready to spend a snowy winter's evening cuddling on the cough with Nikki making Smores! I'm ready, so Nikki said okay, we'll prioritize a fireplace. WOOHOO! Aside from my health, Dash has propelled me thirty pounds lighter and I fit in clothes I haven't worn in years! Nikki too, but for once I lost more because Nikki cheats at work and lunches at fast food. I got to see his office environment, and if my last job had been that nice and calm I would still be working! But I like my housewife life. And ​I spend a great deal of it working on increasing our variety of food and compliance with Dash. Salt is the enemy! I was the average American, and WAY overdosing on the stuff. It just never percolated how dangerous it can be in those amounts for me before. Life goes in waves like the tide. But I came out of this down cycle with a long term plan to address my physical issues, and several new coping mechanisms for emotional ones, and I can finally see that at some point there will be an end to this weird "I have a roof, but I feel homeless" limbo. We basically have a bed in a tiny room, and a corner in the sunroom where the laundry is, and that is our entire plot of "our space" here. It will be lovely to move back into our own place! Sell quick little house. I will really miss you, but gotta go. And supposedly one glass of wine a day is good for your heart too. So...bought a cheap bottle of red and I'm going to try to overcome my aversion to alcohol like I did my aversion to broccoli, pepper, and cauliflower in the last few weeks. It promises to taste like a cherry cupcake. I somehow disbelieve. I'm done rambling now. Tell me about any adventures I missed while I was gone!

Hello TransFormation... and welcome to TG Guide. I'm usually pretty bad about welcoming new members - thank god the women around here take up the slack in that department. But on occasion, a new member will come in with something that reels me in. This is a very open and welcoming board - mind you, it is not restricted to only those who are transgender or intersex. Instead, we fly just about every flag imaginable - including the flags that cisgender and gay people walk under. We include family, friend, ally and on occasion have even tolerated foe if it meant exposing truth, or trying to share enlightenment. There has even been one member who was not trans, whom we later decided was simply using this board as a testing ground for a novel or something. All that said, I have to admit that I don't always read blog entries either. Once again, I must be humbly and ever so grateful for some of the insatiable readers that roam these halls. A person has to come up with a pretty catchy blog title for me to put on the brakes and stop in for a while and check things out. I hope you take no offense as none is intended, but your username and Jackie Gleason-like proclamation caught my eye. Now to the meat of my introduction: 1. About half your entry is all about making sure we know you will give up no details about the woman of whom you speak. I commend you on your respect to her status as trans. I hope you will soon come to learn that respecting one's identity is the number one rule among trans and [and usually] among gay people. We do not out anyone, and those who do become a kind of pariah. What one chooses to share with us is wholey up to the individual. We, of all people, on such a site, need no such castigation. 2. Perhaps in time you will learn that it's really not necessary to announce your sexual preference/orientation. Before reading, "I am heterosexual," I had already assumed as much. As a rule, the only people who assume they will be perceived as gay are those who harbour homophobic tendancies, and/or do not believe/respect 100% that a trans woman is a woman, or that a trans man is a man. 3. In that despite your privileged status as a straight, white man, you apparently ARE subjected to some degree of unacceptance - a Frenchman who is percieved to have turned his back on his people, his culture, his heritage in being English-educated. Magnify whatever slights you have noted by 1,000 times, and you will then understand the great degree of unacceptance we endure 24/7/365. I believe if you endured that level of unacceptance, your blog entry would no doubt have a very different tone. Or at least reason for existence. 4. You are either clairvoyant or highly presumptuous in stating that no one here has ever heard of your books let alone read them, or never seen your blog. I wonder why you believe this. Do you believe trans people to be less intelligent? Perhaps we cannot afford your books? Have you determined what we are or are not interested in? 5. I'm not a woman....and I can't help but think I have an idea why she left you - the writing is, on the wall so-to-speak. Just above, in your blog entry. The answers are all there the way I see it. My apologies in advance if I am being presumptuous. Or wrong. I've been known to find my own foot in my own mouth. 6. Or are you another come here looking for more fodder to fuel the writing juices? After all, you do so bluntly comment how low readership is on this board. Makes me wonder why you are REALLY here... -Mike