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I continue to grow as a person. I have been dealing with issues my whole life. Now that I am accepting myself as who I am meant to be I find it more freeing. I am wearing more of my bras and pretty much all female outfits in public now. My breasts are sore and my nipples hurt those have been for a while now. And I haven't even taken anything to create that at all. I guess I am a lucky one. Having an overactive pituitary gland has forced my hand and forced me to accept myself. Having a higher than normal estrogen level and lower testosterone levels. My hair is softer and my body hair is growing slower. I have been exfoliating with tea tree and mint body wash and a body buffer. My skin is so soft. I am finding that I am more caring than ever. But on the down side I am over emotional sometimes. I take offense to little things that shouldn't matter. I even bought some new panties yesterday and the woman in the checkout isle said nothing about it at all. It was no big deal. I even when I was looking at some in the lingerie dept a woman who worked in the dept. Asked if I needed any help. I said I am not sure. She said if you do let me know sweetie. If you need help finding your size or anything. That made me feel really good. It's nice when you have a good experience out. Tomorrow I have a Dr appt. For refills on my back scripts but I am also gonna ask her about my gender Dysphoria. And see what happens from there. I am gonna ask if she knows of a local therapist or anything. Idk if my ins. Covers med for transitions or not. But T blockers would help I think with my Dysphoria more. There are still so many things I look at in the mirror and go darn I look way to manly I hate it. I just want to be able to be myself and really be comfortable in my own skin. I am getting there it is gonna take a while. For almost 39 years I have gone between self loathing and hatred of my body and periods of time where I liked myself. Somewhat and then back to depression and anxiety over being not who I am. I have already lost most of my friends But whatever. Maybe I can make new ones. Idk only time will tell. Thanks to everyone on here for being so friendly and accepting and loving. And there is a support group that meets 2 a month here. But only one I can attend because of work. So I may go this month and see what that's all about. This site has saved me and I am so happy to have met you all. Thanks again

Today I was thinking about the real life experience (12 months test) that a person is required by the WPATH guidelines and how I seemingly did extremely well over 12+ months and believe this is partly from having studying female mannerisms, realizing from many observations how female and male anatomies are different yet with the right preparation from watching cisgender females a cisgender male can compensate for what surgery can't give you which is the natural movements of a cisgender female and the lack of hips and longer legs. Granted that some of us have longer legs and have a more female curve but many don't. Watch a cross-dresser solely dressing for sexual gratification and we will see them wearing pencil style skirts while a male-to-female that has studied cisgender females may more often wear a skirt that flares out slightly to balance out broad shoulders. Sticking with hips and broad shoulders we can compensate by wearing high waisted jeans. I believe that no matter how well one does compensates with clothing a true telltale sign to others is when a beautiful woman walks down the street like a man, then questions begin to circle through their heads, is that a man or a woman? The aim of studying female movement is so that you can come to possess it for yourself, so that is not copying what women do, but rather making it part of your natural being, as it is for other women. One thing that is seen between males and females when walking is men's feet generally are outward while female's feet are more inward. Take note of this when out in public and I am sure you will see this too. There are natural reasons for this that men do not possess yet one can mimic by imagining that you are walking along a line, but try to curve your feet into that line as you go, rather than letting them move parallel to the line. This should produce a slight, but natural-looking jiggle, that should help you to achieve an acceptably feminine gait. Thinking of walking, how about sitting, where are your leg's, spread apart as a typical male or knees close together or touching. Are you sitting forward or backwards, where are your hands and when talking are you talking with your hands? You simply don't practice and do but practice, practice, practice and evaluate until it becomes natural and the key here is to constantly evaluate one's self.

This is a game changer for life so the answer to pursue hormone replacement treatment should not be sought after until you have taken the time to place yourself into isolation many times and come out with "this is right for me" The following may not be suited for everyone and even so might possible change your opinion of me but I am coming from a very different place here So while teaching a group of people mixes included everyday people and military I posed the question; in front of you is a child with their hand reaching for the trigger of a IED, do you pause or take the shoot? I then stand there and say nothing which (try it sometime, ask a question where you know that nobody wants to answer and then just stand there, they are forced to respond) Bottom line, in this situation hesitation means you are dead. Like the question above indecision with hormones can very well destroy your life either mentally or physically or both. If you jump the gun without placing yourself into isolation and be truthful with yourself, back to mental/physical damage. What is isolation? Example, you walk deep into a forest, sit down and completely clear your mind of everything then focus on solely on you and hormones. If after this you decide to move forward go home, walk up to a mirror and clear your mind, look at yourself in the mirror and be truthful, ask yourself "Is HRT right for me", there should be zero hesitation. If you said yes this is right for me continue with life but mark your calendar to do the mirror thing again at least 10 times and if there is zero hesitation seek medical assistance to get treatment. My path My path did not involve the forest and not everyone can use a forest, you might drive to a secluded place and do the same thing. I would find my place that worked and would ask myself the question which was over at least one year's time. I then made an appointment with a doctor for getting on HRT. We sat down together and discussed how I came to my decision which included telling her I had seen a therapist who approved me for HRT (in later years he included me in a book he wrote that devoted a chapter on me). I told the doctor I had the letter with me if she would like to see it. She placed her hand on my knee and said "dear, I see it in your eyes that you are indeed a candidate for HRT and all I need is blood work from you". She said an assistant would be in to take my blood and make a copy of the letter (she never read it). Two days later I was called asking where should they send the prescription to? A point from the above, during the doctor consultation I believe she saw in my face and eyes from my explanations that there was zero doubt in me to move forward with HRT. I have been using her now for two years and learned that she is not so easy with others. I know of two others who were down right denied HRT until they could produced therapist letters. Conclusion As mentioned above, you must have zero doubt in your mind before making an appointment with a doctor to move forward with HRT. Don't listen to stories that say you an stop before six months and revert back to pre-hormone treatment as this is a strong indicator that those people were not ready and may never be ready for hormone replacement treatment. BE TRUE TO YOURSELF, ZERO HESITATION

I at no time in my life contemplated suicide which I have learned recently through more than one source (on example came from a video I mention here) that 41 percent of people going under the knife will attempt suicide. Never would I had thought that there were many who actually regretted going under the knife as told in this web site. I would think that one reason for this is that a person with regret may very well had a ill equipped therapist that was not qualified to access transgender (or maybe they are not transgender at all) to be a candidate for gender reassignment surgery. Perhaps another reason might be that the person seeking gender reassignment surgery was able to fool a therapist into a diagnosing them as suitable candidates for gender reassignment surgery. Thinking about it I can see that it would be easy to get away with fooling a therapist but wonder what those people think will happen by doing this? When I made the commitment to change gender I first spent time sitting alone questioning myself, self-evaluating myself to no end until I thought back that there were no in decisions, it was not about having sex as a female and knew full well this could very well be an journey that might spiral out of control with no return ticket to reverse the process. As stated in the letter of consent just prior to surgery the signature I penned says this is irreversible, no going back. For me, this was the green light I was looking for while others who realize after the fact they must of had blinders on. Was there do diligence done as I did? Bottom line is gender reassignment surgery is not for everyone even though some go to bed at night wishing they would wake up in the gender they believe they should had been at birth but were denied. There is a reason why there are classifications such as in the image below that a truly qualified therapist will classify a client in and not just mark them all as a true transsexual. You would think that after spending one year in the gender you think you should be that with every day that passes you would know if you can make it in that gender. One has that entire year to forge forward or retreat back to whence they came from a birth. At the very least, sit down in a quiet place as I did and be true to yourself and afterwards take the test and if you land in in a category that says you are a true transsexual find a therapist that has experience with working with transgender people. Most likely you will then begin hormones prior to the therapist recommendation which is yet another check-point to move forward or backwards. Once the therapist approves you we are at the another point of decision, move forward or move backwards and remember, between the time you start with a therapist and finish with a therapist you are living live in the gender you want to be "forever" and forever is a long time to enjoy or learn to hate depending on your age. Choose wisely.

Over time it is hard to not recognize that not just with gender issues but every aspect of life we encounter a fear and doubt our abilities to cope. This is normal behavior until we key in on gender dysphoria because if nothing else we are living in a world that is gender centric, male or female. Fear of being late with a car payment is vastly different than stepping out one’s front door dressed in the opposite gender. We can call the bank, chat with them and make special arrangements if your payment will be a few days overdue. Now when walking out the front door as a female or male those who see us and identify with us as the opposite gender quickly form an opinion be it good or bad unlike the bank who looks at your history with them over a period of time. Once you walk out that door fear takes over similarly to standing in front of a group to give a speech, mouth is dry, we sweat all over the place but over time with repetition we become less sweaty and the mouth is not so dry until if we do it enough now the door is open to familiarity with little to no stress. Heck I know, if you caught me in 2000 standing in front of 10 students you would think I was a complete amateur but several years later stood in front of 375 people and was right a home. I say it and hear others say it, it gets easier each time you walk out the front door dressed in the opposite gender. How many times does it take? That is going to be different for everyone. What is critical is believing in yourself because if you don’t believe in yourself how do you expect others to believe in you? To believe in yourself it takes time in the comfort of your own home first watching various shows on television, study female mannerism then get up of the chair and practice what you just saw. A physical therapist once told me to suck in my abdomen several times a day and would find her in my head at the strangest times so I suck it in. Same applies to learning mannerism of the opposite gender. Example, you are driving in your car, look down at your legs, how are they positioned, legs spread apart or comfortably close together, are both hands on the steering wheel or just one? Correct as needed. Sticking with driving, this is the perfect time to practice your opposite gender voice where absolutely nobody can hear you, just keep the windows up at red lights. The more you practice these and similar traits of the opposite gender the better prepared you are for stepping out the front door. So what if Mr. Jones sees you, wave and smile and don’t hasten your pace, take a deep breath and continue on. Hopefully Mr. Jones will become accustom to you being seen as a female yet there is one fallacy to this which is during the week you are male and weekends female. The fix for this is to be female more often during the week. The key is to want it then prepare so you are as natural as you can be and remember it does get easier over time, I know because I have done many of the suggestions and more. In closing, I invite others to chime in with there suggestions as I DON'T know it all and there is a vast wealth of wisdom within this community that can be drawn upon.

Over the years I (and you most likely have too) have read countless stories of people transitioning with little or no support which is sad. With that said I would like to extend to those here if there is anything I can do shout out. If by chance you are having surgery with Marci Bowers in California with no support let me know, I will fly down for the day of surgery and the day after at the very least to provide support. I don’t want to see anyone take this path alone which is why I will do this and I pay my way entirely. Perhaps in areas such as the East Coast other will assist if possible and if not I will consider making that trip too, after all I have been away from the East Coast way too long as my family keeps reminding me. Now I am going to shut up :)

Many times in my past life it was difficult or nearly impossible to find common ground to convey concepts and feelings to others without a conundrum in and of itself. Things change but the world in all its vastness stays small and elusive to these matters. This is where those who are members here can find common ground and try or do make sense of the issues, emotions and trials we endure. We touch each other sometime out in the open while other times silently and deep. In my own way try and invoke thought but also stay out of the dark waters yet elude to the fact caution is needed in somethings. And with that said I feel that there are some who believe their journey can be achieved through hopes and magic but you and I know that is not the case. We need to go to the deepest parts of our desires and rattle that cage and ask deep questions for without doing so we invite doom into the picture and that leads to very bad places where no one should have to go for leaving on one’s own accord may never happen outside of depression or worst. What do I mean by dark waters? It’s a bunch of little things that when combined together turns from being a ripple to a tidal wave. There are consequences for one who cross dresses or changing one’s gender that if one does not do the research may be in for the tidal wave. A consequences we all think about is “what happens if someone caught me dressed in the opposite gender” or you changed gender in mid-life and now for lack of a better phrase “a teenager again” learning things that might take years for someone to learn growing up and now one thought before the gender change it would be easy yet I know some who did not prepare beforehand. I was lucky to had done research and had gender coaches who helped me before going under the knife. Hopefully those who read this will take something out of these ramblings to heart and take time to flush out everything else in your head and focus on the matter of gender. Ask yourself “Who am I”, “Is my current path logical and sound”, “how will the decisions I make today affect me ten years down the road” or “how will indecision affect me ten years down the road”. Then take that ten years and change it to “the rest of my natural life”. Be honest with yourself. More times than I can count I spent time with myself and ask many questions over and over again until a solution was at hand and even laying on the table in the operating room I had no reservations because all my known issues had answers. Now with that said I would be lying to you saying I knew it all, nobody does so there are still some dark spots that have appeared to me but took time to overcome them. One last thing on dark waters. I grandchild ask his grandfather, what did you do in the war? Grand dad give the child a story that the child can understand and does not go into gory details or even that he soiled his pants (commonly known to soldiers as a battle crap) before going into battle. That is where I am coming from with gender reassignment surgery, myself or others generally do not go into all the details but there are some teenagers out there on youtube that will openly tell viewers that "if I had known" this would happen afterwards I would had thought twice about GRS. So do the chat with yourself and get your ducks lined up before moving forward.

Hopefully I can keep it clean. Been thinking about what is it going to be like pleasure-wise for my new parts so on the way to the grocery store I stopped off at a adult shop, ask for female lube and took the sales lady's suggestion. Went home and searched the web for something that might arouse me, found one. I know it was good because feelings radiated out from that area. Used the lube and a play toy to enhance things. Bottom line, it's been five minutes after the fact and I can still feel that feeling radiating outwards and I like it a lot. Inspection/test run gets an A+ Okay, closer to ten minutes and still got it :rolleyes:

Every twelve months I am required to check in to my doctor for blood work in regards to me continuing on estradiol and spironolactone (anti-androgen). She indicated that there is no need to continue taking spironolactone since this is for blocking testosterone which I don’t have anymore. Had a discussion on dilation, she transitioned 20 years ago so once a day for her. She sits in a warm bath tub and uses baby shampoo for liberation, think I will need to try this for the middle dilation of the day. Also talked about breast implants which I told her I have an appointment with a surgeon in several days. She asked, do you spray when urinating? I did for about three weeks and now everything comes out as it should. On a side note I am very happy about this as it felt strange peeing and having pee on my legs. Now here is something I found interesting, she believes that transitioning is one of the most difficult paths a human take embark on. As we know many want to but do not because of monetary issues or physiological issues. Then there are some who manage to have GRS (Gender Reassignment Surgery) but in one way or another end up a failure which in some cases leads to death. I am fortunate to have many people help me along the way and it help that I had the mindset and the motivation to take the right path on my journey of life. Thinking of "difficult path", I think nobody can deny that at one time or another we entertain our worst nightmares. I will be the first to admit to this were I would go to bed with horrible thoughts that I would never become the female on the outside that needed to happen. I can not even imagine some peoples nightmares were getting to the point they need to be will never happen, not the right support, lacking in funds and no real support from family, friends and co-workers. Then on the other side of the coin we have physical transformation which provides a huge step in "the" journey but also have many downsides. Downsides (my fav) like dilation, w/o hormones your body does not naturally produce them. How about finding a partner to love, that can be a path filled with happiness or depression, a true roller-caster. Neither path is peaches and crème but for me I am truly happy (except for dilation) and welcome what lies ahead and prey that those travelling this path never, ever give up finding their true selves. In closing this in many ways has been an (in a good way)emotional day, this is what hormones do and I welcome them (except when my mascara runs).

One of my Facebook friends is my daughter's best friend who posted that she closed the front door and the security latch got wedged into the door preventing it from opening and asked for help. Since I knew she lived closed by I replied with "I will help if you still need assistance". She gave me her address, five minutes from my home. Went over, I knocked on the front door and she came around from the back door. When she greeted me (she had not seen me in five years) no reactions or comments on my new look as female. Looked at the front door, figured out I needed to pry the door and by thinking ahead of time brought a pry-bar with me. Took two minutes to free the door then a minute to hammer a metal strip back into place. Turned to her and said "done", she thanked me and I left. When I returned home she had sent me a private message You look great by the way! I suppose I figured out what your trip to California was about and wow! Congrats on looking awesome!! I guess she then scrolled through my Facebook notes and on one wrote You are so beautiful. Really. Just so you know. More validation for me. Perhaps this might nudge others down their chosen path of transitioning.

One of my friends on Facebook posted this quote “The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - Ayn Rand I think many feel that they must wait for permission or wish it will happen but the down right truth is you make it happen. Heck I will admit to falling into this mindset in regards to transitioning but for years was the one "who is going to stop me" when it came to teaching specialty classes in self-defense. So it is possible to be of both mindsets and I am sure there are others of similar mindset. Time to take action, don't consider failure as an option but move head first believing what you are after will happen by your hands and mind.

I was contemplating on what I should do for Facebook, create a new account or change the current male one so I created a new one but then thought that this is going to be tough getting friends over to the new account and stopped after creating the new female account last week. While surfing through my male account yesterday I decided to delete the new female account and change the male account to female via gender option then changed from my male name to my female name. Walked away and upon coming back a while later had several people had messaged me, some saw it coming while others did not but so far all are supportive of the change which includes former girlfriends. One thing I have been monitoring is friend count, see if any unfriend me but so far none have which I am thankful for. If any do unfriend me that is their choice which I respect but also realize they were never my friend in the first place. Anyways one of my things is not to simply accept people as friends for the heck of it like some do, instead I only allow those whom I think will be friends, are fellow instructors and/or have common interest. There is one woman I met on My Space, always wanted to date her, in my eyes she is simply hot which does not mean the best looking woman out there, instead I am simply attracted to her and let her know that. We never met but over time became friends in a different way and then when moving to Facebook she friended me. I was pleasantly surprised to find her as one of the first friends to like my note that I was now female, gave me a warm feeling. Another woman whom I feel that we have met in other lives (and she actually was the one who brought this up) and dated also made it known we will always be friends. Funny thing about her while in bed together after making love she says (don't remember the exact words as this was back in 2006) "In a former existence I was the male and you were the female, married and very happy" and thought that was interesting that she firmly believed I was female before. About six months ago I told her I wanted to chat with her over the phone. She gave me her phone number (saying in case you don't have it anymore, which I did) and said give me a call tomorrow. I called her, we chatted for awhile then told her what was going on. There was a slight pause then she came back and said, I will kill you if you look better than me and then said, well we should go out shopping sometime. Talked for about an hour and felt really good that we could do this. I did get a few messages from various friends that had many questions which I am still need to reply too as there were many but all positive. Two of the people who congratulated me are national figures in the world of teaching self-defense and actually was surprised that one did message me while the other one I had no doubt. Looking back several months I would had never guessed this announcement would had been so positive and happy it has gone well.

I will start off by saying that in the past 15 years there has been just one time I truly cried for something real. Today I was watching Chicago Fire television show where there was a very emotional scene. I could feel my body reacting to what I was watching and figured my eyes would become watery but not the case today, I completely broke down, cried, body shook and I actually made sounds. This has to be the hormones as I have noticed in recent months more joy in various aspects of my life, people say I smile a good deal more and I am noticing this myself. I did consider not posting this but decided it might be helpful to know that it took about 9 months to feel undeniable changes in inside of me and 14 months to where there was no controlling what happened today. Since this happened just 10 minutes ago, think I will curl up in my easy chair with a warm cup of black tea.

After surgery my mother called hearing I was in California for surgery and inquired to what the surgery was. I told her it was not life threatening on three different times days after surgery, not to worry mom. Well this morning she called and asked about my surgery again and I said, don't you remember, I told you it was nothing to worry about. She said, I think I know what it was for. I said, what you do think, she said gender change? Well I am surely not going to deny it as my only reason for not telling her was that she is 94 and thought it would upset her, guess I got it wrong. She said I still love you and always will no matter what. She told me when I was young that there was just something about me and that she could see me as a female and actually would had loved to had another daughter but did not know what to do and simply treated me as her child. She never pushed me in either direction from my memories at any point. So now I have fully disclosure with my family :)

My best friend arrived tonight with a flower bouquet with a balloon "it's a girl". What happened at one point after she took several pictures of me and then broke down crying saying "I have never seen you this happy" to me and pretty much seconds later I had tears o joy. This will be a memorable moment in time for me which really there are no words to tell people how I felt at that very moment.

So while checking mail tonight I get a message from a firearm forum saying While we doubt your guns are at the bottom of a lake, we did notice that it has been a while since you've visited us for sometime... So I decided to create a new account for Karen Payne. I was expecting to add a profile picture but somehow when I created the account it grabbed my picture for my Windows machine. I think a few of the guys there like me as I got an alert saying someone likes you for two members (something I would not expect from a firearm forum). This should be fun in that I have a male perspective and working on the female perspective which is not going to be hard since I teach firearms. Another day, another surprise!

Being it’s a new year a thought went through my head, I know what the monetary cost for preparing for surgery, actual surgery and after care but what is the cost over time? Well without going down to the penny I spent roughly $2,000 for a therapist, not enough to register for medications (insurance paid this), since 2000 spent roughly $4,000 for electrolysis, $7,000 on body enhancements. Now couple this with surgery and aftercare I figure a round number is $35.000. Let’s round this off to $50,000 and calculated this cost over the remainder of my life. I am currently 58 years old and at best would live to roughly 90 years old as I believe my genes are predominately my mother’s side of the family where the last three women averaged life is 95. Of course none of them smoked which I have but quitting but they did not have the better care of live available today so I am going to say I might live to 80 or 85. That comes to $3,200 ($266 per month) cost for the rest of my life which I feel is well worth it. Now with that said imagine you could pay for your transition this way. For some it is still unreachable which is sad. All who have considered to transition from male to female many times never take in the magnitude of the cost to transition. If I were doing this today at an early age I would (thinking I think like I do today) go to college, pick a profession that pays well and put my head to the grindstone to fund transitioning. Sure it is easy to say as there are many variables that could side track this but without a plan and goal all the wishing in the world will not make this happen but instead like many will fall asleep at night hoping to wake up in a female body is unrealistic as we all know this will not happen. Any ways with that said I don’t see the $266 spread out over time but instead the money spent put me where I should be and no amount of money can change this. When I made the final decision to transition I was focused like never before in my life, figured out what I needed to move forwarded and never looked back. Nothing like peace of mind.

Since I am having random issue with writing here on my new laptop which I thought were fixed I am writing on the following site. It took just about 5 minute to write this out which is way to long http://paynekaren.wordpress.com By no means does this mean I am leaving here but simply can not fathom writing in pain after surgery like this

The biggest thing I hate about me is being so misunderstood. People think that Me being different that its ok to call me names look at me funny. If I take my son to the park and other families are there I get looked at funny and round up their kids away from me. I don't look as a passable female at all. So I guess that means to them I am a predator or something. Being called names like freak and gay. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay but I don't identify that way. That is desperate from gender. I wish people were more informed and understanding. I am tired of being treated poorly. I just want to be me have fun raise my son. What's wrong with that? I have already lost all my friends and most of my family. I haven't even told them how I see myself. I mean Idk how I see myself Anyways. My ex told a lot of them about who I am at least in her eyes and outed me to them. So they know but I get no chance to defend myself or explain because it's just ignored. I am ignored by all. I have no one left. It a sad closed off world. Not to mention. Of the guys at work knew I would be made even more miserable. Everyone in my life is narrow minded. I am just tired. Its exhausting