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Hi all wonderful people. It has been a while since I posted anything here. After my last post I met a beautiful lady through this site, Steph53, Steph has become very special to me. Steph was very kind and supportive and introduced me to what are now many friends over on Facebook, this is where I now spend most of my time. As for my transition it has progressed rapidly. I am now a month into my Hormone Therapy . I now largely live full time as my true self. I have been out into the real world a number of times and this is now my norm rather than something out of the ordinary. Elsa obviously won the battle with William, it was never a contest. William is now a distant memory and only gets referred to in the 3rd person i.e. he did this, he did that, he was like that. He now plays no part in my life as i move forward. This is now my time to live, to shine and to grow. I do want to relate a recent event which made me realise just how strong I am now. The past weekend 16th -17th June 2018 my daughter and her partner was invited to her grandmothers for lunch, i was happy as they are very close and it showed me my issue had not damaged their relationship despite me not being in the good books with my mother in law any more. I knew of the invite a few weeks ago. On Saturday evening i was informed my wife was also invited but not me again while not happy I understood. As Saturday evening wore on it hit me what this meant, I was no longer welcome on my wife's side of the family and i suddenly felt very alone and isolated. I became very upset. I went to bed and woke up around 3.30am and I was angry, very upset, very down and very vulnerable . i quietly cried into my pillow. Then something happened, i started to think of all the things I (Elsa) had gone through to finally be born. Up until this point whenever I had discussed my battles and coming out and accepting who I was it had always been from his perspective never mine. As i went back to as far as I could remember, my early childhood, I realised the immense struggle i had had just to be heard, to make myself known. The physical abuse by a Father and older brother who couldn't accept that I existed. To a mother that knew I existed but was not sure who i was, stopped the abuse and protected me. While my father effectively ignored me for a long time my older brother took every opportunity to bully me psychological. Into my early teens when thankfully my father went back to sea as a merchant sailor and was never home and the older brother sent to remand school. Finally I had some peace and for around 2 1/2 years I thrived, i dressed all the time although in secret and and with a lot of guilt and shame due to the earlier tortures. My mother knew but kept it to herself and we never discussed it. It was towards the end of these years that he began to dominate, I don't know why, maybe it was the increased testosterone, but he started to isolate me and bury deep down in his psychology. He began to grow into a man physically, he had a mans skin suit. the problem was, that as I watched on, he had know idea what a man was, he was a intrinsically a woman. His only guide was how other men behaved around him, largely his family, and they where not good role models. I could see he was very confused, he did his best but increasingly became more isolated as he didn't seem to fit in but didn't know why. This is how it would continue for the next 40 years from the age of 20. I would eventually find the strength to make myself heard and he would be forced to dress, he hated it and would attempt to bury me even deeper and build more walls to hide me. Every 3 - 6 months i would find a way out and the cycle would start again. He married and had a daughter, this was the first time I ever saw him happy. after work he couldn't wait to get home and be with his new daughter and wife. I was happy, i left him alone and even began to think that maybe this was his turning point and I would slowly fade away and he would finally find some peace. His wife didn't handle the birth to well, she loved her daughter but post natal depression set in. He became confused as he wife seemed to become more and more distance until an event occurred that would change him forever. His mother passed away at 60, he was devastated. He needed support, his wife needed his support but at that exact time his wife broke down. He had to fly down away from home to be at his mothers funeral on his own. I can remember watching him as he approached his mother casket, his family, their wives and their children where all sobbing and he felt the emotion start to well up then shockingly as all that emotion was about to pour out he slammed it down, he refused to show any weakness to his family. He sat stoically through the whole funeral and as he helped carry the casket out. He never cried over the mother he was so close to and was never able to again. From this point one he became cold and any emotions where nothing more than an illusion. I was determined to right this ship as this was not healthy for either of us. The cycle began again but this time he just coldly accepted it and moved on. He turned it sexual, he would drink to excess, he would hurt himself through these periods, sometimes lasting up to 2 weeks all privately and unknown to those around him, he felt regret and shame and guilt but he'd learned to push them away and bury them as he did to me.He became depressed and often suicidal, he never acted on it. He had money to earn and and a family to maintain. The only person he was close to and showed any emotion to was his daughter, he loved her so much as I did and As i now do. She kept him alive. At 50 everything changed, he was tired of the constant battle, his daughter was now old enough to take care of herself and was living her own life, he was happy for her but he was loosing his anchor. He simply gave up and there was nothing I could do. he buried me deeper than before and built so many walls i could no longer influence him. He simple existed and just pretended to be alive. He became and empty shell. I refused to give up. I kept clawing my way out and very occasionally i would make myself heard. for almost 10 years this went on. However i became stronger as his psychology began to weaken. He could no longer maintain the prison of walls he had put me behind, because he just didn't care any more. for a while it was touch and go, he meticulously planned his own suicide even got to the point of ordering the supplies, but I was to strong now, I had not come this far to simply allow him to deny me my life. I stopped him and finally as Christmas 2017 approached I convinced him he had to choose, either come to terms with me or we both cease to exist. It wasn't his choice it was mine and I chose life. It still took a few more months. He couldn't understand what was happening, this constant need to be a woman, it became ad obsession it was still very sexual he purged 3 more times, wasted a lot of money but after each purge I forced him back again. I forced him to research and read about transgender issues, understand it from a scientific perspective, he trained as a scientist so I knew this would appeal to his scientific nature. He finally began to understand. I made him book an appointment with a transgender therapist, now he began to understand who I was. About a week before the appointment we where driving to the shops, i kept whispering to him, you know me, you know who i am, you need to say, say it in your head and then say it out loud, it was his final piece of resistance but not to much. He finally said it, in his head and then out loud. I AM A WOMAN. I WAS FINALLY BORN, I WAS FREE. and the rest as they say is history. I write this now 5 months into the transition. I am at peace, there is no longer any conflict and because of all I have been through to finally be born I am stronger than he ever was. If you can remember back to the beginning of what is now rather a long blog entry, these memories came back at 3.30 Sunday morning 17th June 2018 at about 4.30am I began to sob uncontrollably. I had grown up, this was my life now and he was now just a distant memory. More than that, i was no longer angry, upset, down and vulnerable, I was calm, happy, upbeat and resilient. It no longer mattered who accepted me or not, I was me, this is my life and I will live it on my own terms. I had struggled and fought to be free and that has made me strong. There is very little the world can do to me that I haven't already endured, it will try but I know i will alway prevail. If you decided to read this far thank you I truly appreciate your interest. To all the wonderful people on TGguide and Transgender Radio in Australia who tirelessly maintain and keep these sites alive, that allow people like me to find a home and express ourselves and meet others like us and of course to all my Transgender friends on Facebook. I do however dedicate this to one very special lady who has helped me so much and it his through her kindness and support that I have come so far so quickly. for you Steph. I truly do love you. Hugs and kisses Elsa
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Hi All What a 5 months it has been for me after finally deciding to confront my (at the time crossdressing needs) after almost 60 years of denial, guilt and shame. Little did I know at the time that, as I write this, I would be on the path to transitioning and living full time as a woman. My initial thoughts just after Christmas 2017 was to admit and accept that I liked to dress as a woman and that need would be satisfied on a part time basis and in private. I would come out to my family and depending on their reaction would be allowed to do this with their consent or continue in private or (the painful part) go our seperate ways. As I finally accepted (mid Jan 2018) the need to dress became more urgent and I had become quite obsessive about it to the extent I could think of nothing else. This was confusing and created an enormous amount of conflict. After one final round of guilt, shame and a complete purge of all of my feminine attire and an absolute determination to end this aspect of my life, I thought I was free of it, My resolve lasted less than 24 hours. It was at this stage I decided to seek counselling. I made an appointment for mid Feb 2018 to see a specialist in transgender issues. While I waited for the appointment day to arrive I immersed my self in research into all things crossdressing and transgender, I read all I could so I could try to understand what I was. I also began to rebuild my feminine wardrobe and vowed I would never purge, feel guilty or shame again. About 1 week before my appointment I was driving to the local shops and had a nagging thought racing around my head. As I parked at the shopping centre I found myself just sitting in my car with this thought determined to be heard and voiced. For about 10 minutes I could not bring myself to say a few simple words until they finally broke free. "I am A Woman" I almost shouted them and quickly looked around to make sure no one heard me, and then the dam broke sobbing tears for about 5 minutes before I could pull myself back together. It was the voicing of this sentence "I am A Woman" that my life and where I was heading all made sense. My thoughts cleared, the internal conflict was erased and I found myself at peace with myself. By the time I got to see the specialist, the following Saturday, it was not about my problems but an open and frank discussion about being a transgender woman and what my journey would look like from that point forward. Since then I have come out to my family and friends (mid Feb 2018) and all have been supportive, including my wife ( although we have decided to seperate but will remain friends). As the days and weeks have passed doubts have pressed forward, this can't be right, how can I be a woman, I am 60 years old, get a grip, be a man, stop this nonsense etc etc. As the weeks have turned into months the doubts have been largely silenced and not only have I accepted that I am A Woman but acceptance has turned to joy and pride as I now know who I am and was meant to be, and my feminine wardrobe has expanded rapidly. This week on May 15th I visited my Doctor and we have begun the process of me becoming a woman, blood tests have been done and an appointment made to see a Psychiatrist for a formal evaluation, ( my Dr said this is a formality in my case) before I start female hormone therapy. There no doubt will be many hurdles to jump and tears along the way as well, and I hope, many good moments but I feel mentally stronger and more self assured that I will be able to overcome anything thrown in my way. Thank you if you have read this far. It is sights and communities like Tgguide.com that remind me I am not alone on this journey and there are many like minded souls out there. Finally I can live my life as my authentic and true self Lots of big hugs and kisses Elsa
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Ever wondered what it takes to get on a bus? The fears and scary parts explained and how eventually I overcame them. For some this is not a problem, those with the strongest of characters who really want the world to know about who they are, but for many integrating and becoming the person you really are without any fuss and bother it's a different story. Many years ago the first hurdle apart from the big step of going out of the front door as the real me, was getting on the bus. For those just beginning the journey from one gender to the other, this can be terrifying and once you have managed it thats when you know you have really begun your transition. My preparation was always the best, but my confidence wasn't great so every day I found myself in the position of taking the terrifying journey and this is where strength of character comes in. So you are ready to face the world in the new you and hope no one is going to give you a second glance, because in many ways that is what you are trying to achieve. There you are stood at the bus stop waiting for the bus hoping that no one notices you, and then someone turns to you and asks, "Do you have the time please." Now hang on, who doesn't have a watch or a mobile (cell) phone with a big display on it? Its often a good indication that they want to hear your voice, they have looked at you and wondered....is that a man or a woman? The best way to overcome it is to to nod and show them you watch/phone and smile if you're not happy with how your voice sounds. Of course the bus stop is often where people talk to each other, (years ago before smartphones and everyone was a bit more social) so when the bus arrives its a bit of a relief, or is it. I suppose its a lot easier now with electronic passes, no words have to be uttered but when I was just starting out, talking was necessary....So you ask for your fare....city centre please.....then once you have your ticket you turn and face the all the passengers, desperately trying to find a seat .....EVERYONE is looking at ME.....no they're not, but thats what it feels like. Seat found, head down ....please don't talk to me. I have one of those ...faces. I always sit next to the most talkative person on the bus, it happens often. But then there is the other parts, people looking at YOU....they know, they've spotted me, they know I'm trans and they are looking at me, talking about me.....OMG. The fears of the newbie are immense, in an enclosed space with all these people and THEY KNOW. No, probably they haven't even seen you, but the fear is there all the same. Seat selection is important, inside seat you have to ask (if you are polite that is) to '"Excuse me please." So outside seats are easier (just don't speak to me). If the bus is crowded the next step is to get off the damn bus, ding the bell and hope that its going to be the stop everyone else alights too. If not, it can be a struggle as it might be necessary to say ...excuse me several times. The point of all this? I had realised than when I could get on the bus, face the 'crowd', find a seat, talk to my fellow passengers and get off the bus with no problem, that is when I knew I was on my way to being happy with my transition. Thats when you know you have begun to integrate the new you and made it. Overcoming the fears isn't easy but when I realised that probably no one was really looking at me, no one really noticed anything different about me, it drew less attention anyway. The voice I have found is a powerful delimiter in that you can use the voice to confuse anyone. if you are able to sound like the gender you present, then any unwanted attention seems to be lessened and I found I could overcome many uncomfortable situations. I hope that you have found this interesting and helpful.
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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. -
I was born a woman in a mans body. I've known this since my earliest memory but growing up during the 70s and 80s in Southern California and being raised by two very conservative parents made life heartbreaking and filled with pain. I wasn't strong enough to go against my parents and now at the young age of 50 it's still difficult. I think about how different my life will become and it excites me to think that one day I'll be able to transform into the woman I've always hidden from the public. It's going to take a lot of work—surgical and hormonal— but the end result for me will be liberating and glorious. When I was younger I would wear my sisters dresses as often as I could. One day in my sophomore year of high school my mother caught me in a dress. I spent the next two years in counseling being told it was unacceptable to feel the way I did. In 1986 when I graduated from high school I was forced by my parents to enlist in the United States Army in order to make me a man. I retired after serving 25 years. During my career I fought the urge to be who I was inside. I married three times but that never lasted. I was always jealous of my wives. I wanted to be a wife too. I've begun the necessary steps to happiness. Will it be easy? Absolutely not but anything this important shouldn't be an easy process to traverse. I have several roadblocks ahead of me; weight loss, the looks I'll get when coming out in public for the first time (I'm 6'3" 250 lbs) but I even though I know tough times are ahead I'm still driven to become the woman I was born to be. I quit my job and moved 1,400 miles to Seattle with the hopes of finding a job where I can transition and continue on with becoming Olivia.This will be the first of many blogs depicting my journey.I hope you'll join me by following in on this new grand adventure.
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I had a chat today, with my manager, and we're drawing up a plan of who to tell, how to tell them and when to tell them. It's scarily daunting. It's not only the people I work with, such as my immediate team; it's the people I interact with or the people I see every day. Such as the woman in the restaurant who makes my hazelnut latte each morning, or the guy who delivers parcels to our desks, or the security guards at reception, or the cleaners. Those people don't know me but they see me and they talk to me and they think they know me - and they will be surprised (shocked?) by the upcoming name change. So I can't avoid telling them; not really. The guy I sit next to... we're on a first name basis and I know he likes cycling and he knows I like cycling and we've had chats about the Tour de France and the Vuelta and the Giro... but that's about it. He knows nothing else about me. But I still have to tell him. Everyone at work will know. And I mean everyone. As soon as my email address changes... well, everything changes. People I don't actually know will see my dead name disappear from the directory and a new name appear. And therefore I have to be prepared to receive enquiries and questions from a bunch of people who thought they knew me and a bunch of complete strangers too. And I'm talking about a company that has 100,000 employees. Bring it on!!!
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Hi everyone, I recently finished my first year of school (I'm doing the 2-year MSW program at NYU) and decided that I needed a little get-away (emphasis on "little" - I don't really like traveling all that much, and can't afford much). So I decided on a day trip to the shore - my goal going into the day was to not think backwards or forward, just to try to be in the present. Of course, as I mentioned to a friend later, it was a little weird that I chose to go to a place that we used to go to all the time when I was a child if I didn't want to think backwards - but it still worked out. On the train ride down it occurred to me that through everything that's been going on in the past year I hadn't really taken any time to just reflect specifically on transitioning. It makes sense, I was in school and recovery from GRS, while it wasn't ever particularly painful, is still distracting. But now, school is done for the year and the recovery is very well along - so I did reflect. In that moment I just felt really, really happy about all that had happened. But here's the bigger thing. Either that night or the next it was very warm - it got up to the 90s here and didn't cool off over night. Since I've been too lazy to put my a/c in and only had a fan, I ended up sleeping au naturel. With the lights out and a jazz radio station playing, I closed my eyes. Without really thinking about the fact that I was doing it, one hand came down from a stretch, landed on one of my breasts, and then down to my lower regions - nothing erotic going on, just a casual stroke if you will. But the sensation was wonderful! Again, not erotic, it was just that I actually felt a woman's body - my body was now a woman's body! Just wanted to share that :-) xoxo Chrissy
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I haven't posted anything here in a long time. The last time I posted the reality had just started to set in about what life was going to be like going forward. I have been on HRT for almost 4 months now and life has gotten a lot easier. Hiring a lawyer made me feel a lot better about the upcoming divorce. I'm full time in public which is still really nerve racking but I'm forcing myself outside of my comfort zone. Doing my own makeup is now a thing too. Its a lot easier than I expected except I have trouble with eyeliner. Things have started to develop up top as well. Overall I'm in a much better place despite the fact that not everything , including the divorce, has been handled yet. I was emotional a lot during the first couple of months of HRT but that may have been due to all the stress in my life. I just wanted to come in here and vent in a blog to other transgender people who may know how I feel or what I'm going through.
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Although I had been masculine for most of my adult years, I have been officially out to my family since Jan. 2010 and I have been on testosterone for close to three years. I put off my transition because I didn't think I would have a family if I did. After many of my mom's abusive comments towards me, I finally said, "screw this" and started it. I was right. Our relationship was pretty non-existent, and when I thought I would try to rekindle a familial dynamic again, my mom plain refused to acknowledge my identity, referring to me with female pronouns even though my voice was deep and had facial hair. The day after the Bruce Jenner interview, I ended up seeing her for a family function. She has watched 20/20 and Dateline and like shows for years, so I assumed she saw it, but didn't bring it up. Later in the afternoon, she asked if I watched it. It sparked about a 3 hour conversation, one which I feel was long overdue. Nothing negative was said. It was all positive. She even cried. I don't know if the tears were the realization that being trans is real, and she reflected on the things she's said and the way she treated me in the past, or something else, but I don't care. She actually showed an emotion instead of hiding it and hurting people. At this moment, I feel like she is now supportive, and this is something I have NEVER had from her. Thanks Bruce Jenner for sharing your story.
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This was an interesting week. Feelings of being female kind of just came and went as the tides do. Anyways, this week was tough. I work in DC and take the metro every day and see some nicely dressed women going to work each day. And once a week, I will see at least one person who is trans* going to work, who dresses appropriately and looks really nice (seeing them makes me really proud to be trans and I am proud of them as well - btw!). I had a follow up app't with my therapist today that she had to reschedule. That is fine. I am not in as much of a crisis anymore, more of in a daze lately, just "dealing with being male" and thinking about being female. It is rescheduled for 12/12 at 2 pm. I may go out with friends after and perhaps to a support group. This week, I am headed out on Saturday to the Holiday Inn at 7pm. It should be fun. I don't know what to wear (it will probably be a dress), but it does not matter, I am just glad that I am going out. I have been overweight over the past year, but at least my weight has been stable. I do need to lose weight though, because I feel uncomfortable particularly in tight clothes or when I do endurance sports. Nothing like riding a bike up a 12% climb and wishing I was 150 - 160 lbs again. Anyways ... I hope that everyone has had a good week. Keep your chin up and be proud of who you are, whoever that may be! I love you all and thank you for reading! Love, Lisa
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11/29/2014 I'm starting to wonder if I am not Trans Female rather bi-gendered. There are some mornings and I feel perfectly content getting up and being male. Other mornings, not so much. In general, I feel like I should have been born a girl, however, it is such a pain in the butt getting ready and presenting female. So, I don't know if my distain for getting ready is behind this or if I genuinely like being male some days, which would make me bi-gendered (though when I was 4 years old that was not the case). Anyways, this is all so confusing. Honestly, if I could comfortably live as a woman full-time, but occaisionally present as male or just dress in male clothes that might be a good stead-state for me. I don't know. We'll see. It is hard to know or to tell. I don't get as nervous about being a girl like I used to, however in a lot of ways I am just getting started. I will need to learn so many things and adapt in ways that I will not be comfortable with initially. If anything, I just need to remember to be myself. Once I stop doing that I will be right back where I started, in crisis-mode again.
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11/24/2014 So, we left to go to my mom's in Perrysburg OH. I was thinking about bringing some of my girl clothes with me but did not. As we left, I felt a tremendous amount of anxiety. Never felt this way before and don't know why. It's almost like I felt like I did not have that outlet if I needed it. However it felt much more than that. Anyways, the trip went well. Though most of the time I thought about what I was going to tell my mom regarding my current situation. She knows about me dressing and wanting to be a girl. However, I believe that she thinks it is no longer an issue. I definitely felt like a girl today. 11/25/2014 I'm at my mom's with my family. I worked in the morning, ran 7.5 miles and then went to the Toledo Zoo for the lights. It was really wonderful. I loved it. We were there for 4 hours. I used to go to the Toledo Zoo when I was young several times a year. So it brought back memories. They had a Santa that was there and the kids had their pictures taken with him. I wished that my dad was there. He would have loved it. 11/26/2014 My son had pink eye this morning so I had to take him to urgent care. I took him home while I got his prescription and went to Target while I waited. If anyone doesn't know already ... Target has awesome girl clothes (If you don't know this, then you can leave the cave now and enjoy). Anyways, I was looking for good workout clothes and cold weather gear for running. Anyways, Target used to have great runnning stuff for guys. Now, they have nothing for guys, only stuff for girls. So, I've been driven to crossdress (damn you, Target, damn you. ;-)). Anyways, I looked at their cold weather women stuff and liked but did not buy because I wanted to try it on, but did not have the time because I had to get back. May go back on Saturday and buy, because I need at least a couple pairs of warm fitted compression pants. --Lisa
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