A More Innocent Time

 

Image from Arun Sharma
on UnSplash. 

On occasion, I look back at the early days of my cross-dressing past wistfully thinking those days were the innocent ones of my life before everything began to get more complicated.

In those days, all I needed to do was make sure I did not destroy mom’s pantyhose or stockings and be careful to put back her clothes where I found them. I guess I was successful because she never said anything to me. Using her makeup was much easier because she always kept samples in a side drawer in the bathroom, I could experiment with. At that time, the whole cross-dressing experience seemed to be an innocent game. Except for my deep paranoia about getting caught. Even the paranoia led me to being more creative about hiding my feminine clothes and makeup. What I had of it.

When the reality of serving in the military during the increasingly deadly Vietnam War slowly but surely made its way into my life, much of my innocence began to go away. The stark reality of going without my dresses and makeup for three years of my young life began to set in. After I passed my draft, medical exams and tests there was nothing I could do about it. Because I was not prepared to run to Canada to evade serving in the military. During that time as well as many years after I was honorably discharged from the Army, I continued to be quite naïve or innocent that all I needed to do to survive as a transgender woman in the world was to do my best to look really feminine. These were the days when my second wife and I battled back and forth about how I was cross dressing as a woman. She always thought my makeup was overdone and I was too fond of wearing “girly” fashion for her tastes. I tried to tone it down for the occasions we went out as two women but her expectations of me were so strict that if I followed her directions, I might as well not bother cross-dressing at all.

Even though I lost most of the battles with her about my evolving fashion sense, I won a few wars when she had to ask me for makeup guidance when we were going out to a fancier setting. Revenge was sweet. For a while, life was very routine for us as we both had challenging employment when we moved from our native Ohio to the suburbs of New York City, a real culture shock to us both. I was disappointed when the more liberal attitude I expected in the big city never materialized because we had to rent from an elderly Italian man and his wife who I knew would have never accepted a trans woman in their apartment. Long story short, my wife loved NYC while I disliked it and started my habit of rapidly changing jobs and moving to outrun my gender issues. Undoubtedly, I had entered one of the most exhaustive phases of my life as I tried to balance my growing transfeminine desires with a wife, a job and a family.

By this time, my growing one on one interactions with the public were driving what I had left of my innocence away. I began to realize that I was locked in a life-or-death gender struggle which may be impossible to ignore. What did I do? I exchanged my exhausting job changing for settling down in one great job opportunity, and at the same time begin to explore the new and exciting world of being a trans woman fulltime. For a time, I was fulfilled by both aspects of my new life until I began to be overwhelmed by the speed both my job and me being able to carve out a life as a new trans woman was coming together. I never imagined I would be so successful, and so terrified about what I would do about them together.

I like to refer to the process I was going through as trying to piece together a large, complex puzzle of life. On one hand, I had my male side loving the financial increases he was seeing. Then my female side pushing back to what was more important. Making money as an unhappy man or living a softer more fulfilling life as a transgender woman. Almost daily I struggled with finding the right pieces for my puzzle. All I accomplished was taking all the satisfaction I was feeling from either side as they battled on.

As I faced the new world I was living in, I was determined to be less self-destructive but that did not work either as I continued to do things like go to my restaurant competitors dressed as my authentic trans woman self. I was not that good, and it did not take long for the gossip to get out about what I was doing. Sabotaging all that I had worked so hard to achieve in my career to finally let people know who I really was. I was destroying once and for all my male past and the innocence was gone. However, with the loss of innocence came the deep feelings that I had finally made the right choice and everything I had done in life directly or indirectly had influenced my future. My primary example is fathering my daughter, who over the years has accepted me and I love very much. Without being forced into the Army where I met her mother, I would never have had the experience of my life. I am just fortunate that I was destined to live as long as I have to have the chance to see the pieces of my puzzle come together and have a chance to experience one of the most interesting and scary experiences a human can take. That of course is crossing the gender border from male to female to live on the other side.

I was never good with puzzles, especially my own, and to lose my innocence finishing mine was a real treat.

 

 

The First Time

 

Image from Jon Tyson 
on UnSplash.

Like most of you, as I look back at an increasingly long life, I tend to remember many firsts I accomplished.

Of course, my gender dealings are among the top things I remember along with the first time I had sex with a girl, all the way to the first time I drove a car. I also vividly remember the first prom date I went on and how amazed I was when on the first night of basic training in the Army how many of the men around me were crying. I may have felt like crying too because the military was taking away my makeup, dresses, and wigs but I would be damned if I would cry in public about it.

Through it all, I learned the hard way to wait out the hard times and try to look ahead and not behind me for a better future. The first time I remember it happened was when we were on a long-forced march during the wintertime at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. I was feeling sorry for myself until I looked back and looked at how far I had come. From it I learned a lifetime lesson I could fall back on when I was feeling down. Which was often when I could not have any way to express myself as a feminine person by cross-dressing.

I had no idea when I resumed my civilian life after the Army how much I would have changed when I had the freedom to explore who I was. Even to the point of trying to come out to my mom. I was naïve and thought that even though I was accepted when I came out to anyone for the first time about being a transvestite (as we were called back then) while I was still in the Army, my mom would accept me also. I was wrong and all she offered was a trip to a psychiatrist rather than any understanding. So, my first time coming out to any of my family was a complete failure and the subject was never brought up again. I went back into my gender closet and slammed the door shut again. The only redeeming value I had was my closet was big enough to have a mirror to lie to me about my cross-dressing future when I needed it.

The first time I made a major step into the world as a future transgender woman was when I started to go to Halloween parties where I could express my true self. After a rocky beginning, I settled into a professional woman’s “costume” which brought me acceptance and gave me hope that possibly I could make it to make dream of living fulltime as a transfeminine person if I looked ahead and learned from my experiences.

From those humble Halloween beginnings, I began to explore a number of other firsts on my gender path. I figured if strangers were mistaking me for a woman at the parties I was going to, I would not have to wait another year to do it again and started to visit venues such as clothing stores in big malls as well as safe places such as coffee shops and bookstores. When that worked for me, I expanded my gender outreach into more challenging venues such as restaurants where I needed to interact with more people.

As I began to enjoy my time as a novice trans woman more and more, the problems of how much male baggage I still had began to cause a strain with my mental health which was already fragile. All my male life, I had tried to fight a losing battle to get rid of any possible positive male belongings that I had by moving all around to different jobs and being very self-destructive. Like runaway trains on the same track, the successes I could not wish away were coming at me from the male and female side. I could not shake the fact I had a very successful marriage, a good daughter and great job I had worked hard for so easily as I had imagined. It was the first time in my life I felt bad about being successful.

At the same time all of this was happening, I realized I was transitioning again as my transwoman self. It happened when I grew tired (again) of thinking of myself as a man who was just cross-dressing as a woman into more of a woman myself. It seemed I was facing firsts every week when I snuck out of the house to be myself. I was terrified and excited at the same time with the way my life was unfolding. I had never planned on how my life was turning out, even though I hoped that it would. I never dreamed I could carve out a new life as a transgender woman as quickly as I did.

Now I could look back on all the other first times I could remember as being important and add my series of transitions as a male to female feminized person with them. My first stable communications with other women one on one immediately come to mind as firsts. It was because I was allowed behind the gender curtain in a way I never was when I was acting to be a man. Plus, I can never leave out the impact HRT or gender affirming hormones had on my life. All of a sudden, my inside feelings and external images began to sync up, and my world softened on the hormones. Making many of my previous firsts in life seem minor in comparison. Who cares about marching at Ft. Knox when I could feel so good about myself. Truthfully though, one first led to another and made my life much fuller as I look back on it.

I never realized all the firsts were just a sign of where destiny was leading me in my life and I should have paid more attention when all I wanted to do as a kid was to be a woman when I grew up. I was always a go with the flow as a person, and the flow took me eventually exactly where I wanted to go as a transgender woman…with a lot of help from my friends.

 

 

 

What Kind of Man was I?

 

Image from Christian Lue
on UnSplash.

I had a good question on one of the blogging platforms I write for the other day. The person asked a simple but relevant question about what kind of a man I was before I went down the strenuous male to female femininization I chose for my life.

Here is how I replied: Thanks for the question. In my former male life, I did the best I could to be successful and hide my true self from the world. Early on, I played football and worked on cars to essentially build a wall to keep the teenaged bullies away. From there, I went off to college and earned my first degree, a bachelor’s in history before I was swept off into the Army during the Vietnam years.

After the Army which I was honorably discharged from after three years away from being able to express my feminine self, I ended up jumping back into my cross-dressing ways and eventually getting married for the first time and fathering a daughter. Once again, I was doing my best to do the all the right things to make the world think I was a “normal” male which of course I always struggled with.

From there, I jumped out of the radio business and into the tavern venue world when a friend of mine and I bought a small neighborhood bar where we lived. My dad described it best by saying it had two doors, so the flies did not have to stop when they went through the bar. He always had away with words. At any rate, the bar did not make it long, but my ownership of the building did. Initially I did not want the responsibility of property ownership but was talked into it by my dad. I think at the time, I did not want the extra pressure of owning anything I would have to get rid of as extra baggage if I decided to make the jump from one gender border to another.

I stayed in my male mode and managed to turn the failed bar into a successful pizzeria until I was drinking too much and lost it too. I was trying to over medicate myself as I ran from my depression and anxiety issues, along with the major problem I had which was of course I wanted to be a woman more than anything else. During this time also, I managed to sneak in another degree, an associates in business, from a local college to take advantage of my veterans’ benefits.

By this time, you can see the theme of my life was not a good one. Anything successful I did, I managed to destroy because of my gender issues. I even lost our house I bought off the GI bill.

Ironically, my life began to turn around when I met the first of the two most influential women in my life. The woman I met worked at a radio station I worked for after I was discharged from the Army and was trying to run the pizzeria successfully. I was literally swept off my feet and ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying the second woman. By the way, both women knew of my cross-dressing desires before we were married. It turned out I was man enough to stay married to her for twenty-five years before she suddenly passed away, wrecking my life for several years before I could rebuild it.

During the twenty-five years I went through with my second wife, I began to really learn I was not the man I used to be as I felt myself transitioning again from cross-dresser to transgender woman. In the meantime, I had thrown my old baggage caution to the side and had built a successful career for myself in the restaurant industry. By the time she passed on, I had built was too much spousal support, family, friends and jobs to casually risk it all and transition. Although it was always my dream to do so. Being the man I was meant I would have to give up the positions I held with civic organizations in town too. I felt flattered to be a part but at the same time never felt really at home there.

After I had given up any hope of ever finding anyone else to be with the rest of my life, I met my future wife Liz, and she was instrumental in pushing me into pursuing HRT by telling me she had never seen any male in me to start with. Her gentle push was all I needed to give away all my male clothes and stop the charade I was living life as a man.

I guess you could say that although I tried hard to be a successful man, I kept trying to destroy any success I had. It took a series of good women to show me the way to where I should have been all along, living my dream of being a transfeminine person fulltime.

My first wife went with the flow and did not seem to care what I did, my second wife approved of my cross-dressing but totally disapproved of HRT and any idea I was transgender, and my third wife totally helped me along. Out of the manhood I never wanted. The only woman left to mention was my internal one who (not so patiently) had to wait for her turn to do more than survive as she needed to thrive for a change.

I hope this answers the question of what kind of man I was before a jumped out of the man’s club and into the girl’s sandbox. I led a complex life of failure and success as a man but never felt as if I was doing the right thing. I was fortunate when good people came along to save me from my self-destructive self. Without them, I doubt if I could have ever made it to the place, I am today.

Thanks for the question! I appreciate any response I get from all of you plus any claps and subscriptions you send my way.

 

 

 

 

 

Fight or Flight?

 

Image from Anna Deli
on UnSplash.

As a man, fight or flight became very important to me. Primarily because I needed to become the protector of the loved ones around me and myself.

To be clear, I was never much of a physical fighter, but as I grew into manhood, I was not shy of confrontations either. I could use my size and or male knowledge to back off most potential opponents. For the most part, it was a straightforward proposition. Rule, or be ruled.

Of course, when I transitioned from my unwanted male life into a new exciting feminine world, my idea of fight or flight needed to dramatically change, before I got hurt.

Not too long ago, I had a question from one of my readers asking me what the most important male privilege that I lost was. I replied, the loss of my personal security. I found out quite quickly how dangerous men can be to women a couple times right after I transitioned and left myself in compromising situations around toxic men. I was fortunate my second wife was around to bail me out the first time and I was able to spend my last five-dollar bill to pay two guys off to leave me alone on the second. The best five dollars I had ever spent! (There probably should be something to the effect I was cheap but not easy brought up too!)

All kidding aside, escaping these situations taught me valuable fight or flight lessons. Gone were the days of out bluffing other men in potentially harmful situations, and in were the days of planning ahead to stay out of situations which could cause me trouble. Keep in mind also, I was spending most of my time out to be alone in those days, so I as completely alone as a transgender woman. If I passed as a cisgender woman, was I in better shape than if I was read as being a trans woman. There was no good alternative, and I always kept flight ideas in the back of my mind if I needed them. I think one of my biggest paranoias was having some bigot sneak up on me from behind and pull my wig off. Which never happened.

Through it all, I suffered from not having a girlhood to grow up in where I could learn the lessons all cisgender women know. Such as doing their best not to find themselves in dark unlit parking lots alone. Following my close call on a dark city street outside two gay venues, from then on, I had a trans man friend of mine walk me to my car to be safe. It was a different experience to be sure for me, but there was/is safety in numbers when it comes to leaving your male safety privilege behind.

When it comes right down to it, your fight or flight chapter of your gender workbook needs to be filled out quite quickly. I know several transgender women who carry weapons in their purses for protection. Even though I was infantry trained on weapons in the Army, I choose not to arm myself because of the fear of shooting myself. My wife Liz and I have talked about the possibility of buying pepper spray as a deterrent, but we just don’t really go anywhere where we could be in danger of using it. So, we have not acted on any moves to arm ourselves yet. Plus, Liz went through some intensive martial arts training several years ago which she could use. There is a plan for us to use if we have to fight in an increasingly toxic world in which I am just about totally worthless at the age of seventy-five and with mobility issues. Ironically, I have experienced yet another full circle moment in my life as I have gone from a fight-first mentality, all the way to a flight first priority. I guess it comes with the territory of being a senior citizen transgender woman.

Whatever the case is for you, please be careful in whatever path you choose to go as a transfeminine person. Just use your new feminine wiles to help you stay safe just knowing it is a possibly toxic world depending upon where you live. I have an on-line acquaintance who lives in rural Tennessee who has been slowly coming out in the recent months, and by sheer willpower, she has chosen to stay and fight for her existence. It takes a lot of courage to say to one of her neighbors who threatened her job by saying she was transgender, to get over it, but she finally did. And she still kept her job, so it is possible to fight instead of fleeing. As I said, just be careful if you do it.

I think the worse bigots to fight are the Bible thumpers who want to quote scripture to you. I am far from a biblical scholar and can never remember a rebuttal to use when and if it ever happens to me. It never has because I would have to fight not to flee the situation.

 

Deadly Serious

 

Image from Nicholas COMTE
on UnSplash

Looking back at my long (50 year) gender journey, I wonder now how I became so deadly serious as I considered myself more than a casual cross dresser.

I came a long way from just experimenting with my mom’s clothing to where I am today. As I live fulltime as a transgender woman. Many days, if I have the time to even think about it, I wonder how I went about connecting my dots during my travel from the male to female gender. But, before I go any farther, I should mention two things. First of all, I have nothing against cross dressers, as I spent too many years being one to attempt to put myself up on any sort of gender pedestal. Secondly, I don’t consider myself a female in the strictest sense of the word. That is why you might notice I use the transgender or transfeminine word more frequently. In addition, I strongly feel the woman word (and man) are both socialized terms as many females or males never make it to being true women or men. Now, since I got all of that out of the way, what does that have to do with being deadly serious about anything. Not much, but I always like to clear the air.

In my life, I can only remember being deadly serious about two things, the first was following an often-vague path to my own version of womanhood and the other was Army basic training. In the Army, your secondary MOS or job classification is infantry which means I received the same training as everyone else who were going to Vietnam for a very uncertain future. So, the bottom line was, I took my military training deadly seriously. Just in case I needed it later. Fortunately, I never did. Naturally, pursuing my feminine path was destined to be just the opposite.

It seemed, the more I tried to do as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, the more I wanted to do. I forced myself away from the easy gender experiences I was trying, into a true interaction with the world and my challenges became much more serious but not quite to the deadly stage. I think the reason was, I was still experimenting with people as strangers. Not like somebody I would see more than once. I was naïve and thought people would not remember me for what I was, a man in drag or a dress. When other people began to see me repeatedly it was good for both of us because I needed to up my presentation game and quit changing wigs every time I went out. To succeed in the new world I was creating, people needed to see I was deadly serious about being accepted in the new mainstream venues I was going to when I gave up on going to the gay venues I tried.

More importantly, I lived through all the bumps and bruises I suffered as I silently fought back against the gender bigots I faced. Some of which were not so silent as I attempted to enter the so-called women only spaces such as restrooms. One night, I was called a pervert by an irate cisgender woman before I backed her down. She was the one I had to threaten with LGBTQ sanctions on her business if she did not leave me alone. Which she did.

The more comfortable I became in my transgender world, the more deadly serious I became about doing more. Soon I was to the point where I was like a runaway train heading down a one-way track as my manhood was coming to an end. One of the final acts of severing what was left of him came when I was approved for and started gender affirming hormones or HRT. My body took to the new hormones flawlessly to the point when I wondered why I hadn’t been on them all along.

The reason was relatively simple, as the changes from the HRT would preclude me from going back to the male life I had worked so hard to establish. Would I be deadly serious enough to risk all I had built up such as a long-term marriage, a family and friends plus a very good job which I could have never transitioned on.

Finally, after years of introspection, I made the decision to go as far as I could without surgery into a transgender life. With all I had to lose at the age of sixty, I decided “playtime” was over, and it was time to be deadly serious again and never look back as I had reached my dream of living in a transfeminine world.

 

It is Just a Phase?

Image from Claudia Love on UnSplash.

Have you ever been accused of just going through a phase?

Drawing from several comments from other transgender women and trans men, including myself, I have heard us being accused of just going through a phase when it comes to being transgender.

There was a time in my life when I seriously hoped I was just going through a phase when it came to my love of dressing in feminine clothing and makeup. I wanted it to be just an innocent hobby I could put down and walk away from at any time. As years went by, I found I couldn’t replace my so-called hobby with anything else in my life. I did the worse possible thing, I tried to internalize my feelings hoping I could somehow ignore them, and the phase would go away. Of course, it never did.

I always thought my mom knew I was trying on her clothes and putting on her makeup but never said anything because she thought I was going through a phase. Obviously, she was wrong! She never had the courage to call me out on what I was doing until I brought it up to her in a very ill-fated attempt to come out when I was discharged from the Army many years later. She quickly rejected my attempt to clear the air by volunteering psychiatric care. Of course, I refused her offer because I knew I was not mentally ill. I just wanted to live a transfeminine life on my terms. We never mentioned it again for the rest of her life but at least I tried to explain my deepest secret to her.

The phase idea came to be one idea I always ran from. I did not feel deep down my feelings were a phase but still was afraid to face the truth. I ended up moving many times and trying many new jobs just to try to outrun my gender feelings. It all was exhausting to my already fragile mental health. In fact, my initial gender therapist diagnosed me as being bi-polar when all along I thought I was just terribly depressed when I never thought I could achieve my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman. I was depressed when I considered the extreme distance I still had to travel, just not as bad.

As I still managed to progress along my gender pathway, I still encountered phases I needed to go through. The major one was what I called my teen girl dressing years. As I survived my urge to stuff my oversize male body into skimpy fashions, I was quickly laughed back into my closet several times before I learned the proper way to attempt to blend in with what other women my age were wearing. Easily, it was the most difficult phase I needed to deal with. Mainly because I was so stubborn.

It turned out the stubbornness I possessed was just what I needed to keep going. Deep down I knew I was in the middle of one of the most complex journeys a human can take, and I could be successful if I tried hard enough. It all meant I needed to earn my way through the feminine gatekeepers I faced to be allowed to play in their sandbox.  I was petrified when I needed to actually begin to talk one on one with other women. Very early on, I was frightened of their reaction when they learned I was not a cis-gendered woman. This was before I learned my path to womanhood was as valid as theirs. I just came to mine along a different path. Amazingly to me, the doors were opened to me, and I was permitted to play behind the gender curtain.

It was around this time when I began one of the most powerful phases of my life, when I made the correct decision to begin gender affirming hormones, or HRT. I say powerful because the new hormones I was prescribed by a doctor turned out to be everything I dreamed of and more. If anything, else, the hormones proved my whole life was not a phase. Now I felt as if I was arriving home in the deepest sense. If you compared my hormonal life as a circle, I was completing mine. The effects of HRT made me feel whole as a transfeminine woman. I could feel deeper, be more emotional and enjoy the world as never before.

I proved, more than ever before, my life was not a phase, I was much more than just a man putting on a dress. I proved all along I was a woman putting on a male face and clothes all along. At the least, I could rest easily knowing what my gender issue was all along. Not a phase but my life.

 

 

Writing Your Own Script

Carla Lewis

 It is difficult enough to go through life trying to live up to the expectations of others around you. 

In my case, and maybe you too, you struggled under the burden of living up to the demanding expectations of a male world. Perhaps, you achieved some sort of success in the male world as a method of self-survival.  Bullies were everywhere and ready to pounce and you had to be ready. I used the world of sports to hide the fact in truth I wanted to be a woman as I progressed through life. An example was, when I was playing football on the high school football team, I would stare longingly at the cheerleaders who were practicing nearby. Of course, it was my deep, dark secret about how badly I wanted to be one of them. 

About that time, destiny set in for me and it was time for me to step up and serve in the military. Little did I know, later in life, all transgender military members would be banned from serving by a self-serving draft dodger.  Or as trans woman "Carla Lewis" famously said, "I fought for your right to hate me." Now, it is even worse. I fought for your right to ban me.

Regardless, I kept my head down and served my time in the Army. I never labored under the impression the experience would make me a better "man." Looking back, as I was writing a new script in life, the entire process made me a better woman. Why, may you ask? Mainly because I was taught in basic training what extremes I could endure and adjust to in the military. Plus, I learned to always look ahead in life and not backward which would serve me well as I became a serious cross dresser. When I hit the rough spots which always come when you try to cross the gender border, I used my military lessons to always go back to the drawing board, try harder, and move forward. 

When I did move forward into a new scary, yet exciting life, writing my script became so much more intense. I needed to just to get by. For example, what would I do when I needed to put the carefully crafted feminine presentation I put together over the years into motion. The need to move like a woman and communicate with other women were and are prime examples. To make matters worse, I had no workbook to work from. I was completely on my own and made my share of mistakes before I began to be successful.

As you progress with your own life's script, adding being transgender into it adds a certain amount of intrigue. Especially, these days when we are under attack from so many politicians.

Following the Path

 

Image from the 
Jessie Hart
Archives

The path I followed as I chased my gender truth at times turned out to be very difficult. 

It all started with having a very unaccepting family environment and continued from there. Similar to so many of you, I needed to wait for just the right time to pull out my small stash of girls clothes and cross dress. Because of that my available times to dress up and do my best to follow my new path were few and far between. Plus, the signs I desperately were looking for were distant and difficult to read. When I came to gender cross roads, I was having a hard time figuring out which one to follow. 

This was all happening during my pre teen years so I was confused enough about my life to start with. On top of the usual questions kids had growing up, I had added problems wondering what gender I was, all the way to my sexuality. I felt as if I was attracted to girls during puberty but the how I was attracted became the problem. I was facing the sexuality issue of desiring women because I wanted to have sex with them when all I really wanted was to be them. To make matters worse, I was extremely shy around people I didn't know. Especially girls. None of it was making my path any easer to follow.

To make matters worse, when I was in high school, the political powers to be decided to dramatically expand the United States presence in Southeast Asia or the Vietnam War in particular. On top of all my other worries I needed to add possibly being drafted to serve in the military. Not a good feeling to carry with me all those years. How could I possibly serve if I didn't want to be a man at all. It turned out, I didn't have the choice after I stayed in college for four years, I was drafted anyhow and my path became very clouded. 

The best I could, I went down my path adding three years in the Army to my life experiences. At the least, I had more knowledge of the world to base my gender decisions off of. Or, at least I thought so. Not long after I was discharged from the military, I went through the life altering experience of having witnessed the birth of my first and only child, a daughter who turned out to be my biggest supporter to this day.

As I was building a rather successful life as a man, I also began to explore other cross roads on my gender path. Possibly the biggest one was when I started to think of myself as more than just a casual cross dresser and more of the newly minted transgender individual. Most certainly just thinking I was trans rather than a guy in a dress petrified me. To make up for all my gender fears, I did my best to hide my true authentic self from the world. When I did, I kept hitting more and more dead ends on my path. 

Years later, as I was stumbling along attempting to find my way, I sustained so many bumps and bruises I could take it no longer. I made the effort to see a doctor and be approved for HRT and all of a sudden my path became more of a highway to my future. I guess it was more like an interstate as I was able to easily pass more and more milestones on my journey. 

It certainly took me long enough to get to my destination but once I did, it was all worth it.

A Busy Morning on the Computer

 Thanks to the virus, almost all of my interaction these days comes through my Cyrstih@yahoo.com email plus comments here to the blog or on Facebook. 

This morning I received a couple of pleasant surprises. The biggest one was finding out I was one of the nominee's for the Greater Dayton Rainbow Alliance veterans awards. Needless to say I was humbled and flattered. Along the way too, I had to reach way back in my rusty noggin to remember some of the service details they asked for. I had to pull back facts from the 1972-1975 days I was in the Army during the Vietnam War. The organization wanted to know such things as awards I received, rank etc. I knew I had four award medals to wear on my uniform but I even had to Google Viet era military medals to see what they were called. Bottom line was with a little help from Google, I was able to shake off the dust and answer the questions. 

The other significant happening this morning was when I was confirmed for a virtual conference on LGBTQ aging later on in October in close by Dayton, Ohio. I even will receive a small book for going. Of course I will pass along any relevant details to all of you!

Finally, of less significance but no less importance is the school group (10th grade) which is forming a LGBTQ group. They have asked for outside help and I responded. Now the big question is, will there be school at all due to rising virus case concerns. Or, will it all go on line. The good news is that so far my advanced age hasn't scared them off. 

I can only say, now I need a nap!