My Gender Timing was Everything

 

Image from Danny G
on UnSplash. 

For me, timing was everything when it came to completing my male to female gender transition. Plus, there was no way possible to think I would take nearly a half of century to do it.

The problem was, I never considered the extra layers of a ciswoman’s life rather than what a man had to go through to live. Just having to put up with a man in a relationship would have been enough for me to drive me into a lesbian relationship. Although I never really understood why more men don’t want to accept trans women because we understand so much about the way they think because after all, we had to live as a man for a while. But that is a long, drawn-out story to be saved for another time.

In many ways, timing comes down to everything when you decide to jump out of your closet and enter the world. Just a few things to consider are what would happen to you if you were out as your authentic feminine self and ran into someone you know. It happened to me one time long ago when I was married to my second wife. I was happily following my shopping routines in the small Ohio town we lived in when I parked in a parking lot, slid out of my car and right into the on-coming face of my wife’s boss. As I panicked and headed the other way as fast as I could, all I could hope for was he did not recognize me in my wig, makeup, mini skirt and matching leotard top. Fortunately, as I got a quick glimpse of his face, he showed no reaction to me at all.

I thought the experience was behind me until a week or so later, we were invited to a party at their house. At the party, her boss casually brought up how he had seen this big woman at a big box store he was shopping at the other day.  As I ignored the comment the best I could, I saw my wife suddenly glaring at me from across the room, and I knew what she was thinking. It was me; her boss saw that day. It took me a long time to live that one down because I was never supposed to leave the house as a trans woman unless I was somehow supervised.

Timing kept me living on the edge with my job too. What if my “hobby” of being a cross dresser was discovered? I knew I would not be able to function the way my male self-had all his life. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place on several personal fronts. I was becoming increasingly dependent on my lessons I was teaching myself as a woman and keeping my personal life together. All I could do was keep on working towards my dream of living as a transfeminine person. As I progressed along my often-rocky gender path, all I could do was look for a quick exit. But I found out, exits were as rare as on a long-deserted interstate highway.

It was not until I reached my mid-fifties, did I begin to see the faint out-lines of a possible gender exit ahead for me. All I needed to do was time my male exit correctly so I could cover the main living basics such as spousal support (or nonsupport), a job to support name changes, all the way to all the identification forms I would need such as a new driver’s license. For me, the name change was the most challenging because I needed to go before a very conservative judge I even knew before as a man. Surprisingly, he just smiled and approved my paperwork and name change and the rest was basically easy. So timing on that exit went smoothly with no roadblocks.

Other exits were not so forgiving for me. Such as what was I going to do about a job at that time. I had just closed my restaurant and was essentially broke, and I needed to find a job fairly quickly to support myself. I guess timing was everything and I took an easy exit into a job that I hated. I took the job anyway and managed to keep it for the couple of years I needed to work to claim my early retirement and keep myself afloat by selling vintage collections that my deceased wife and I had put together over the years. During this time of my life, there were other main detours which were difficult to navigate.

That was when my current wife Liz stepped in along with a huge push from destiny to erase any doubts in my mind that I was making the right decisions. I can not forget to mention this was also the time when I was able to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones and take another smooth exit away from my old male life. Putting him in my rearview mirror was the best move I had ever made in my life. I had a new me to go with my new name, and I was ready to go by the time I hit the age of sixty-two. I did not even have to revisit another job exit and just totally retired and moved in with Liz. Where I still am nearly a decade later.

Timing was everything for me, and even though it took me longer than I ever expected to reach my dream, the trip was worth it and I managed to even stay on a very rocky gender road full of roadblocks without wrecking.

 

 

 

Following your North Star

 

Image from Heidi Fin 
on UnSplash. 

I define my own personal “North Star” as the basic direction I had to go to be truthful to myself. Many times, I found how valuable my star was when I was lost in my own transgender woods and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Along my path, there were many times I lost sight of my North Star and needed to regain it before I could continue. As I did, I spent many a very dark night searching for my life’s truth of wanting to shed my male existence for a feminine one. I would not recommend what I went through to anyone because it was a long, lonely journey. Even still, I was fortunate in that I seemed to always have just the right amount of gender euphoria to propel me forward. It did not matter if I was just gazing at my image in the mirror and thinking I was a pretty girl, or shopping for groceries in our local market, something possibly positive came along for me to see my star and wondered if it was still within reach.

Sometimes, life was cruel and dealt me roadblocks which kept me from following my dreams such as the unplanned birth of my daughter. Which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. At the time of her birth in 1976 I was very much out of control and needed something to ground me. Much more than the excessive amount of alcohol I was drinking at the time. All the beer did was help me to lose sight of my North Star until I could regroup and find it. I did not learn until much later how alcohol was a depressant and did not mix well with my already depressed personality. Even though I was dazzled by the miracle of birth and the rapid growth into a little person by my daughter, life was still not good as I was sliding by in a haze most of the time and losing track once again of my North Star.

Somehow, I was able to emerge from this part of my life on my feet and ready to search for my truth again. But not enough to accept what I was finding. Even though that bright light of a transfeminine existence seemed close enough for me to reach out and grab it, I just kept denying its existence and taking the route of least resistance and was existing the best I could as a part-time cross-dresser.

When I changed professions and entered the professional restaurant business, I developed a love/hate relationship with what I was doing. I loved the extra money and advancement it brought me but hated the hours and extra pressure the job brought with it. I guess the good part also was that the new profession cleared the way for me to reset my existence and locate my North Star again.

Once I located my star, I had to finally face the reality of where it was leading me. Gone were the evenings or days of going out into the world thinking I was nothing more than an innocent man trying to look like a cisgender woman. In, was a new reality that I wanted much more than to look like a woman. I was a woman and needed to see if I could live my truth, I knew all along but refused to face. Even though I was terrified of doing it, I was advancing down my gender path, and the skies were clear so I could see my star and have an idea of where I wanted to go. Better yet, once I was passing my gender mileposts of very much socializing with cisgender women as an equal in my mind, there was no going back.

As I did it, I made certain I was trying to cover all my basics such as what I would do to live in a new transgender world I dreamed of and in reality, had never seen. Such as how I would support myself because I knew my current male job would never support a mid-gender stream male to female transition. At that time, I was still several years away from an early Social Security retirement, so I needed to be careful of what I decided to do. What I decided on was a low impact non pressure job I could work just to get by for the time I needed until I retired. I found that was impossible and I had to backtrack into fast food again and work a job I hated until I could quit and pursue my star.

By this time, I had paid a lot of dues playing in the girls’ sandbox and I had a very good idea of what I was facing if I went full time into a transgender world. I don’t think it is possible to ever capture your North Star, but I do think you can come close to living it. There are many paths to get there, and no one is right. Some transition on their own while others have help like I did. I was always a social critter, and my process happened to work for me but yours could be different. Plus, destiny can often alter your path to following your personal star. Do not panic until you find it again and revive your journey.

Remember, you are in uncharted gender territory, often without a compass. When it happens to you, you need to just hitch up your big girl panties and do it.

 

 

 

Who Won the War

 

I call this a fake image of me.
Pre Hormonal padding and hair.

Relax, this post is not another of my political rants!

As my life enters its senior stages, I have the luxury of looking back and wondering what the hell happened. Or, who won the gender battles and who ultimately won the war.

Even though the cards were stacked against her to start (and continued for years), my feminine side managed to hold her own enough to survive. Which was amazing when I looked at the beginnings of our life and what she had to put up with. To start with, I was born into a very male dominated family with a highly competitive nature to contend with, so I always had to be ready for a battle of some sort. For the longest time, I would have to accept defeat at the hands of my brother who was always the better athlete and I would quickly run and hide behind my dresses and makeup. When I did, my feelings were soothed and I was ready to try to compete and win.

One way or another, I found the only winning I was doing was when I was a girl in front of the mirror. The mirror kept telling me I was pretty, and that kept me going. I was far from winning any gender war within myself, but I was managing to tread water and stay afloat…barely because I had no where else to turn. My desire to be a girl was shutting me off from the world. What happened then was, I grew tired of just presenting in front of the mirror and wanted to test how well I did in front of the world. The whole scenario forced me into major battles once again.

This time, I found amazingly I could compete in the world as a transgender woman and I did not have to accept defeat every time I went out in public. Maybe I was finding my home gender after all. I think at this time too, I was battle hardened from all the defeats I had sustained in my male life, and it was easier for me to continue to move forward.

As life started to change, I wanted to explore the consequences of what I was doing more and more. Then my battles became more serious and far reaching which led my male self and my second wife to panic. They suddenly realized I was becoming a more accomplished trans woman and could possibly make it after all to my dream of living a full-time life as a transfeminine person. For her part, my wife kept telling me I made a terrible woman, which I learned later was true. Simply because I had not spent enough time behind the gender curtain to claim my womanhood, yet, but I was coming alarmingly close enough to find out what she was talking about to set her alarms off. And my male self, not to be outdone was doing his part too by relaying all the new jobs and moves he was making into a personal success story.

Between the two of them, they made formidable gender foes, and I needed to become better at exploring who I really was. Whenever I could get off work, I attended cross dresser-transgender mixers, both large and small to determine if I could do what I saw other successful people living on the gender frontier. By doing so I could see my major battle lines being drawn up ahead, and I was like a runaway train headed for them. Major decisions were coming up in my life if I like them or not because I had spent too much time and effort in my explorations to turn tail and run again. I had nowhere to go this time because I had blocked all my exits. All my skirts, dresses, heels and makeup were ready for action.

By this time, my male self was in pure panic mode knowing that his ace card of military service had backfired on him. He thought somehow an ultra-macho experience that Army infantry basic training would make me more of a man when in fact, the whole experience made me a stronger person and believer in myself. When push came to shove and the times were darkest, I could make a decision and live with it. Even if was the decision that would effectively be his final battle and win the war for his feminine counterpart.

Also, I was coming up with a clearer idea of why I had struggled with who I truly was for all those years. I had blindly followed the idea that I was a man cross dressing as a parttime woman when, in fact, I was a woman cross dressing as a parttime man who happened to be married to a strong ciswoman. Plus, he was the primary wage earner in the family. Covering all those gender tracks was exceedingly difficult and put a tremendous strain on his mental health but he kept on fighting the gender battles against all odds. Out of some misguided idea that he had to. It was such a relief when he surrendered and gave up the remainder of his clothes to a local thrift store. The only thing he saved was his Army uniform which had taught me so much about life and winning,

When he realized he had lost, there was no time for wild celebrations. Only time for serious contemplation of what was next and how my victorious trans woman would react. It turned out, she took her win quietly and set out to build a life she always knew was possible. A life which was enhanced even further when she was approved for therapy and HRT through the Veterans Administration. Finally, she had the help she needed to match her internal needs with her external appearance. Which is the subject for another blog post altogether.

Regardless, victory was sweet as my old male self-faded into the past. She lost many battles, but ultimately won the war.

 

If You Dream it, Can you Do It

 

Image from Alaric Duan
on UnSplash.

Dreams can be a motivational tool or a cruel mistake to follow.

Often dreaming it and doing it are two vastly different things. As I always mention, some of the most serious and reoccurring dreams I experienced were those which I was a pretty girl and those dreams carried over into real life with me wanting to be a woman when I became older. For years and years, it seemed to be an impossible dream. As it was impossible to see the future.

Initially, the future just looked bleak to me when my cards told me I would be a male for life. I was born into it, now I had to get over it. I can honestly say I worked hard at being the best man I could. Even to point where I did not appreciate the toxic male behavior, I was witnessing around other males I was with.  I am sure now, I was feeling how my feminine side was reacting to the spectacle I was witnessing. It certainly affected me when I first encountered toxic males when I entered the world as a transgender woman. I was paranoid and considered myself an easy target for them. Still, my dream would not go away, and I continued along my path to gender freedom. Sometimes, my life was like I had climbed a big hill and from the summit I could see my dream life in the distance. If only I could get there and was it just another impossible dream.

In the meantime, I became as good as I could on leading a life which included a heavy dose of male status quo. In other words, I was doing all the right things possible to maintain a proper male life, while at the same time attempting to still see if my dream was a possibility. There were just too many gender variables to ignore. Such as spouse, family, friends and employment. I just had to see if my dream could ever become a reality, and if it could, how would I do it. As I was heavily embedded in the male culture and it seemed as if I was getting deeper in over my head every day. I became so sick and tired of having two people compete for my life and every time I did something as a man, having my woman want to do it too. There was no escape, even on vacation when I was trying to run from myself. All that happened was I would grow frustrated with my situation and ruin the whole vacation with my wife when she kept asking what was wrong. There was no way I could tell her the truth and that I rather be spending my time as a woman.

Until I made it out into the world as a novice transfeminine person, did I begin to see I could indeed have a chance to make it to my ultimate goal of joining the society of cisgender women as much of an equal as I could manage. Or would I be roundly rejected and my dream shattered. Of course, during this time of my life, I needed to really consider what I wanted (or needed) to do. Happily, I discovered there was a place in the world for trans women like me if I approached my dream the right way. I decided to try to slow my life down so I could see the big picture. What the big picture showed me was there indeed was a path to my dream.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to quit obsessing about worrying so much about my appearance and start concentrating on me the best I could. I had spent years doing appearance and achieved all my goals for presenting as a woman. Then it was time for the me who was waiting for her chance to shine for all those years could come out and not  to be outdone. She did not disappoint and she quickly surpassed what my male self-had attempted to do for all those years and proved she was much more than a dream. She emerged as a real person who had paid her dues. I was not the prettiest girl in the room, but I could be the nicest and let my personality rule.

Because of several fortunate events, I was able to see my dream up close and seize it. I am sure if you asked that kid gazing at a girl in the mirror who was him if he would ever make it to living his dream of living as a woman, he would have said you were crazy. He had no way of knowing all the ups and downs and twists and turns gender dysphoria would take him during his life. If nothing else, it made life interesting and taught me a lot about human nature.

For me, dreaming it was doing it. Mainly because I had no other dreams to sidetrack me. I was very much a live and let live person and let life come to me. Except of course, when it came to my gender issues which took years to overcome.

Being humans, we all have different dreams, and I hope whatever your dream is, that you realize it and make sure it is not a nightmare, Surely, if you do your research, it won’t be and you can live your version of yourself as a transgender woman.

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mor Shani

Lately, it has occurred to me that possibly my posts have been a little negative when describing my journey along my gender path. Sure, my trip had its ups and downs but overall, it was a labor of love. Gender euphoria always seemed to come along at just the right time to keep me centered on my dream of living a transfeminine life. Finally meaning to me that transitioning male to female was the only way to live for me.

From that point forward, I just had to figure out a way to do it. I knew I loved the lure of women’s fashion and makeup, and how it all changed around me on a seasonal basis. So far from the male fashion I was used to. Instead of just putting on a coat when the weather became cooler outside. Now I needed to choose between leggings, boots and fuzzy sweaters to keep me warm and stylish.  Furthermore, I loved the concept of seasonal change and the desirability of going through my wardrobe to see what could stay and what had to go to the thrift store.

Even though, fashion and makeup remained a priority for me, a new love interest set in when I began to explore the world more as a transgender woman. Whole new gender vistas opened up for me relatively quickly as I needed to put my static mirror version of my trans woman self into motion. It became a labor of love to go out and start meeting new people. As I did, I came to the realization that most strangers I met did not mistake me for a cisgender woman, but on the other hand, I could be quite satisfied to be recognized as myself…a woman from a different background. I think in a couple of the venues I became a regular in; I became their token transgender woman to prove their overall diversity. Whatever the case, I loved the extra attention I was getting. Especially from the ciswomen I met who were basically curious what I was doing in their world.

All the on hands experience in the world I was getting helped me to want more and leave my male life behind. As I always say, the gender change concept seemed to be so natural for me as I went forward. The only problems came from wondering what I was going to do about all the male baggage I carried with me. I discovered I was much more than a man trying to put on a pretty face, I was a full-fledged person trying to build a life from scratch. All the nuances of doing so extended way psst making sure my shoes matched my purse, all the way to wondering how I was going to handle the woman sitting next to me when and if she tried to make conversation. In a very short period of time, I became used to the challenge, and it became part of my life and yes, I loved it.

As I increasingly loved this new life I was living, I was able to balance between the two main binary genders. Before it became too much to handle mentally for me. It became increasingly evident that if I was going to survive as a person, I was going to have to choose one of the genders pulling on me. At that point my lifetime of loving everything feminine kicked in for me. Long ago, I had realized I was much more than a casual crossdresser and made it a love affair to learn more about my dream of being a woman on my own terms. Which meant I did not necessarily need all the extensive facial or gender realignment surgeries. I just needed to present well enough in the world as a trans woman to be left alone. Mainly because of the circle of ciswomen friends who accepted me as an equal, I was able to achieve my goal. Even with the added surprise of finding a woman who loved me the way I was.

The tragedy probably was I did not realize the depth of the love affair I was having until much later in life. I would have preferred to have spent more time living as a transgender woman in a world I created. Rather than sharing it with a man I started a life with and had very little control over.

I will never know (of course) what life I missed and maybe the course of destiny I was on would have stayed the same anyhow. Just being able to acknowledge the lifelong love affair I was on is just enough to rationalize where I ended up. So if you are just starting or contemplating starting your journey, try to look down deep inside of yourself to see where your love affair has taken you. It may save you problems later on your journey.

 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Theme

 

Image from Alexsandra King
on UnSplash. 

Reflections on a theme could really go several ways.

The first one goes all the way back to my earliest days of gazing in the mirror at my new girl-like figure. Since I did not have much to work with as far as clothes and makeup went, I needed to use a lot of my imagination when I looked at myself. All I remember is, every article of clothing I could wear was cherished and I hoped I did not destroy it and clue my mom into someone had been into her clothes.

On the other hand, makeup was a little easier to hide, since mom had a whole drawer full of used makeup and samples for me to experiment with until I arrived at the point where I did not think I looked like a circus clown doing drag. As I said, imagination played heavily into my girlish pursuits back in those days until one fact came in loud and clear. Just dressing like a girl fell far short of meeting my expectations of how I wanted to feel. More than just looking like a girl, I wanted to know how it would be to feel like one. It turned out to be an idea I would carry with me throughout my life. Little did I know I would be writing about the same theme some fifty years later as I still struggle to understand all the aspects of the gender dysphoria I went through before I just gave up and went to my dominant side which was OK because in her own way my mom was a dominant woman and had to be to survive in the world of men she was in.

I guess you could say mom was the first feminine role model I had. As I reflected on her, I saw a person who worked hard to get a college degree during the depression years then ran off with a man her parents probably did not totally approve of. In other words, she was strong-willed and often got her way. Except for the daughter, she never knew she had who was watching more than just the way she applied her makeup. I was watching how she navigated the world. In my own way, I went through my own great depression as I learned how difficult it was going to be to be a transfeminine person. Long before the term was ever used.

During this time, I spent a lot of time reflecting on who I was and why I was this way. Surely, I was one of a very few boys around me who wanted to be a girl. One of the many ideas I reflected on was the fact that I was simply afraid to go out and compete with the other boys. Which even though was probably true to an extent, I knew I had to do it anyway, so I had no choice but to make a half-hearted attempt at doing boy things to throw gender doubters off my path when they realized what an effeminate boy I really was. Since I was not athletic enough to hang with the jocks or smart enough to hang with the brains, I ended up taking some sort of a middle path with a group of troublemakers which at least kept me away from the bullies. Sadly, there was no group for boys who wanted to be girls.

As I stayed in the mirror for years and years, I built up quite the love for my reflection as I went along. So much so that I caught my reflection lying to me. No matter how ridiculous I looked, the reflection I was seeing told me I looked great which hurt my overall feminine approach to life, out of the mirror. It was not until I gathered all my courage and began to explore the world as a novice crossdresser ot transgender woman, did my reflection begin to change. What happened was, for better or for worse, I traded out my home mirror for one in public. As strangers began to notice me, I very quickly received feedback on my reflection from them. Was I convincing the world that I was a serious transgender woman and not some sort of a joke or someone up to no good that was all the craze back in those days on television and in the movies.

All of this reflection on a theme quickly became very important to me since I had finally made the move to get out of my closet and see the world through the eyes of a very serious trans woman. Soon I reached the point of no return and just had to rely on my home mirror to apply my makeup and fix my hair. The rest was up to me to do in the public’s eye, where my true reflection always was. My theme always should have been I was a feminine based individual all of my life with strong ties to woman role models. My goal never was to be the, “Pretty, pretty princess” as my wife called me. I was just going through a phase so get to a point where I could become a strong independent trans woman. I did not know at the time how much the world would change and I would need every bit of my new self to survive under a corrupt president who wants to erase the LGBTQ community.

Now, when I see myself in the mirror, the only reflection on a theme that I see is me. I am a survivor of my internal gender dysphoria wars and external problems along the way too. Some were interesting, some I learned from and most were quickly forgotten as life intervened. All I know is, I would never have found out if I had been stuck in my reflection on a theme. Which was being a woman. Being stubborn enough to keep pushing ahead was what kept me going. Deep down, I knew I was right.

 

 

 

 

Running...Always Running

 

Image from Filip Mroz 
on UnSplash. 

During my life, I have never thought of myself as a runner of any sort. I have never completed any marathons, or long distance runs anywhere except the Army in basic training when I had to.

In basic, all I really learned about running was to never try to look behind you and see how fast if anyone was gaining on you. Mainly because I was never the fastest person running and I was trying to compete against the clock. Not another person. Lessons which came back and helped me later in life when I set out to battle my gender dysphoria. I would have been so much better off if I had never looked back to see who was chasing me.

For the longest time, I took up too much of my mental universe either worrying about what someone else thought about me or worse yet, feeling extreme jealousy over the way another woman looked. I discovered that I was just wasting my time when I spent too much time or effort on both. Which I was doing. There was no way possible that everyone was going to accept me because no matter what I was doing, there seemed to be to be someone else on my wavelength to tell me something was wrong with what I was doing. And as far as being jealous of the way another ciswoman looked, I discovered later in life that there had not been a woman born yet who did not find some sort of flaw in the way she looked. My job was to do the best I could and work with what I had to present my best transfeminine to the world.

Instead of turning around and wasting time and energy watching who was gaining on me, to succeed I needed to throw all my limited resources towards filling out my gender workbook as fast as possible. If someone did like me because I was a transgender woman, that was their problem not mine.

The main problem I needed to solve about me running from my problems was all the moving and job changes I was putting myself and my family through. Even though all the job interviews and moving around was exhausting, I used the process to run from my inner most feelings…that I wanted to quit being a male and live a feminine life. Behind every job move that I made, there was the ulterior motive of wanting to make my life back then as a cross dresser potentially easier. Ultimately, that is the reason I made moves from places like my conservative hometown in Ohio all the way to New York City where I thought I could find a much more liberal existence.

Finally, I went nearly full circle and landed back in my old hometown, but the difference was this time I would be much closer to Columbus, Ohio where I had contacts in the cross dressing-transgender community. By doing so, I even managed to land a much better job which I had worked for years to get. For once, it seemed I was putting my running life behind me, but I really wasn’t. Not until I finally was able to face myself about my true lifelong issues such as (you guessed it) why I wanted to be a transgender woman. To do so, I still had the usual obstacles in the way such as what was I ever going to do about the twenty year plus marriage I was in and the great job I had worked so hard to get, Stopping all the running I was doing was never going to be easy but I kept painting myself into corners I could not easily escape from when on the occasions I was successful in my feminine presentation led me on to wanting more.

More meant taking an increased number of chances with a male life I should have been satisfied with. All my plans were coming together except for the most important one. Except for the most important one I had been running from my entire life. What was I going to do about my increasingly relevant feminine life. The stress I was under became tremendous. Afterall, I was trying my best to juggle two binary genders at the same time. Lucky or not, I was still able to keep most of my feminine life a secret from most of my acquaintances and I continued on as long as I could before the running had to come to a complete halt.

During my life, I was able to only make and keep a very few male friends and as destiny would have it, they all passed away (along with my wife) in a short span of time. At that point, there was no reason to keep running, so I was able to stop and take the easy way out for a change. I chose going all out into a transfeminine lifestyle and never look back with the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

When I stopped all my running and faced the truth, I had been avoiding all along, the feeling I had was euphoric and one I had never experienced before. My next step was not to hold it against myself that I did not stop running much earlier in my life and take the lessons I learned about not looking back in the Army. I never knew what happiness was until I did it.

 

Solving the Gender Puzzle

Christine Jorgensen. 

Many times, during my life, I have looked at my gender issues as having a big puzzle to solve.

From my earliest age of recollection, I can remember thinking that something about me was really wrong, but I could not put my finger on what the problem exactly was. Most likely, it was not until I began to have a fascination with my mom’s clothes did, I began to discover what the puzzle I had was really all about. At that point did I embark on a lifetime journey or path to figure it out. I had no idea of all the twists and turns my path would take me on until I could finally put the pieces of my gender puzzle together.

Perhaps the biggest part of the puzzle to me was the fact that I was born into a male world with no way out in sight. I lived in a rural area around the same kids growing up from kindergarten through ninth grade, so I figured no one else had the same puzzle to solve that I did. Plus, in the pre-internet days, when I was growing up, there was no easy way to access any outside information. Especially none as radical as having anything to do with gender issues. As close as I could come was sneaking a look at all the “National Enquirer” type trash rags at a friend of mine’s aunt’s small neighborhood convenience store. Every once in a while, they would run a sensationalized story about “Christine Jorgensen” or another G. I. who wanted to change his/her sex. I remember the first time I saw one of the stories, I was hooked and could not wait to go back and look for more stories.

In some ways, just looking at these stories made finding pieces to my puzzle even more difficult to do. There was just no way I could ever see myself ever arriving at the point where I could go through such drastic measures to be a woman. I would just have to rely on my dreams to give me hope of ever living my life the way I wanted. Which of course was that of a transfeminine person. Hell, the word did not even exist back then in the sixties and having any sort of gender dysphoria was still considered to be a form of mental illness. Any hope of piecing together my gender puzzle would somehow just have to wait. For a bigger problem called military duty.

As I entered my formative years of high school, the Vietnam War was still escalating and the government had to establish a military draft to fill the ranks of unwilling participants, which included me. With all the stress hanging over me, I went off to college to at least prolong the draft position I had for four more years. Surely, the war would be over by then, but it wasn’t and it was my time to serve in the Army. I had the dual problems of not wanting to experience a military career from what it might do to me along with the problems I would have expressed any of my gender issues which I was just starting to do when I was drafted. My one certainty was miniskirts on soldiers would be frowned upon in Army basic training. Any work on my gender puzzle would have to wait for three long years.

Three years later, I survived my military service much better than I ever thought possible. I got to travel the world on Uncle Sam’s dime and even was able to experience the beautiful, exotic “Lady Boys” of Thailand when I was stationed there for a year. Even though I was fascinated with their culture, I was never brave enough to approach. Much later on, when I was in Germany, I gathered my courage to go to a hospital Halloween party dressed head to toe as a woman which led me later to my first coming out piece to my puzzle. Over huge amounts of good German beer one night, I admitted to three of my closest friends that my Halloween “costume” was more than a one-time deal. I was a transvestite and was attracted to dressing like a woman. Luckily for me, no one else cared and my secret was safe for the remaining six months I had to serve in the Army.

After I had served my time in the military, piecing together my gender puzzle became a bigger priority. Initially, I needed to rely on Halloween parties every year to express my need for public exposure as a transgender woman as by that time, I was realizing I was much more than a cross-dressing part-time guy. One of the biggest “aha” moments of my life came the night I made the mental shift from cross dresser to transgender woman and went out into the world. Despite being scared to death, I made the evening a success and knew deep down there was no going back. I had found a giant piece to my puzzle and I began to wonder what took me so long.

From then on, the pieces to my giant puzzle began to come together quickly as I began to carve out a life for myself in a world of cisgender women. To this day, the path I took seemed like a blur and once I began rolling downhill towards living my dream I could not stop. I was going crazy looking for the final pieces of my puzzle until I discovered the magic of gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones evened out my testosterone poisoned personality and enabled me to feel emotions I never realized I had. For the first time ever, I was able to feel the feminine way I tried so hard to appear like.

I have never been good at puzzles my entire life and find them to be exceedingly boring and frustrating…except my gender puzzle. Even though I don’t think I will ever finish it in this lifetime, the amount of work I put into it turned out to be very satisfying and just what the therapist in me ordered. I was able to finish to the point where I could see myself in the puzzle and was satisfied with what I saw.

  

Making the New You...You

 

JJ Hart

Making the new you… you probably know is a lot more than putting on a dress, wig and makeup.

Most of the time, it takes time to grow into what you always had thought yourself to be all along. A fully feminine person. By that, I don’t mean you have to go out and have major gender surgeries to feel complete although many transgender women do. In my case and at my advanced age of seventy-six, I have long since given up on gender surgeries because they don’t define me. But that is like HRT or gender affirming hormones, just because you can’t take them does not make you any less of a transfeminine person.

Going back to my original point, I think it is important that we take the time and opportunity to grow into our new authentic selves which have been a part of us forever. I know forever is a big word which people like me have run from our entire lives. It is especially frustrating when you discover the truth has been right in front of you forever. Instead, I took the long route or path of slowly discovering I could indeed make it to my dream of living life as a transgender woman. I had to go back and back fill my entire personality and outlook on life to do it.

In the book I am writing through another format for my daughter and other family members who have questions about my life. This week’s topic is what I would do differently if I had a chance to go back and do it again. It was an easy question to answer; I would certainly go back and transitioned earlier in life than I did. The problem I have with thinking this way is I am selfish and I would want certain aspects of my male life to live themselves out before I made the big gender jump across the border for good. For instance, I would hate to give up my stake in having my daughter who is one of the greatest gifts of my life. Plus, you can’t forget the world and its reaction to transfeminine people was much different back then and if I transitioned then I would consider surgeries to advance my standing in an often-unforgiving world. Chances are, I would, simply because I had so much longer to live.

It would have been interesting because back then, I had such little understanding of what I was really facing if I continued along my gender path. I was still laboring under the impression that a pretty face would be all I needed to get by as a trans woman. There was still so much to do to enable the authentic me to emerge into the world. What would I do when and if I needed to have the pretty face actually communicate in the world with other humans. I had come to the point where I could make her move more convincingly as a woman, now I had the biggest jump to make. I did the best I could. Even to the point of taking vocal lessons on the small ways ciswomen communicate with the world. The entire process was intense but worth it.

The only way I made it through the rebuilding process was to make it a completely selfish pursuit which I spent every spare moment thinking about. My male time in life shrunk to a bare minimum, or just enough time to get by and keep him moving on the essentials of life such as a job.

On the feminine side, I found I had help from understanding ciswomen that accepted me. I write about them often. Emphasizing their warmth and humor when at the same time were the best gender teachers I could have ever asked for. Together, they all helped the new me be me and move on from there.

From there meant I could begin to attend “meet up” groups in the Cincinnati area with my wife to be Liz. We went to writers’ groups as well as artisan/crafts groups which helped me to come farther out of my gender shell and just be the new me. If you live in an area which has groups such as meet ups, I highly recommend them as vehicles to experience new vistas of your gender experience. I always looked at them as a way to expand who I was in the world as I shed my old male past. Which led one step farther into a spiritual group which Liz was already a part of. I was invited in with open arms which gave me yet another new outlet to experience.

Making the new you, you will never be an easy experience depending on how much gender baggage you had to shed along the way. The longer I waited, the more I had to figure out what to keep and what I needed to get rid of. Whichever way you decide to go, just try to make the best possible decisions and keep moving towards your dream. Just think, your whole journey could be a labor of love.

 

 

As the Clock Strikes Midnight

 

JJ Hart

New Year’s Eve is upon us again.

With it comes a flood of memories, some good, some not so good from both sides of my transgender border. First, let’s remember one of the ugly male experiences I had. This came from years ago when I had completed my tour of military duty and we were celebrating that as well as the New Years.

Being the huge drinker that I was, I ordered a keg of beer and a bottle of mezcal for a smallish party my second wife (to be) and I were having. Too much booze it seemed to stay socialized at all. To make a long story short, after a hard night of trying to drink the mezcal and the barrel of beer, when the clock struck zero and the ball in Times Square dropped, I did not kiss my future wife first, I committed the ultimate sin of kissing her more attractive sister. Needless to say, there was no way to hide what I did, and I was in deep trouble no matter what I had to say about it.  The damage was done, and I would have to live with it for years. In fact, I don’t think I ever lived it down.

I could blame the entire unfortunate episode on toxic masculinity setting in, but in fact, I was trying desperately to bury any thoughts that I had of being a woman on yet another New Year’s Eve. From then on, the yearly debacle which was a party on New Years went on by me in a blur. At the least I proved I could outdrink anyone else and at its best I learned the problems of acting like a fool and being careful to kiss the right person at the right time.

Nothing really changed until I met my current wife Liz approximately seven years ago when we went out on the town in downtown Cincinnati for a New Year’s Eve celebration. We began with having an Uber ride to our first destination, which was the Cincinnati Music Hall for a performance of the symphony orchestra. Even though I thought I was dressed appropriately for the occasion in my black sequined gown, I was still very terrified about going at all. It turned out that once again all the worrying in the world did not help me at all because nothing happened. I went, I blended and I conquered all those around me who may have questioned having a transgender woman in their midst. And probably, the best part was that the night was just beginning.

From the music hall, we took a terrifying taxi ride in a cab company called Einstein Taxi (really). He drove us at breakneck speed to a venue where we had dinner reservations down by the riverfront. Once we safely arrived, we did not have to wait long to be seated and once again I was met with no resistance to being me at all. The venue was also a micro-brewery which featured German food, so we ate well as we waited for the ball to drop on a New Year. This time, I made sure I was kissing the right woman. Liz of course, before it was time to head back home and no, we did not drive.

This marked the first time I can remember I did not have the thoughts of failure hanging over my head. I was not going to spend another year as my hated male self again. What a relief!

This New Year’s we have a huge college football game to watch as The Ohio State Buckeyes play Miami of Florida. Since the game does not start until seven thirty, we will have plenty of time to open a bottle of wine and toast the incoming 2026. Without dwelling on all of the problems the transgender community had heaped on us in 2025, maybe the upcoming year will be the one when the rest of the world says enough is enough and the upcoming mid term elections will sweep the evilness and the liars out. It is the country’s two hundred fiftieth anniversary. It is time to reclaim some of our past which made us great.

That is my hope for the New Year, as well as I hope you have a better year too, no matter what your goals and dreams might be. I will be spending it in the comfort of my own home with my favorite person who did more for my male to female gender transition than anyone else. It does not get any better for me and I don’t have to worry about who I am going to kiss.

Happy New Year’s!

Dark Side of the Gender Moon

 

Image from Maria Kovalets
on UnSplash.

Exploring the dark side of the gender moon for me meant a lot of work.

I equate it to the first times I could experience wearing my own hair in public without the help of a wig of any sort. The satisfying part was that I did not have to worry about the style and color of the wig I selected and how hot it was going to be on my head during the warm summer months when my makeup threatened to melt off of me as soon as I put it on. On the other hand, I needed to master the art of looking at the back of my head in a mirror to see how my new hair looked. I began to think of it as the dark side of the moon. No longer would I have the ease of styling a wig on a wig stand in the back so I knew it would look good on my head.  

Also, not wearing wigs anymore opened up a new wonderful world for me of visiting women’s beauty salons. I will forever remember the first time my daughter gifted me a visit to her upscale salon/spa. I was just coming out of my gender shell and the whole prospect of having my hair done terrified me, but I hitched up my big girl panties and said yes. Little did I know what was instore for me. Thanks to my daughter, first of all I needed to walk through seemingly an endless gauntlet of women in chairs in various stages of having their hair done. I gathered up all of my courage and tried to walk as femininely as I could until I met my new stylist.

The first of many decisions I needed to make was what color I wanted my new hair to be. As my daughter and stylist hovered over me with what seemed like an endless set of examples to choose from, I chose a red/blond streaked shade and then had to pick how long or short I wanted my new hairstyle to be. I had no idea choosing the dark side of my gender moon would be this difficult. Quickly though, I chose an off the shoulder look which maintained most of the hair I had grown. All too soon, my appointment was over and I was spun around in the chair to see the new me and I loved her! All the years of frustration of not being able to afford quality wigs or take care of them faded away and the best part was I had been blessed with visits to women’s spaces such as beauty salons and I walked away from the experience knowing why so many ciswomen value their beauty visits to the hair salon the way they do. The day following my first visit to a serious upscale salon, I thought I had been exposed to so much estrogen, I could skip my daily dosage.

I guess you could say, having my hair done was just the first of dark side of the moon gender moments in my transfeminine life. When you add in all my other journeys into women only spaces, there were plenty of other experiences to mention. Like the one I rarely recall when I was invited to go out and party with a few of the servers, I met at one of the regular sports bars I hung out at. Like the experiences of having my hair done, I had been out several times on girls’ nights out invitations in my past, but never like this one. These women were all much younger and prettier than I was so I wondered how I would fit in. The answer was that even though they were all nice to me, I did not really fit in at all. The other women were too busy getting hit on by guys so there was little time for other socializing. I quietly sipped my drinks and pleasantly left with the group when most of them did. More lessons learned.

As far as any major male to female feminization process goes, there are inherent risks to be taken when you go through the process of losing your male privileges and discovering your new feminine ones. I know in my case, I was starting to know I was successful as a transgender woman when I began to be treated in certain ways. Such as when men in particular began to question my intelligence as I talked to them. I thought to myself, did I treat women this way?  I was definitely on the dark side of my gender moon as I explored a new world.

As you begin to explore your new world, there is plenty to do such as gathering the courage to use the women’s rest room. Which is a natural need when you are out and about for any length of time as your new trans woman self. Not any of the rightwing paranoia being spewed by the bigots saying we are men using the women’s room.

Actually, exploring the dark side of your gender moon can be an exciting experience and one you have waited your whole life to take. Take it far past just styling your own hair and/or wig and expand it all the way to discovering a new world you wanted to live in so badly. Just try to enjoy the discoveries you make and any aha moments you live through. There is so much to be learned when you jump the binary gender border to live on the other side. All the work I put in was certainly worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fearing Change as a Gender Challenged Woman

Image from Joshua Gaunt 
on UnSplash. 

Gender change came so very slowly for me during my life.

First, I needed to free myself from the male bonds I was born into which I had no control over. Looking back, I think one of the main problems I had was fearing the changes I was looking to go through if I faced up to reality. From that point forward, life became a struggle as I feared changing it.

What I became was the best transgender procrastinator I knew. Any excuse I could come up with not to go through with living my dream, I clung to like a survivor on the Titanic. What I would do about spouses, family and employment were a few of the major questions I was asking. So, what did I do? I ran as hard and as fast as I could from the problem. I was running so hard, I even changed jobs very quickly so I would not be bored with my life as a transfeminine fugitive. Eventually, even though I grew tired of the pace, I found a stable good job and settled part of my life down. I say part of my life because during that time my gender issues were raging out of control.

Even though I was slowly becoming successful at blending my feminine self in with the world of cisgender women, I still had many fears to conquer. Just when I thought life was improving for me, I would hit another roadblock and send me running back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Which was crazily marked with clownish makeup until I got it right. The fear of applying skilled makeup kept me occupied for years it seemed. On the other hand, when I got my male ego out of the way and realized I needed to dress for other women and not men, did I begin to improve my overall look and the laughter I used to receive in public began to die away. When it did, I learned the most powerful force I had to combat gender change was having confidence in myself. Surely, I would never be the prettiest most beautiful woman in the room, but a lot of other cisgender women were not either and they were surviving and even thriving just fine. There were many layers to building womanhood and I just needed to find mine.

For some reason, the more success I felt as a transgender woman, the more fear I had. I guess it was because of my old male self-starting to panic because he was losing his dominance over my life. For years, what had seemed like the impossible gender dream was now looking as if it could become a reality. As he fought his new reality, the stakes towards living a successful life as a trans woman, increased dramatically. Every step I was taking towards my dream seemed to feel as if I was walking in quicksand since at any time, life as I knew it could be disrupted beyond repair in the little backwards town I lived in. I still lived in mortal fear that any day I could be discovered and the acquaintances I had built up over the years would realize I was living a gender lie. Which I was.

I finally made it to a point where I could not procrastinate my life any longer and I began to use every spare moment to explore the world as a transfeminine person. It all meant I accepted the challenge to finally go all in with making the final preparations for my new life. The bittersweet part of it all was part of my male to female final transition was built on tragedy. In the space of a couple short years, I lost my second wife as well as all of the friends I had built up over the years to death, and I had to start all over again. Sure, I was still afraid to do it but deep down I knew transition was the only way I could go. Suddenly it was up to only me to decide if I wanted to take the ultimate step and try to get a doctor’s permission to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was approved and then the changes I was hoping for began to really happen for me. The changes were so dramatic, I sometimes take an entire blog post to relate them to you.

What frustrates me now are the haters who say that because I took so long to transition, I am not trans enough for them. Normally, they are younger LGBTQ individuals who have no idea of what the world was like way back when I was growing up. We all have our own gender crosses to bear, and we need to understand each other’s journey.

Sadly, there are all those transgender women and trans men who can’t take the burden of gender change fear any longer and tragically try to take the self-harm way out. The suicide rate in our community is completely too high and could come down with proper help and understanding.

In my case, my excuse is I had a heavy dose of ignorance combined with fear and procrastination as reasons it took me nearly a half a century to come out of my gender shell and live freely in the world as a transgender woman. These days, if you can steer clear of all the online trolls and haters, you can still get valuable information on the internet concerning ideas on how to build a new life as a woman from scratch. Plus, fear for me was a powerful motivator and when I was forced into a corner because of my gender, I came out fighting because I believed I was right.

It turned out I was.