Quote of the Day

"We spend so much time disguising ourselves to others, we end up losing track of who we really are" .
unknown

Waaaasup?

Hello! Finally time for a little update as I approach the 5 month point in my hormone journey.
First let me point out I started on New Year's Eve on a minimum dose for the first two months which was then doubled to 4 mg a day. It was my choice to go slow at first and I'm scheduled for an update appointment sometime in July.
The latest physical changes I can pass along are in the breast and hip area.
I can now put a full two fingers under the breasts (my own measuring system similar to the metric)
As satisfying as that is, the very beginning of hip development was wonderful too.
I have always had some sort of a slight waist line but then nothing in the hip or rear area. Slowly I'm starting to add some flesh into both of those areas that most genetic women hate to do.
With the warmer nice weather I have been able to at least to stabilize the weight gain I have experienced with my new less active life style and increased appetite. Some say it's hormonal induced. Some don't.
I finally listened to advice and began to use a cocoa butter moisturize for my face which has relieved the drying.
Overall I love the way my skin is softening and the soft glow I feel it has and hair growth on my body has definitely slowed.
The next step (with the advance of and the lowering of laser prices) would be laser facial hair removal which I would love. I just have other financial needs right now.
So there you go!
I'm sure it's familiar ground to you trans women (transgender or transsexual) but maybe informational (I hope) to you transitional girls who are considering taking a bigger step!

The Socialization of Transgender Numerology

I'm thinking about now I have spent way too much time on my latest pet theory.
Just when I want to put it all to rest and enjoy passing along simpler fun posts about the effect of the hormones I'm on-there is more from "Natalie Reed":

"While cis girls, throughout their socialization and lives in our
culture, internalize cultural messages about ideal womanhood as a
demand of what they need to be in order to be considered valuable,
desirable, good women, they have the comparable “advantage” of at
least already being girls / women (or at least already having that
assignment). Trans girls, though, are subjected to those same messages
but internalize them as what is required to manifest womanhood at all.
We’re swimming upstream against our gender assignment, and if THAT is
what “being a woman is all about”, THAT gets internalized as the
standard we need to live up not simply to be loved and valued, but in
order to simply be read and perceived as ourselves. In other words,
while cis girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be
good girls, trans girls internalize it as what they need to be in
order to be.

This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans
woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the
question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid
things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty
#2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to “fit in”
or be “good”. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be
embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather
than who we aren’t.

So when we’re told that we’re failing to live up to one of those
morphological standards, the consequence isn’t a feeling of “Oh shit,
I guess I’m not a proper woman”. It hits us much, much more deeply. It
undercuts our fundamental sense of being."

Natalie Reed comes up with very good points and you can read more here.
Now, lets see...about those hormones....