Another Holiday?

My Favorite Valentines. Liz on left, daughter 
on right.
From the Jessie Hart Archives.

 Following the Christmas holiday season which presents so many problems for transgender women and men, here comes yet another rather traumatic holiday. 

Both of the holidays revolve around personal relationships, to which trans folk often have lost close friends or family because they set out to live as their authentic selves. When I read all the social media posts from transgender folk who are lonely, my heart goes out to them. The entire process just goes to show how much a person can lose following a gender transition. Once again it shows how much of a choice we don't have when we set out on our gender journeys. 

I am fairly sure I didn't think of losing family the first time I looked at myself cross dressed as a girl in the hallway mirror but then again maybe I did because I was so frightened about getting caught. Maybe my fears were justified so many years later, when I did lose all contact with the brother I was afraid of exposing my secret to so many years ago.

Overall, I know how fortunate I am when certain holidays such as Christmas and Valentines Day come around each year. Through a mix of work, destiny an sheer luck, I was able to find another person in the world who accepted the authentic me. My wife Liz basically picked me up off the trash heap and made me a believer in myself again. Something which I thought was impossible at my age of sixty two. In fact, I had given up on the idea of another serious relationship in my life and felt I was doomed to live alone as a transgender woman trying to make her way in the world. 

Perhaps, more importantly, I was able to rebuild family connections which were lost. Through my daughter's in laws and Liz's family, having a Christmas with family and friends became a reality again. And, even though I had never been a big believer in Valentine's Day, it is still very nice to tell Liz happy Valentines Day and I love her and for her to return the favor. Plus, I can't forget all my bonus checks which were added to because of Valentines promotions in the restaurant business I was in.

At the least, Valentines Day only lasts for one day and hopefully you can mend the hurt you may feel from having no one to celebrate with. Anyway you cut it being transgender should not deny you a chance to be happy with another person...but it does. 

It is just another holiday designed to stimulate certain areas of the economy not hurt the ones who happen to be single when it comes around. If you are one of those people, Liz gives out the best hugs and I am sending a big one to each of you.

Beautiful...Inisde and Out

 

Image from the Jessie Hart 
Archives...

As I obsessed with looking the best I could as a novice transgender woman or cross dresser, all I could think of was how I looked. Little did I know there was so much more coming up in my journey to living fulltime as a trans woman. I needed to live my looks as well as just admiring myself in a mirror. 

This morning turned out to be a prime example. Today I tagged along with my wife Liz to her mammogram appointment. Before I went, I applied my usual minimal amount of makeup, brushed out my hair and was essentially ready to go. While I was doing it, I felt it was time for a change. I thought I have been in a rut I have been in too long. I have essentially stopped working on my appearance and then being shocked when I am mis-gendered. 

Of course, nothing negative happened morning when it came to the doctors appointment because there were very few people waiting to begin with plus no one was paying any attention to anyone else. Since I had a spare moment, I went shopping on my phone for a foundation specifically tailored for older women. A group I naturally fit into. I found their on-line site and decided to give it a try. 

Currently, I am relying on the skin effects of gender affirming hormones, so I don't have to use a foundation at all. Or so I thought. It's occurring to me now the hormones have been a crutch for me to quit trying as much as I did. I ordered the new foundation and I will let you know my feelings. 

The end result is I need to work harder to make my inside and outside match up again. I learned long ago, similar to many cis-women, I will never be the prettiest woman in the room. I needed to find other ways to survive in the world as a new transgender woman. Little did I know, my biggest positive as a new person was already within me. My discovery was my inner feminine soul was actually good people. Opening up to others turned out to be one of my biggest pluses. The world turned out to like me. 

Doing my best to be beautiful to others, inside and out, turned out to be one of the most beneficial things I have ever done. Now, I feel it's time to get out of my rut, have some fun and get back in the game. Maybe to the point of treating Liz out to get our nails done and then have some dinner out at our favorite restaurant

I need to get us both out of the house.  

Dreams versus Priorities

Image from Marcos Paulo Prado 
on UnSplash

 Seemingly forever, I had the dream of leading a feminine life. 

As I progressed along my bumpy gender journey, slowly but surely I learned perhaps I could achieve my number one dream.  Other guys I knew dreamed of having a great job or a beautiful wife while, all along, all I wanted was to change my gender. It all seemed simple enough except it wasn't. In fact, it proved to be extremely difficult. 

As I lived a reasonably successful male life, it became more and more difficult to just give it up and just walk away. To do it, my dream needed to become a priority. Around this time, was when I entered what I refer to as my second major transition. It was when I went from being a very serious cross dresser to being a transgender woman or going from just wanting to look like a woman, I wanted to be a woman. The entire process seems like semantics it probably is but I was serious and I was led into gender areas I never dreamed of. Primarily when I needed to step up my game from just concentrating on my appearance to needing to learn a whole new form of communication in the world.

I was in shock when I learned how quickly my white male privileges could be swept away leaving me with very little to fall back on. My previous "hit and run" approach to facing the public needed to change if I was going to survive and keep my dream alive. 

For the longest time, I was by myself in the world as a man and a woman. My male self had lost almost all of his friends and family to death leaving him mostly all alone. Plus my trans woman self had not had the chance to establish herself as a person in the world. I was stuck in a gender limbo, until my life started to change for the better as I began to set priorities for myself. Since I really had nothing to lose, I went all out on on-line dating sites which predictably I had very little success with. Partially I think because in those days there were no sites which catered to transgender women who were not fetish items. It was complicated but I went on regular sites under different listings such as everything from woman seeking woman to woman seeking man. After sorting through tons of being being rejected, my wife Liz responded to an ad I ran asking for a woman seeking woman and we have been together ever since.

Destiny at that point intervened more completely in my dreams when my regular trips to straight venues ended up with me meeting two different lesbian women on separate occasions and quickly we became a tight knit small group. My dreams quickly became my priorities at this time of my life because I needed to step my gender game up to learn and understand what the other cis-women in my life were showing me. If they knew it or not. 

When I started gender affirming hormones (HRT) around this time, there was no turning back. I faced an all out priority to live a life I had only dreamed of. For the first time, it was so close I could reach out and touch it. Even though my life turned out to be different than I ever imagined it would be, I still couldn't conceive of living it any other way. My dreams had turned into the priority of allowing my inner feminine soul a chance to live.