Kimberley
08-20-2006, 09:47 AM
This is a copy of a very long letter I sent to one of our girls who is struggling. I reread it this morning and thought that with a few minor changes I would post it. I chose to post it here because it will reach more people (including the visitors) than it would on the TG/TS forums.
The story is all so familiar so let me put it into a nutshell. Simplistic but none the less very pertinent.
***********************
Well where to begin? At the beginning of….
So many of us start out casually X-dressing and are happy little campers. Then one day we wake up and discover that our closets are being overrun by skirts and dresses and blouses, and let’s not forget the shoes. The drawers are overflowing with panties, slips, stockings and bras. We reach for a bikini not a pair of BVD’s. We pull on a pair of Levis 504 low rise jeans, not the 725’s mom bought at Wally world for our birthday. We layer our tops. Then we pass a mirror and stop and it hits like a ton of bricks. Everything we are wearing is from the ladies dept.
We go to work and we think about our femme self at least for half the day. Our friends at work are the girls, not the guys. We pass a store window and wish we could afford that dress. As we walk we suddenly become aware that our steps are shorter, our hips swing. We go to lunch and order a salad instead of a steak. When we get home we change into something comfortable then we begin to question.
It was all so easy in the beginning. We dressed for the thrill, both sexual and psychological and we didn’t know why, only that it was “wrong”. But we knew it wasn’t wrong, it felt right. But then so did putting on a 3 piece suit. We didn’t date much because of fear, fear that we would be found out and ridiculed. Nothing was more hurtful than the ridicule of people who didn’t know or understand. So we became even more secretive. We took very macho jobs and eventually we landed the girl thinking it would make us right. Wrong.
Then she finds out and all hell lets loose. Maybe we are left on our own or maybe the trust in our marriage has been destroyed.
After a couple of children one day we wake up and we know something we didn’t know before. Nothing feels right about our natural gender and sexual assignment. Panic sets in but now it is being fueled by a need we don’t understand, a need to be female.
We question, we get depressed, our marriages fall apart, our lives fall apart yet this insatiable need still has a grip on us. Now we are convinced we are truly a woman in a man’s body. Or are we? The questions go on and the vicious circle is established.
We are alone with our pain; and it is painful because nothing we knew about ourselves fits anymore.
Sound familiar? It is pretty much stereotypical. So where do we go from there?
Well, first we really need to stop the cycle of stinky thinking. It clouds our objectivity and how can we be objective about ourselves when we are fixated, obsessed? We cant. Everything comes crashing in at once and some of us can manage to crawl through and others get crushed by it all. Our best defense comes on two fronts.
First we need people we can talk to and trust. We need to know they will keep our secret. One of those people should be a good therapist who is experienced in gender issues. The other is a very close friend who will listen and not judge. Someone who will hand us a tissue when we need it and we do need a lot of them during this time. The more we talk and get it out the better we feel, well sometimes but not for everyone. There are a very, very limited few who are driven to transition.
There’s that word. Transition. For some reason I don’t know, people think that when the awakening comes that they have only that option. It simply isn’t true. That is at the extreme end of the continuum and definitely not the norm. For these people it is the only answer. All too often they regret their decision later. Some actually succeed and are "cured" but a lot do not.
So what are the other options? Well, one could undergo HRT and live female 24/7. For some that is an acceptable solution. For another, being androgynous is viable. Lastly, slipping between the worlds is the compromise.
Okay, so those are the options and everything will be wonderful. Wrong. It never ever goes away. This is why the therapist is so important because being transgendered is not the problem (despite the so-called diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria which in my opinion is bunk. We can talk about that more at another time.) The problem we have is reconciling our confusion with our daily life. The problems we created for ourselves all through our life. We erected barriers to protect ourselves and they have to be torn down.
Next, we need to listen to that little voice inside and listen carefully. She is a child who hasn’t grown up and she is damned angry. She will scream and yell and stamp her feet to get what she wants. Her temper tantrum would scare a two year old. The problem we have is that we give in to her. We let her have her way and it causes us a lot more pain so we suffer some more.
How do we overcome this? Hon, this is critical. We listen, we negotiate, and we let her grow up on our terms. Eventually she blossoms into a very sweet girl we love and then we get the second revelation. She has always been there. She has always been a part of us but we pushed her down. Now she is ready to face the world, not as Kimberley but as a mix of Kimberley and Joe. She has grown up and can be with us always, not as a single gender, but now as something totally different, that third gender you have read about. Forget the labels, they aren’t important.
NOW we can make decisions because we have accepted that we are different, neither male nor female but both at the same time, and at different times. It is called self acceptance. The hard thing to reconcile is that in spite of all this, we are still the same person with the same values, the same needs for love and acceptance.
We all go through this but some stop and go in a different direction; transition. It is necessary for some but not all, or even most people for that matter. That doesn’t mean we aren’t TS, only that we have chosen a different path to take.
The key to our survival is self-acceptance based in love, that love we found within.
:hugs: and a :koc:
Kimberley.
The story is all so familiar so let me put it into a nutshell. Simplistic but none the less very pertinent.
***********************
Well where to begin? At the beginning of….
So many of us start out casually X-dressing and are happy little campers. Then one day we wake up and discover that our closets are being overrun by skirts and dresses and blouses, and let’s not forget the shoes. The drawers are overflowing with panties, slips, stockings and bras. We reach for a bikini not a pair of BVD’s. We pull on a pair of Levis 504 low rise jeans, not the 725’s mom bought at Wally world for our birthday. We layer our tops. Then we pass a mirror and stop and it hits like a ton of bricks. Everything we are wearing is from the ladies dept.
We go to work and we think about our femme self at least for half the day. Our friends at work are the girls, not the guys. We pass a store window and wish we could afford that dress. As we walk we suddenly become aware that our steps are shorter, our hips swing. We go to lunch and order a salad instead of a steak. When we get home we change into something comfortable then we begin to question.
It was all so easy in the beginning. We dressed for the thrill, both sexual and psychological and we didn’t know why, only that it was “wrong”. But we knew it wasn’t wrong, it felt right. But then so did putting on a 3 piece suit. We didn’t date much because of fear, fear that we would be found out and ridiculed. Nothing was more hurtful than the ridicule of people who didn’t know or understand. So we became even more secretive. We took very macho jobs and eventually we landed the girl thinking it would make us right. Wrong.
Then she finds out and all hell lets loose. Maybe we are left on our own or maybe the trust in our marriage has been destroyed.
After a couple of children one day we wake up and we know something we didn’t know before. Nothing feels right about our natural gender and sexual assignment. Panic sets in but now it is being fueled by a need we don’t understand, a need to be female.
We question, we get depressed, our marriages fall apart, our lives fall apart yet this insatiable need still has a grip on us. Now we are convinced we are truly a woman in a man’s body. Or are we? The questions go on and the vicious circle is established.
We are alone with our pain; and it is painful because nothing we knew about ourselves fits anymore.
Sound familiar? It is pretty much stereotypical. So where do we go from there?
Well, first we really need to stop the cycle of stinky thinking. It clouds our objectivity and how can we be objective about ourselves when we are fixated, obsessed? We cant. Everything comes crashing in at once and some of us can manage to crawl through and others get crushed by it all. Our best defense comes on two fronts.
First we need people we can talk to and trust. We need to know they will keep our secret. One of those people should be a good therapist who is experienced in gender issues. The other is a very close friend who will listen and not judge. Someone who will hand us a tissue when we need it and we do need a lot of them during this time. The more we talk and get it out the better we feel, well sometimes but not for everyone. There are a very, very limited few who are driven to transition.
There’s that word. Transition. For some reason I don’t know, people think that when the awakening comes that they have only that option. It simply isn’t true. That is at the extreme end of the continuum and definitely not the norm. For these people it is the only answer. All too often they regret their decision later. Some actually succeed and are "cured" but a lot do not.
So what are the other options? Well, one could undergo HRT and live female 24/7. For some that is an acceptable solution. For another, being androgynous is viable. Lastly, slipping between the worlds is the compromise.
Okay, so those are the options and everything will be wonderful. Wrong. It never ever goes away. This is why the therapist is so important because being transgendered is not the problem (despite the so-called diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria which in my opinion is bunk. We can talk about that more at another time.) The problem we have is reconciling our confusion with our daily life. The problems we created for ourselves all through our life. We erected barriers to protect ourselves and they have to be torn down.
Next, we need to listen to that little voice inside and listen carefully. She is a child who hasn’t grown up and she is damned angry. She will scream and yell and stamp her feet to get what she wants. Her temper tantrum would scare a two year old. The problem we have is that we give in to her. We let her have her way and it causes us a lot more pain so we suffer some more.
How do we overcome this? Hon, this is critical. We listen, we negotiate, and we let her grow up on our terms. Eventually she blossoms into a very sweet girl we love and then we get the second revelation. She has always been there. She has always been a part of us but we pushed her down. Now she is ready to face the world, not as Kimberley but as a mix of Kimberley and Joe. She has grown up and can be with us always, not as a single gender, but now as something totally different, that third gender you have read about. Forget the labels, they aren’t important.
NOW we can make decisions because we have accepted that we are different, neither male nor female but both at the same time, and at different times. It is called self acceptance. The hard thing to reconcile is that in spite of all this, we are still the same person with the same values, the same needs for love and acceptance.
We all go through this but some stop and go in a different direction; transition. It is necessary for some but not all, or even most people for that matter. That doesn’t mean we aren’t TS, only that we have chosen a different path to take.
The key to our survival is self-acceptance based in love, that love we found within.
:hugs: and a :koc:
Kimberley.