Today I had my eight month endocrinology check up, so I thought it is a good time to share what I have experienced. When my doctor asked how I was, I could hardly contain my delight and appreciation of her participation in my transition. I am in a place of joy and freedom in my spirit that I could not have imagined years ago. My response physiologically to HRT is for me nothing less than awesome. My breasts, hips, butt, and cheeks all express a female physiology that gives me the confidence to be public. I am becoming a beautiful trangender woman, much to my surprise and satisfaction. I realize that I am one of the lucky ones when it comes to changes from HRT. Along with HRT I have been in intensive therapy for one year, plus I moved to a more accepting type of spirituality rather than a judgmental religion. The combination of all this has given me a deep joy and freedom to be myself, to be a confident, outgoing woman in private and in public. I move through the day with a delight in my spirit, I love to look people in the eye and smile! I am pleased to report that in these last eight months, I have not had one negative public experience. People smile back at me! However, I have had quite a few negative experiences from friends and clients that would categorically reject me, mostly for religious reasons, and told me so. Two years ago this would have devastated me and reinforced my own self condemnation, today I see clearly that it is their problem and not mine.

I am being drawn deeper into this life changing process called transition. I realize now more than ever before that I was truly born transgender. When I told my psychiatrist fifty years ago, after a complete collapse at 19 years of age, that I wanted to be woman and hated my genitals, that those were entirely my own words. I had never heard them before, there was no internet or forum back then.

I am deeply grateful that I have been allowed to experience the answer to my life of emotional turmoil and self hate, even if it comes in the last chapter. Thanks to the progress in psychology, medicine, and social acceptance, I am being set free to be my true self. For me, transition is giving me my life back!