You've seen my photo on the previous page, but as incongruous as it may seem, inside that oh-so-male outer frame is a person you might not expect - for I am and have always been Transgendered. [Read on, but I have reached a new understanding of all this, which is described at the bottom.] When I was little, there wasn't even a word for it. And through most of my years I kept it buried deeply away. I sublimated it by quietly cross-dressing most of my years, and allowed myself to believe that was all it was.
I went on through life, acting the male role, finishing my undergraduate work and getting called to military service. During my Army time I married. Some years later my two sons were born about three years apart. I found myself wishing that I could nurse each of them myself, that I should have carried and born them instead of the woman I was married to. But my body was wrong. I had fathered them, and I still love them dearly. But inside I know I should have been their mother instead of their father. I 've done what I could to be a good parent to them and feel I've been successful at that. In so many ways, they're my life. But even as adults, they had only a limited concept about what was inside me.
NEW INFORMATION: Over the past few years, I have reached further understanding of myself. Because of a lifetime of experience at it, I did "boy" pretty well - despite what was inside. But now I live as a female full-time, including at work, due in large part to an understanding and supportive boss. My legal name-change and transition happened over the Labor Day weekend of 2003. My good and accepting friends grow in number over the years. Without them I would be lost - and TO them I offer heartfelt thanks, especially two of my co-workers and my boss. Without her encouragement, I would never have dared actually take this long-sought-after step.
Remember the photo of me in a tux? Handsome lad, eh?
Now look at me - not pretty, but finally at home with myself:
Actually, perhaps "allowed" isn't a strong enough term. I guess I actively surpressed this knowledge about myself most of the time. Still, I can remember many times when I was strongly wishing that I could wake up the next morning in a girl's body, the proper body for my mental gender. As a teen, I wrote to Dear Abby about it, but never got any reply, either in the newspaper or by mail. It wasn't until I got out of my small village and into a Big Ten school that I had access to a library with real BOOKS about gender issues. I learned as much as I could - I read those treatises over and over, but there was no way to talk to anybody - no way to try to obtain any kind of treatment to help me unify my mind with the proper body. (This proved amazingly hard to write about.)
Life would be so much less complicated for me and would be considerably easier to get through from day to day if this condition did not exist. Yet for the most part I would not now trade it away. It carries great frustrations, but even when I kept it deeply submerged, it helped shape me into the person I am: one who loves literature, music and the arts; who loves animals, one whom people find it easy to trust, one who is accepting of other lifestyles, one who has dedicated my life to helping others. I cannot imagine how I might otherwise have turned out if this had not been a part of me.
A good and trusted friend once called being transgendered a "birth defect," and so it may be. It definitely goes back as far as my memory reaches, to at least age three. This condition was not environmental ("nurture") - the nature and location of my childhood were such that my parents would have been scandalized if they had realized any of this. Now that my mother is quite elderly and infirm and my father has passed away, I intend that Mom will never learn the whole truth. However, since I have finally accepted myself I am much more at peace.
Many who have dealt with transgenderism in their websites have completed the entire transition process; others are still on the path, but are well down the road to their goal. When I began this page, I said "I am barely beginning, as far as actual action is concerned, and so this site may over time become a diary." Occasionally I may add photos here, or on a separate page. I anticipate many really tough times along the road, and hope for some good ones as well. The end of the path now begun will never create a fashion model out of me, but that doesn't matter in the least. There may be times when this page is frequently updated, and others when it might go untouched for lengthy periods. Stay tuned.
DISASTER.
I have sought out a variety of Websites related to transgender issues, both for those who live with this issue on a daily basis as I do, and for those who would like to learn more about it. There are many on the Web that I don't really consider appropriate, but several others are excellent.
For starters, here in no particular order are a couple really decent links to explore:
Page maintained by deej -
Website established in October 1998
Last update of this page October 7, 2004