Those are good points. Safety is very important and valid, and I wish I would have touched on that earlier.

One thing I did in the beginning was to wear colorful cloth masks matching my outfits. I think doing that and hiding my receding hair line underneath hats did a huge job with allowing me to pass in people’s eyes.

💜

I know that you are feeling very down, but you have some part of you that is fighting this and is strong. Every time you post and show yourself and reach out, that part of you is showing itself to us.

Always remember that you have a kind heart and a beautiful soul and you are worthy of love. Thank you for sharing with us.

That is so awesome!

Dang near every time I am in front of a mirror, there’s this cute girl staring back at me and I cannot help but smile and say hi to her using the full name I chose. The immediate and joyful recognition that, “Hey! I’m that girl! Yaay!!” has such an astounding, affirming and euphoric effect on the rest of my day.

I loved your post and I am so glad you are happy. Thank you so much for sharing this part of you.

Somewhere, I can’t recall if it was on the fedi or discord, I saw the term gock (girl cock) and thought that was cute.

💜

Girl listen to this 54 year old telling you that no one ever starts transitioning too late. If it makes you happy, don’t look back.

It took me decades to get over my self hatred. But it doesn’t need to take you that long and honey you are doing amazing and you are stronger than you realize. It takes huge guts to come back and be here. Do not be ashamed. You are a badass.

That psychiatrist sounds like a fucking idiot. Fucking yikes. You are not a bad person but you need a better therapist. Keep working on it, mental health can take a long time to smooth out but you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. 💜

I started transitioning at 52 years old. I didn’t have any idea what gender dysphoria actually was until I was 51. At 49 I was misgendered over the phone. A woman called me “ma’am” like 5 times. I had no idea why that felt so good.

Eventually I realized that I am a woman and that I’ve always been a woman and started investigating what I could do about this.

There’s no time limit, and transitioning is a choice. For me it was the correct one. I knew there could be negative things in my future but i felt that no matter what, my newly found sense of self love and caring outweighed any consequences or side effects. Chasing the euphoria and self care became the best thing to ever happen in my life.

Sadly the consequences have recently arrived. I lost family over it and I was kicked out of the house a month ago. But I will never look back and say that my transition was a mistake because I calculated those risks. The family members I lost were already bigots and would have never come around. The friend I lost over becoming unhoused was sadly fair weathered.

Transgender people can face difficult challenges negotiating relationships and sometimes we aren’t accepted. That can be a very daunting thing to think about before beginning. But for me, I am glad I can see those people for who they really are. People that I can no longer tolerate in my life.

I will tell you what helped me to decide. I literally wrote down lists. 1 list of Reasons to transition. 1 list of things that I remembered from my past to help me see why it might be a good thing. 1 list of challenges I would have to face. Writing everything down over the course of several days was exactly what I needed.

Only you can make this decision. And it is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. But you can always start HRT and stop if you don’t think it’s helping. There is no shame in trying it even if it’s just for a week or a month.

I wish you the best. Whether you decide to move forward or not is up to you. But even if you don’t, just the process of self discovery is so important and I am happy that you are at least willing to explore and learn more about yourself. Whatever you decide, you can keep that momentum going.

Be good to yourself.

Shaving had been a huge issue for me at first. My skin hates blades, super sensitive no matter what I did. The first shaver I found was so good but they seem to have stopped making, it was called Flawless Legs and had 4 rotating heads. But sadly I dropped it and then the battery eventually went out completely.

But this replacement I found is just as good. It’s a 3 head shaver and gets a pretty close shave. It’s by Vogoe and runs about 30$ on Amazon. I will try to attach a picture. It’s really easy to clean and I swear I need to buy a second one once I get some income. I also got a single head “conair” that has a bunch of attachments and it works ok.

I love that outfit and you look great! I want those pants 💜

One thing that super helped me the first time I went into a public restroom was that I was using a face mask. I try to wear cloth masks that match my clothing. I became more comfortable in public in general wearing masks in the first few months of transition.

The first few times though, I wasn’t even really wearing fem clothing. I just decided that I needed to go and felt icky about using the ‘mens’ room. The other thing that helped was that it was a restroom in an office building so not much traffic through it at all. It was maybe 3 weeks later that I finally got pants from the woman’s section at Target and that helped even more.

That first time I went in public, I stood up to pee. As soon as I was done and out the door in the hallway I realized that felt pretty dysphoric and also might call attention to me. At home I started practicing sitting down and realized how amazing and gender euphoric this felt.

Sorry if I am meandering and rambling a little but I thought maybe my experience might help.

I hope it gets easier for you. Take one step at a time. You are doing something right if you are getting welcomed like this. 💜

Edit: not to say that if someone isn’t getting welcomed that they are doing anything wrong. It may take time to find an accepting group of people. 💜

I am so glad you reconsidered. You are worth it and you are a good person. Dont give into the bad thoughts. It’s fucking hard. Therapy has helped me so much in that regard. Keep fighting honey. We’ve got your back.

Do you have any hobbies?

I tend to go with my favorite meal and cheesecake for birthdays and such. And if there was some small thing I had my eye on I get it and call it a present.

The problem I have with that, is that threatening violence with an object is one of the grounds that someone can use to file a protective order and drag you into court.

I would be extremely careful doing that especially in a public place because if they get vindictive it becomes a huge legal hassle and they would have witnesses. In the USA you can’t ask for a public defender because it’s not a criminal case.

Just passing this along for safety information. Thank you for sharing what you did, I think it’s cool that there are places like that to seek adventures.

💜

Things have been going mildly ok, all things considered. I just attended a very nice gathering, had a nice meal and met new people.

This is a huge improvement to yesterday when I tried using my new food benefits card at the cheapest grocery store around, and it just kinda… Didn’t work at all. Not tapping, not chip, not sliding. “Oh I don’t think it’s you, someone else earlier had the same problem. Must be our system.” I said, “thanks, but I am sorry I can not buy these groceries then.” And I had to wheel the cart to the other side of the lane and unpack the 2 bags of groceries I had just packed, trying hard not to feel embarrassed, and left the store. I knew I had it set up right and was pretty unhappy at that situation.

So I went just down the street to a much more expensive store, spent even longer shopping, got up front to check out and tapping didn’t work, and chip didn’t work, but sliding it worked. Holy fuck. I am guessing the other store’s checkout lane has dirty sensors on that Point of Sale machine, or their system is just plain not communication with the food benefits system.

Next time I will go to the stores that are slightly better priced but not the cheapest. Groceries and gas are just so fucked right now.

Things are improving. A mutual aid group has been helping me find places to stay. I am so freaking grateful that they found me a place for a month! There is hope out there when I look for it.

Great name! Hi Alethea, how are you doing today?

After being temporarily ejected from my birth parent’s home on Monday evening under false pretenses, this week has been one of the worst weeks of my life. She has been increasingly transphobic and unsupportive from the beginning and it came to a head this summer after I changed my name.

It is really sad because I am certain she has been gradually affected by cognitive decline and recently it has gotten worse. I was her caregiver for 10 years. Life sucks like that sometimes.

I will defend myself in court in 3 days. She was ordered by the judge to allow me 1 visit in between to pick up more of my belongings because I was only given 5 minutes to do so Monday night by the cops, and of course they show up late at night so I was quite groggy. Sadly, the cops have not called me back yet so in anticipation of her defying the judges order, I splurged at a thrift store and bought a cute black and white mini dress and a black purse to match. And hell ya I am wearing it to court. If I go down, it won’t be while wearing a T-shirt 😹

I had one advantage in my current situation, in that I have been anticipating something like this happening for over 3 months. So I already had a backpack prepared. I kept all my identity documents in it, including all prescription medications, my pill planners, my laptop, charging cable and brick, and a copy of my name change order.

This forward thinking saved this girl’s behind because I had to apply for shelter and SNAP on Thursday and found out that the State I live in, which is one of the better ones for trans folks, STILL had my dead name somewhere on their back end computers. So the guy is looking back and forth between my application and his screen and finally he said, something is wrong, your name doesn’t match your SSN. I was very upset internally but I put that emotion quickly to the side and explained that I was fairly certain that I had my new SS card in my car. He allowed me time to go get it and moved to the next person. Folks, I even had the letter they sent me saying ‘your name change was successful and your card is on its way but you can use this to start updating other things.’ This state tried to screw me over when I updated my medical insurance with them as well. It took fully 1 month to complete and I had to hound them about it. So if you change your name, be prepared for several follow ups with everything you change it on.

If you or anyone else is coming out to people that you live with, please prepare a backpack like this. If things even seem a tiny bit rocky, If they do not immediately embrace your identity, start preparing for the worst. Better yet, prepare before you tell anyone. Please pass along my story to anyone you wish.

I am alive, I am safe, and I am attempting to heal. I have an amazingly awesome therapist and supportive queer community. I was able to create accounts to allow myself to receive donations on the second day I was unhoused because I had all my information at hand. And the community rose up to meet me and try and arrange friendly couches which I will start relying on after the hearing. I have received money from complete strangers. Sometimes life kicks you down with one foot and helps you back up with the other… foot. Ok that line needs work. I still have my sense of humor 😹

I slept in my car on the third night by choice but I wasn’t prepared enough for that. I received amazing advice from people, you can check the thread I posted last week.

I am truly blessed and have started making plans for what I will do with the rest of my life. I am already 54 years old but I think I got another 25 or 30 years left in the tank and I will not give up.

I have worked on compiling a defense and hopefully I can get a public defender as my previous law firm is super busy now. As far as I am aware, the worst that happens Wednesday is that their bogus protective order stands and I will be officially evicted. Fuck it, get me the fuck away from her and the other 2 family members enabling her shitty behavior. I may lose my whole family over this. But I don’t care anymore. It’s up to them to decide who to believe.

Sorry for the huge post. I needed to say a lot, I guess. I have concentrated hard on self care and used some of the funds I was given for 5 nights in the best cheapest hotel possible. Tuesday night I will stay near the courthouse in an even more comfy hotel. I can’t stay in hotels forever and I know this. So I will spend my time finding more friends, learning spanish, creating music and learning how to live and navigate life as another person in between the cracks of society.

I am truly happy and blessed, and I am convinced there is more for me to do on this planet. Thank you for indulging me in this space. 💜💜💜

Mia Violet’s memoir is called “Yes, you are trans enough.” I was maybe 4+ months on HRT when I read it, and it really helped me to corroborate my feelings focus on what was most important to me in my transition.

There are other great memoirs out there but that was the one that hit me the most.

The other thing that super helped me figure things out was therapy.

I wish you peace in your journey of self discovery. It can be a very daunting thing to face.

Wooooo boobies yayyyy 💖

:3

Brooke Mangolia Fields
Was this one a typo? If so, Brooke Magnolia Fields sounds very pretty to me and then you get BMF as initials:
Bad Motor Finger etc

Edit: Brooke Autumn is a strong choice too

Great look! 💖 love those sleeves and dress and you accessorize so well!

I hope your date goes well and thanks so much for sharing!