Before/after

[Guest karen]

i'm looking for inspiration, just starting on the road to womanhood, finding life difficult to pass

[Guest Rayne]

i'm looking for inspiration, just starting on the road to womanhood, finding life difficult to pass

Look for solutions from WITHIN, young one.

First, therapy. It helps.

Next - sound advice regardless of if your TG or not - discover and be happy with who you are apart from gender.

Only you can decide how far you want to go down this road.

Looking to others as inspiration may be a bad idea in this case as you could end up making a life altering decision while simply emmulating someone else.

Focus on you. Why do you want to do this? What about this makes you happy? Therapy can help you work a lot of it out.

Get into therapy and take things slowly from there. Go where you're comfortable going.

[Guest Evan_J]

I have to agree with Rayne, although I can't determine whats right for everyone, stepping away from other people -both trans and non- was what I needed for a long time. Just to have only myself as an influence and to know me and spend time feeling the place where I was comfortable by myself. Then trying to identify/word where that place was. I think its easy for people -anyone- to go to various stages in trasitioning because it seems thats what you're expected to do next, comparing yourself to others not remembering that their needs and your own do not necessarily have to match for you both to be transgendered.

For me, finding the most authentic me, and liking me, and then bringing that into the equation I think has let me feel more at ease with myself while determining/beginning any kind of transition.

I dunno. It's .02. And if you do begin therapy just to help you do all of that, you'll benefit should you take it to the conclusion of physical transition.

[Guest Isobelle Fox]

Well said, Evan and Rayne

I agree about therapy. I feel thats probably the best first step you can take. Get some help sorting your feelings out. And too, don't fall into the mind set that being trans means one particular thing. It may or may not lead you down the road that you see others taking. Success does not depend on the extent to which you change your life or your body. It depends on doing what you need to do to find peace in your heart and be happy with yourself. Maybe that means transitioning to some extent for you, or maybe not. Its something to get help with. Its something to take at a gradual and careful pace.

Its just my opinion, and I include myself in the statement, but I really think that trans people are very often especially succeptible to being influenced by our observations of other people. So many of us try so hard to fit into our biological gender, doing so against the grain of our own beings. We do this by watching others and learning how. Then later in life, when we can't carry the facade any more, we try to do the same thing in reverse- we watch and try to emulate the characteristics of our true gender. Along the way, we sometimes also watch and try to emulate people in the trans community, usually people who seem to have found some degree of happiness or people who have navigated the complexities of transitioning "successfully."

We can't help it- we are observers and often mimic-ers, looking all around us for the answer to the conflict in our own beings. And being that way can be useful in the long run if its managed properly. To assume a gender role in society, after all, one must be able to fit into the role.

But being happy and healthy is about knowing who and what YOU are, not whats going on in the lives and hearts and minds of everyone around you. The work it takes to find peace in this condition is mostly YOURS, since you are the subject of the work and the resident expert on you. : )

But therapy helps a LOT. The guidance can help to unravel the messy and complicated feelings and confusions that are just pretty much inherently a part of being trans. And a qualified therapist can also help you to know what your options are and how best to proceed as you make the big decisions in your life.