What Finally Triggered you to Transition

[HollyElizabeth]

@Shay Honey, You're very welcome. I know the feeling about wanting to have a child, but I had that feeling tears before I started on HRT. I will say that since starting HRT, I've had the desire stronger than ever. I so want to get pregnant and give birth, but I know it's just a dream. Like you Shay, I've never been lucky enough to have any children. That makes this desire even worse.

[Elizabeth Star]

I did what I could to clean up my story.

 

What started my trigger was a motorcycle accident. I broke my back and fractured my knee. It was just an off-chance I was wearing a helmet. I usually didn't and it saved my life. After that self abuse became my normal. Years later my migraines started to get the best of me. To the point my Dr. swore I had a stroke. They tested me for everything but found nothing except migraines, lots of migraines. I was put on meds for them. Although it didn't do much for my headaches but I did started to feel more feminine. After a couple of months I realized I had been thinking about my gender identity for years. Then one day it hit me. It was like like a computer had been running a calculation for 40 years and finally got an answer. I'm a girl. I didn't know if or what I could do with this new information but I had my answer. I tried to tell myself I was too old and emotionally messed up to transition. It didn't help the girl wanted out. Eventually things came crashing down and I tried to delete myself. It's just by a miracle I'm still here. That night I promised myself I would set aside my fears, be strong and accept my true self. Since then I quit drinking, smoking and have been taking better care of myself. Even my migraines are gone now. I really wish I would've done this sooner but I'm here now and that all that really matters.

[Heather Shay]

@ElizabethStar I can relate deleting myself but I couldn't do it and asked God if God could just take me away and pretend I'd never happened.

I think the miagaines were another sign your subconscious was telling you you were a girl and wouldn't let go until you got it and I'm so happy you did.

[KathyLauren]

@ElizabethStar, that sounds a lot like a friend of mine who saw the light after almost dying in a parasail accident.  She figured it out while lying in a hospital bed for months, having numerous surgeries to put her body back together.  She realized that there was really just one surgery that she wanted.  She had her GCS a month ago.

[Drayse]

You're welcome @Shay, but just a couple of quick notes. When I see other girls struggles I sometimes question my own transness. ? Many girls have spoken in other threads about a definitive moment where they realized that they were trans. But I have no memory of such an event, I just gradually grew to understand that I was more woman than man.

 

The same girls often also speak of pursuing hyper masculinity. While I did my best to be masculine, I didn't desire to be hyper masculine though I still did often do things that were suboptimal in doing so. Perhaps it's because I had a younger brother who did pursue a more hyper masculine path and he did so to differentiate himself from me (we're 13 months apart and out parents raised us practically as twins). Where he zigged I zagged in my own pursuit to define myself.

 

Yet here I am, transitioning and so glad that I am. I go to bed happy every night knowing that I'll always be Drayse now. My triggering event was probably my separation, but the tipping event was accessing my female game character. So I have that to draw on. Perhaps I depend to much on external validation to confirm my transness, but it's something I can claim that is relatable to the experiences of my trans sisters.

[Heather Shay]

@KathyLauren that just brought me goosebumps about your friends recent GCS fulfillment surgery. Someday I will?feel that joy.

[Drayse]

13 hours ago, ElizabethStar said:

It was like like a computer had been running a calculation for 40 years and finally got an answer. I'm a girl. I didn't know if or what I could do with this new information but I had my answer. I tried to tell myself I was too old and emotionally messed up to transition.

Sounds similar to my last six years, but I can't imagine your suffering. That's something only you can know, but I feel empathy all the same. So glad you chose transitioning and life. I've found you to be an inspiration.

[Drayse]

1 hour ago, KathyLauren said:

@ElizabethStar, that sounds a lot like a friend of mine who saw the light after almost dying in a parasail accident.  She figured it out while lying in a hospital bed for months, having numerous surgeries to put her body back together.  She realized that there was really just one surgery that she wanted.  She had her GCS a month ago.

???

[Tasha Marie]

Good morning all. I have come to the conclusion that time is passing us by so fast.I let things get in my way and I’m not implying there won’t be any more roadblocks but I come to a realization that with things like Covid there’s always going to be something in your way we have to be true to ourselves it’s not going to be easy but I think we should all push forward a lot of you on here have already done that I know but for us newbies life‘s too short to wait put yourself in front of others. Which is hard sometimes. And when I say newbie at least for me yes I’ve always known but new to pushing for the transition.

[Heather Shay]

@Drayse first I love your name. Sweet unique and feminine. As far as triggering events we all have our own personal journeys and I don't think each of us has a life changing singular event that finally triggers but like an addict you have to bottom out and accept what you've denied all these years. I admire young folks today who know and accept and don't have the effects of years of T. Thankfully their road is easier and society more accepting and I am happy for them. For us older ladies it has been a long hard road alone but thanks to TP and the amazing women here and topics like that we know we are not alone anymore.

[Heather Shay]

@Tasha Marie I.am totally with you and understand where you are coming from and I am definitely in the newbie group and grateful to have company like you.

[Tasha Marie]

@Shay Thank you. 
Hugs

[Delcina B]

(I thought this posted yesterday) Thank you all! I needed to read this. After a great afternoon with my wife & grand daughter in my man role I was thinking maybe I'm not as femme as I thought, but then I think about the happy & normal feelings I feel when in femme. This is probably just me tipping the scale to going to see a therapist.

 

Hugs,

Delcina

[Willow McKenzie]

Hi everyone, your responses  are helpful to read.  

    After my second marriage failure I found a young person to share costs with me.   They are AFAB but are Bi and far more Non Binary.   After divorce I made up my mind that it was my house and I didn't want a housewife.   She went to work and paid rent.  I work from home so we were switching traditional roles.  One morning I was downstairs making coffee and breakfast and I put on a maid's costume outfit with boobie inserts.   I stood at the bottom of the stairs with her coffee, and in my most feminine voice yelled " coffee is on".  That's when I found out all the non-stock things about her.

    Not long after that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  The Doctors took all my maleness away and  I went into menopause.  I finally went to the woman's section in the health food store and found PM.  I immediately started feeling better.   I went on line and learned about everything, trans, hormones, HRT, intersex, and me.  I wanted to just let go and go all the way.   I was so afraid of the mess I would make in everyone else's life.   I stopped taking Herbs when my boobs started growing.  after a couple weeks my partner came to me and asked if I had quit taking PM, I said yes.   She told me that she couldn't stand me this way and it was obvious I couldn't stand myself either.   She actually threw the bottle at me.  I didn't want to take herbal so I found a trans-friendly Primary Doctor and informed consent.   That was 5 years ago.   I live in a small rural community and I couldn't hide it, plus I'm quite proud of being my real self, so I have shared the journey with my friends and we are all transitioning together.   I still worry about bringing HELL onto my self. some days I really worry.   I have more genuine friends now than I ever had as a male.   I just hope it all works out.   I have so much to live for now.

 

   ---WILLOW---

 

[Heather Shay]

@Willow Farmer When I read the HELL comment I think about my Catholic AND Polish upbringing - I'm cursed with double guilt feelings and my Polish mom was good at pressing my buttons and teaching me guilt. When I think about it now - if you have a Christian background - just think about the Christ. He hung around with all those types that society "says" are bad. I realized that today more than ever there are Pharisees (hypocrites) everywhere and that God made me this way for a reason. It isn't something I would wish on anyone and I never asked for it to happen to me but as I transition I realize more and more that I am loved and all I can do is finally love myself because I can't love my neighbor if I don't first love myself. I have ceased following organized religion and try to emulate the way Jesus and Budha and MLK and other wise and wonderful guides lived and treated others. And they all knew that to give is to recieve, to give service brings satisfaction, to plant good seeds is the best you can do.

[Jackie C.]

4 hours ago, Drayse said:

The same girls often also speak of pursuing hyper masculinity. While I did my best to be masculine, I didn't desire to be hyper masculine though I still did often do things that were suboptimal in doing so. Perhaps it's because I had a younger brother who did pursue a more hyper masculine path and he did so to differentiate himself from me (we're 13 months apart and out parents raised us practically as twins). Where he zigged I zagged in my own pursuit to define myself.

 

That's OK. I was terrible at being a boy. Hyper-masculinity wouldn't have worked (it would have been downright silly really) for me either. Things eventually worked out though.

 

I tried scouts when I was little to fit in with the other guys. What a disaster. I wasn't interested in anything the scout handbook had to offer and found the meetings incredibly boring. I'm also allergic to, basically, the outdoors.

 

While lots of girls go the hyper-masculine route to prove that they're men not all of us do. Not everybody gets an "AHA!" moment either. I had one, but it sounds like you were sure without one. Good for you.

 

Hugs!

[Ivy]

While I do look at a certain chain of events, really I find that I am still constantly processing it all.  As time goes by I remember more things in my past.  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had made different choices.  But there's no point in that, since the past is past.

And I wonder how much do I break from my past?  How much is just a continuing story?  

Sometimes I feel as if I'm still in a holding pattern.  I suspect the covid pandemic has something to do with that.

I'm not young, but I don't know where to go from here - it probably won't be far, LOL.

Guess I'm just rambling now.

[claire1000]

There doesn't have to be a HAHA moment as I said before it was constant hints through childhood that made me feel different from other boys, and my teenage years were a nightmare as I tried the hyper masculine {playing football}way of trying to hide how I really felt which in the sixties would have been looked on with disdain or even thought to be a mental illness. When I was sixteen or so I found a copy of DR Harrry Bengamin's The Transexual Phenomenon  when I read it I cried thinking there was a solution but cried realizing that the chances of me being able to do this was slim and none. Forty  plus years of frustration, and 20 years of drinking alcoholiclly left me little hope for real happiness. What happened when I started HRT wasn't any physical change{they were relatively slow} but just the general feeling of well being of feeling this must be what being a female is, not sure if it was the estrogen finally in me, or the Knowledge that I was on my way but it was if I was walking on a type of cloud nine that the weight of the male world was finally beginning to lift that for me was my HAHA moment.

[Heather Shay]

1 hour ago, Jandi said:

While I do look at a certain chain of events, really I find that I am still constantly processing it all.  As time goes by I remember more things in my past.  

OMG - same is tryue here and I never remembered much about my dad and my wife notices I am remembering more in those areas - the almost continuous life of hints and clues and smacks in the sub-conscious - my sub-conscious now says .... duh .... what did you think was going on?

 

@claire1000 - I forgot to mention numbing the pain with pot (gave it up but it didn't help) and drinking heavy (gave it up but that didn't help either) - the only solution has been "quit denying yourself and find the resources you need." the current society acceptance and with more and more folks coming out - it is getting easier - and I can't deny the frustrations of the past and wished I lived in an era of acceptance back then - I choose to be BETTER not BITTER about the past - that was my journey and only I could go on the journey.

[Willow McKenzie]

4 hours ago, Shay said:

@Willow Farmer When I read the HELL comment I think about my Catholic AND Polish upbringing - I'm cursed with double guilt feelings and my Polish mom was good at pressing my buttons and teaching me guilt. When I think about it now - if you have a Christian background - just think about the Christ. He hung around with all those types that society "says" are bad. I realized that today more than ever there are Pharisees (hypocrites) everywhere and that God made me this way for a reason. It isn't something I would wish on anyone and I never asked for it to happen to me but as I transition I realize more and more that I am loved and all I can do is finally love myself because I can't love my neighbor if I don't first love myself. I have ceased following organized religion and try to emulate the way Jesus and Budha and MLK and other wise and wonderful guides lived and treated others. And they all knew that to give is to recieve, to give service brings satisfaction, to plant good seeds is the best you can do.

I have 3 seriously Christian customers that know what I am doing, -trans-.   They don't preach , they live by example.   They have always liked me and support me now.  

[Heather Shay]

@Willow Farmer - hurray Christians who actually are living by the example of Jesus. 

[Betty K]

This may be an unpopular answer because I know many trans folk are sick of having their gender identities and sexualities conflated, but for me it was a sexual experience that finally made me take the idea of transitioning seriously: I had sex with a man, while presenting as a woman, and loved it. One thing I loved was being treated like a woman, but what I loved most was how it made me behave -- how feminine I felt and acted in that scenario. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have behaved that way eventually without the sexual experience, but that experience just fast-tracked me, I think. Afterwards I felt exhilarated for a few days, then had a drastic comedown when I realised it was back to being a man again in my everyday life. Nor did I decide to transition immediately -- I still haven't really decided -- but it became something I think about regularly and seriously as a realistic option. It was also the moment when I said to myself, "I'm transgender. Of course I'm transgender. Why didn't I accept it earlier?"

 

The other big trigger was breaking up with my wife about six months before that. Slowly I started crossdressing again -- something I'd done little of throughout our relationship -- and, to my own surprise, fantasising about transitioning. None of this should really have been a surprise to me: I'd had a major crossdressing phase about 10 years back before meeting my wife, and I'd often said if I could only be a woman on the weekends I'd be fine with being a man in between. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. But now I realise even if I could do that maybe it wouldn't work, because it is actually painful to morph from one personality to the other. Since realising not only how much I love being feminine but how deeply feminine I am, behaving as a male in the outside world has become more crazy-making than ever. I have always struggled with how to just get by and appear normal in male society -- sometimes I've knuckled down and tried to accept it and other times I've rebelled against it -- but I've never realised just how much of an act I put on day after day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mickey]

I first knew I was really a girl at a very early age. Three... Maybe four. I didn't have the language for it then. And I was a teenager when I learned that Sex Reassignment Surgery was a thing. I'm in the belt buckle, of the Bible belt. So I kept everything hidden my whole life. When I was 43 I had Acute Pericarditis and was in the hospital for 5 days. I learned then, that the high levels of Rheumatoid in my system could very well kill me any day, and that if I wanted to be happy for however long I had left, I would have to transition. When I got out of the hospital I started researching what I would need to do and I started to transition. That was in 2013. I started HRT in January of 2014 and haven't looked back since. I have never been happier in my life. I am legally female now with all the IDs that say so. And I look exactly like my mom.

 

[Heather Shay]

@Betty K @Mickey thank you for sharing. Every journey is different yet we have so much in common, the pain of having the wrong hormones and gender markings.

[Maddee]

Something mostly intangeable happened between me and a young woman.  I had long given up hope on transitioning and was doing my best to be the man and road dad for her and various other traveling individuals.

 

During transferences I intentioned some of her soul into my being and gave her some of mine.   She sought male attributes.

I noticed she started having keen insight into men's souls.  She also became suicidal and went to her mom.  I was down too. I went to a cold dark northern place, shaved my body, and haven't looked back towards what I was trying to be.

 

We were both already heading where this is going.   Just helped each other along our opposite ways.

 

I think we traded.