Being Me

Without a doubt, the times are dark right now. In a world that has gone mad with hate and bigotry, that is looking to devolve to a darker time in history, the question becomes: how do we cope?

It had been on my mind for a while and when an opportunity came up in the Fall to get a consultation for a tracheal shave, I decided to move forward.

I hemmed and hawed over getting a breast augmentation for a while now, but last summer's bikini shopping pushed me over the edge.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my sharing my true self with the world around me. I feel like that means that it's not a bad time to reflect.

I have a couple of classes left in my first ballet course and I was thinking about what the class has done for me so far.

We're past spoiler moments now right? Well, maybe not, but suffice to say the last line of the Barbie movie landed on me like a ton of bricks and today was the day that I had that moment.  Okay spoilers ahead, you have been warned!

I was in a great discussion today, with some trans friends at work, when I started describing the moment where I went from "I am transitioning" to "I have transitioned" in my mind and it's not when you would think!

Time flies! I wouldn't necessarily say "when you are having fun" with that, but it's actually been pretty good, especially as the weather is getting better!

With my surgery date a mere 3 weeks away as of Monday, I'm all set to go.

We're on the cusp of a new year and as I look back at 2022, I am really happy to be leaving it behind.

I started talking a little bit about my journey in to spaces like Wicca and Witchcraft and along the way, I decided that if I needed to write things out for a purpose, it would be either be with a glass or regular dip pen and ink.

Chatting with a friend, last night, about how I think about the nature of Wicca and what the Goddess and God embody to me.

There is something to be said for an unexpected cry that you had no idea you really needed, but actually did. It's deeply healing and something that was absent from my life before.

So, I recently decided that I would dip my toe back into a Q&A site, Stack Exchange's Photography site, where I was once a moderator... turns out, the stove was hot and I got burned by it. Content warning: transphobic slurs in an image.

This question made the rounds on Twitter recently and it's a powerful and deeply interesting one I think. However, before I dive into how it feels for me, I want to be clear: dysphoria is not a requirement for being trans.

While I fully came out in January of this year, the real start of my journey was on July 6th, 2020. That evening, shortly after dinner, I took my first dose of Estradiol and started walking the path that has set me free. It makes me smile, in hindsight, to recall that I took that first dose with all of the gravitas and ceremony of a morning vitamin, I have a knack for sailing past the big moment. I think, as I took the pills out of the bottle, I was just telling myself to get on with it and so I did. Nevertheless, a year has passed and, wow, what a year it has been. Physically, a lot of change has happened, some subtle, some not quite so much. My skin is softer and less oily. I get cold in a sauna. I have acquired a surprisingly deep love of 95% dark chocolate. More noticeable is that I am also reshaping in response to one of nature's most powerful biological chemicals. Each of these, and more, are an incredible source of affirmation for me. It is difficult to convey to cis people ...

  Just some rambling thoughts about paperwork and journals... 

This past Friday, I finally received my new birth certificate with my name and my true gender on it. Legally me and somehow, way more than I expected, validating.

As I progress in my transition, the image of who I used to be feels almost like they're in a fog, clouded by time and space. Memories of the past don't disappear, but how you engage with them matters.

My company hosts an annual Women in Tech Experience, a multi-day event with talks, teaching, and other learning opportunities from all regions of the company. As part of that experience, I was asked to do a lightning talk on my experience where people helped with my dreams. Now, obviously, I did not talk about this in the context of career dreams, but much more personally and from the lens of an environment of inclusion. Now that the event is past, I wanted to share the text of my speech, with the names of the guilty redacted. 😊 I was born a little less than a year before the Stonewall Riots, a watershed moment in the development of LGBTQ+ rights. But that was just the beginning of what is still a significant battle for equality almost 52 years later. As I speak here today, across 33 States there are more than 100 pieces of legislation aimed at curtailing trans rights or suppressing our very existence. I live in a world where my right to personal dignity, to be treated with respect, t...