My Challenges and Changes
Since my transition, I’ve faced real challenges and changes in my life. When people say I “made a choice,” they don’t understand that being transgender is a fact of who I am, not a decision — while transitioning was the choice I made to finally live authentically. The way society sometimes treats transgender people can cost us our spouse, children, family, home, work, and friends. Even knowing all of that is possible, many of us still feel we have no choice but to be our true selves, because the pain of hiding can become so unbearable that some in our community tragically die by suicide. After a lot of prayer, I felt a total peace that I was doing the right thing.
One of my biggest challenges was telling my mother I was transgender. She worried a great deal about things, and most of all about me. Getting her to start using my new name and the correct pronouns was going to take time. One of the most embarrassing moments was at the store, when she would slip and say “he,” which used to drive me a little crazy. I had to help her understand that when someone uses the wrong pronoun for me in public, people around us don’t know whether that’s transphobia, and it could potentially put me in an unsafe situation. Today, my mother is so much better about it, and if she occasionally slips, she quickly corrects herself.
Another challenge I faced was transitioning while at work. With coworkers who already knew me, some accepted it and some didn’t, and you have to learn how to navigate that with grace. It helps to understand that your transition is also a process for the people in your life — it takes them time to adjust too. For new coworkers coming on board later, it becomes a matter of choosing when and how you tell them, on your own timeline, rather than having someone else out you. One important thing to keep in mind is that, depending on where you live and work, you could still face job loss simply for being transgender. I always tell other transgender people to carry themselves with confidence and to build their own personal “platform,” so that when you do tell others you’re transgender, it doesn’t shake their opinion of you — because they’ll already know who you are on the inside, rather than focusing only on how you look on the outside. My mother once wrote in a letter to a friend, “Just because the cover of the book has changed, the story inside remains the same.”
Some of the smaller, everyday challenges caught me off guard too. It used to take me five minutes to wash my hair — now it can take up to 45 minutes. At concerts or sporting events, the restroom lines I deal with now are far longer. Buttons on blouses and zippers on pants sit on the opposite side from what I was used to, and I sometimes find myself changing outfits three or four times just to match the right shoes and purse. I’ve also had to learn a whole new set of everyday and medical terms that go along with the gender I live as now.