There come times in all lives when we face difficulties and there are times when those difficulties are over. While there may always be those for whom recounting them will have value, there are many more who want to hear more positive news.
It doesn’t matter what the ordeal was. The bout with cancer, mine with transition, another’s with prolonged poverty.
More than that, the longer you spend your time walking backward and looking back, the more time you’re wasting from your new life moving forward.
You owe it to yourself to get past the past.
About six months ago it stopped being weird to hear she or her or miss or ma’am in reference to me. I stopped being able to not directly identify as a woman, there was no longer anything to hold me back.
Yesterday, a good friend bought me coffee and said “and give this woman whatever she wants” and the only feeling I had was amitie for my friend and a good feeling that I no longer have that twinge.
We had a nice talk over coffee. It was lovely.
In the past I needed to spend time on my pain and sorrow because that was what was happening. Now I need to focus on my joy. I have other concerns as all of us do, but perhaps it is good to share a view from outside of the crucible as well.
It feels lovely to have a face that is now feminine with or without makeup, and to have the confidence to go out with a scarf or a wig without worrying what people see because they see me, and I’m a woman and that’s all I want to be.
I delight in having the body I always felt I should have. What things divide me from being born that way do not weigh me down or concern me overmuch. I am instead lifted up.
I love my sisters and my ability to understand them. I wish my brothers could understand us too, but I remember why they can’t. (giggle)
I love having people tell me that things I’m wearing are pretty, or that (what flatterers) that I am somehow nice looking. While I don’t really believe it, I still feel nice that they value me enough to make the effort.
I delight that it all came out so well and that at my age.
I am so grateful for my friends and community, they make me rich.
Count your blessings and your joys.
My Gifted Life 
I read this a day ago and since it has been turning over in my mind.
I like the idea there is a progression from (in my words) being ‘pre-transition’ to being a transgender woman (which is how I identify at present) to being a woman period. Where I am at right now is acute awareness that I didn’t experience the socialisation that women do, that I am therefore different (and maybe not fully a woman). I look forward to the point you’ve experienced of being fully accepted as a woman by other women. I realise I have first to accept me as a woman, not as a trans woman.
Thanks for writing this piece.
Toni
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