Changing feelings about my trans identity and self-acceptance

I met Fox Fisher at Trans Pride, and it was amazing!

I had a sort of epiphany/ self affirming moment the other day when I went to gymnastics. We were stood lining up for for the air track and in the queue I was stood right between a group of guys likely not much older than me (probably late twenties) and there was about 10 of them, all around 6ft with varying amounts of muscle. As usual I started the evening off feeling pretty dysphoric and inferior as I usually do around tall muscly guys with deep voices. But as the session went on, and we were doing different things I started realising, hey they may be taller and stronger, with a more stereotypically pleasing aesthetic but in this situation right now..I actual excel over them. I'm the one demonstrating the things that they're trying to do. They're the ones saying “wow” when I do something and I'm the one explaining things to them to help them improve.
It suddenly sunk in, something that should have occurred to me a long time ago. As trans people, we will often feel inferior to cis people, for many different reasons (and obviously I'm not just saying it's only trans people that have these feelings but right now that's what I'm focusing on) but there will always be situations where we are the individuals that the others around us want to be as good as. They might have been able to easily muscle up to front support on bar or rings but something as simple for me as a cartwheel, is something they struggle with. And with a lot of hard work I could also one day do a muscle up if I train hard enough.

Cornwall Pride 2016

You may often look around at others, whether they are trans people further ahead in their transition than you, or cis people and feel inferior, wishing you were them. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others, which can be so self destructive. You can't be them, but you can become the best version of you. I may not be able to make myself taller, but I could become as strong and muscular as these guys if I put in the hard work and dedication. It may take longer, but it is possible.  And on the subject of height, as it's one of the main things I struggle with due to most of my male friends being pretty tall and it gets me down every time I go to buy trousers and even the shorter leg ones are too long. I doubt even if I was born as cis male that I would be much taller than I am now. My whole family is pretty tiny. I'm the same height as my Dad and like an inch taller than my Mum, I have one random 6ft+ Uncle but my Great Granddad was tall so someone had to get that gene, but the rest of my family are all around the same height as me.
I actually managed to find a girlfriend shorter than me as well, and I've asked her if she's ever wished I was taller, she responded with “no because then I'd have to tiptoe to kiss you”. We often assume that all girls (or guys) want the stereotypical tall dark and handsome partner but that really isn't always the case and we often forget this. The world needs diversity, it would be boring if we all looked the same. I may not be the tallest, strongest, most typically attractive or most talented guy in the world, but that doesn't matter. I am still valued as a person, I have friends and family that think I'm pretty great (most of the time) and I'm trying my best to do something good with my life, help others and enjoy it along the way. Obviously I still have days where my dysphoria flares up again and I doubt that will ever go away completely, but it doesn't stick around as long as it use to, I handle it better and I am learning to accept the way I am and even embrace it.

One of my best mate's (Meg) and I at the bar

I wouldn't be where I am today, surrounded by amazing and inspiring people if I wasn't trans. I would likely not be as open minded about things, I wouldn't know the vast majority of my friends. I wouldn't have met my girlfriend. I probably wouldn't be trying to do something important and educational for others. The trans community can be quite a toxic place at times, with so many conflicting opinions, jealously, confusion, misunderstandings and personal struggles but it can also be a beautifully supportive and inspiring thing to be a part of.
When I started my transition just over 5 years ago I always thought that when I had finished all of my surgeries and been discharged from the Gender Clinic that I would never want to talk to anyone about it. That I would just want to forget about it and never tell anyone about it. I think I felt somewhat ashamed of who I was because it wasn't “normal”, along with being scared that people wouldn't accept me and would treat me differently. So much has changed. I have finally reached a stage in my own self-acceptance where I don't care who knows about my trans history. I feel good about the fact that sharing my transition with people has helped others to understand themselves or eachother. I have managed to make parents of others realise that their child being trans is not going to ruin either of their lives. Through volunteering at the Gender Clinic over the last 6 months I have met some great people at the early stages of their transition. Hearing them say that just meeting me and having a chat about things has ended up giving them hope for their future is one of the best feelings in the world and I am so happy to be able to do that for someone.

First family photo with Mum and Step-Dad since I transitioned

Obviously I still have down days as everyone does. There’s days where I wish I had a cis-male body, and get really depressed about the fact I had to go through so much to get a body that feels now just acceptable to me, but I have been much more fortunate that many others and I try to remind myself of how far I’ve come in the last 6 years. There were times when I thought dying would be the easier and better thing to do, but I managed to make it through that, with the help of great friends and family. My therapist and friends had often said that they’re amazed at how well I deal with things and always seemed so positive, but really I just found it easier to pretend like things were fine and not eating away at me. I just didn’t want to deal with things so just ignored a lot of it and waited for it to go away or work itself out, which for some things did actually work. Though I know that’s not a healthy way to deal with things.
I’m still working on being able to talk to people about things. But I think now at this stage people often just accept that I don’t like to talk about stuff and leave me be while I go quiet for a few days and don’t interact much. I use to keep a journal and write stuff down early in transition, maybe I should do that again. But also my girlfriend now seems to be finding a way to make me talk about things which is good. Sorry this ended up going in a bit of a negative direction after the positive start! I was going to delete this whole section and leave it all positive, but I think I’ll just leave it now since it shows I’m still just human and not a big positivity machine.

My girlfriend (Meg (a different Meg)) and I at Pride

Anyway, the point of this post was we all have things we don’t like about ourselves, we’ve all been through things we thought might break us but that have made us stronger and will continue to do so. If we try to focus on something we do like about ourselves to try and move the focus onto to a positive thought it can make such a big change. Even something small like “hey my eyebrows look good today” or “I really like how this shirt looks” or it doesn’t even need to be a physical thing, maybe you’re proud of the way you handled a customer or comment, or the fact that you got up out of bed that day and ate something or even went outside, that’s brilliant, Go You!! We need to try and celebrate the good things, and be proud of what we’ve managed to do and think of what we’re capable of instead of focusing on the things that didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. I will also try to take my own advice on this and not be a massive hypocrite!

I know everyone is saying this at the moment with all the crappy things that are going on around the world, but a little love and compassion can go such a long way. Be kind to each other and be kind to yourself.

Coming Out - Part 4 (other family members)

Just a random pic of me in 2013 

I told the majority of the rest of my family via email because they live all over the place. I have tried getting into my old email account to find exactly what I said and everyone's responses but for some reason Outlook is telling me the account doesn't exist, So I'm gonna do my best to remember how things went with various people. There was a largely varied response, and some were quite surprising. The people I thought would be supportive were not, and the people I thought would be a bit more hesitant, were actually fine. I had some very difficult comments from my Grandmother, which I will share later. These however were mostly horrible sounding due to the lack of education and her understanding of the subject rather than intentionally offensive. For example “why can't you just be a butch lesbian” was one of the questions asked. I will add some excerpts from a selection of responses and talk about it properly in a bit.

Firstly I am going to talk about how things went with one of Aunts and Uncles. I have 4 sets of Aunts and Uncles, these were the pair I was closest to, and they have 2 kids, twins who were 9 at this time. I sent an email to my Uncle, pretty much the same email that I sent to everyone. It just explained how I felt, and what I was going to be doing, name, pronouns etc. I thought that these 2 would be more open minded and supportive than the others, especially since we were so close. That wasn't the case unfortunately.  He said that I was too young to know that this is who I am. He also didn't want to tell the kids, which basically meant I wouldn't be able to see them any more. I am writing this now almost 5 years later and I haven't seen my cousins in this time. I have seen this Aunt and Uncle once, and that was at my Nana's funeral last year.

Me and my cousin at Mum and Step Dad's wedding in 2010

However, in the last year, the girl twin has added me on facebook, snapchat, instagram (crazy social media obsessed 13 year olds these days haha!) but it's been so great reconnecting with her. We were so close when she was little, I remember her saying once at a family meal “I want to be a tomboy like you when I'm older”, this was obviously before I came out or anything, but it was so cute, thankfully my Uncle didn't hear that. As it turns out though she's actually become quite girly instead, she's somewhat followed in my footsteps doing gymnastics though which is pretty cool. She's an amazing dancer, and I love that I get to see her growing up now, it's such a shame I missed out on seeing them over the last 5 years. I will make sure to get some photos of us when they all come down to visit next week! It's going to be so strange seeing them again, and I'm slightly concerned they're both going to be taller than me. I'm pretty sure the boy will be as my Aunt told me he has size 8 feet the other day when I asked what I could get them for Christmas! That's crazy, is it normal for 13 year old boys to have feet that big!?

Nana at my Mum and Step Dad's wedding

Moving on to another unfortunate outcome, my Mum and Grandma decided that they didn't want to let my Nana (great grandmother) know about my transition, because it would upset her. Being in her 90s and a Christian, they figured she would be very against the whole thing. They didn't want her to know I had a girlfriend before this either. This was the worst for me, Nana was also the family member I was closest to. She was the coolest person ever to me. When she was younger she was the first woman in her town to wear trousers, which was obviously frowned upon at this time. She also had a pet monkey that her brother brought back when he was serving in the forces overseas. She had afternoon tea with the local Vicar once and the monkey hit the Vicar's cup of tea out of his hand. You can't make this stuff up. I could go on and on but you get the idea, she was awesome. So you can imagine how upset I was about this, especially because she lived really close and I use to see her pretty often. But I didn't want to ruffle any more feathers, so I didn't really argue their decision. I stopped seeing her and that lasted about a year I think, something like that.

This is the Tumblr blog post I wrote about telling Nana from September 2013:

Nana and I the first time I went to see her again 

“I’m actually finally allowed to tell my Nana (great Gran) about me transitioning today.. So for the year my Mum and Gran haven’t wanted me to talk to or go and see my Nana for two reasons, one being that they don’t think she’d react well and she’s in her early 90’s, and the other being that they expected/hoped I was just going through a phase or something. But now since me having my top surgery, they’ve decided I should be allowed to talk to her and have her know why I haven’t been to see her. Apparently they have just been telling her that I have been off doing my own thing and not had the chance to go and visit her, which really upsets me ‘cause it is so not the case, and she was the family member that I was closest to before all this. So today I am going up to see her, my Gran and Grandad will already be there and have explained to her what is going on. I’m a bit annoyed that they insist on telling her themselves because I doubt they will explain it well, but I haven’t bothered arguing 'cause I just want her to know now so I can see her again. My mum won’t be there because apparently she said she wont be able to hold it together, and we rarely see each other anyway.
Really hope it goes well. Wish me luck guys, I will report back this evening.”


“So I arrived at my Nana’s house and my Gran and Granddad had already told her as they said they would, I’m not a hundred percent sure what they told her, and to be honest I was very nervous about how they would explain it. However, from the second I walked in, all three of them were very happy to see me, I went over and gave Nana a hug as its been almost a year since I’ve seen her and I’ve missed her a lot. I sat down next to her and it was like nothing had happened. My 94 year old great grandmother immediately started using male pronouns for me when talking across to my grandma and I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t been allowed to see her all this time ‘cause everyone said she would react horribly. She is annoyed at my mum for not letting me go and see her. She said to me before I left that she has a good friend who’s granddaughter was born as her grandson, and she talks to her about hairstyles and things. She was not at all phased by anything. She said I must make sure to go and see her often now, which I plan to definitely :) 

As usual, signing off with a recent pic. Jan 2017

We went by my mum’s on the way home to tell her how it went, and she seemed in a bad mood from the second I walked in the door, even when my Gran told her the afternoon went extremely well, she still didn’t cheer up at all, she probably just feels a fool now though. 
Also when my grandparents were dropping me back home afterwards they said “Nana is going to call your mum now and will be asking how is Adam and Mum is not going to be happy” but anyway, it all pretty much went fantastically.”
The next time I went to see Nana, her friend was there and as I walked in she said to her “oh is't he handsome”. It made me feel so good, which was the day the above photo of us was taken.