Hi All,
I'm Robyn. So very pleased and excited to finally go from lurking to participating here. I have learned so much from this community, my hope is that maybe I can give back at some point. I'm a 50 year old transgender woman from Oregon. I have been in transition in some way or another since I was a teenager and dealing with my dysphoria with many strategies, some of them healthy and others not.
I went through cycles of dress and presentation, worked with feminine consultants, bounced back and forth between presentations, communities etc. I've had lots and lots of therapy of various sorts. I knew I needed to be more feminine, that is where I became calm and happy.
Finally, the stubborn woman in me decided to do what I should have been doing as early as the mid-90s, and I started HRT this year. T-Blockers in Feb and Estrogen in June. The results have already been amazing both in my body and spirit. I feel like I am 30 yrs. old again. Gone is all the nasty stuff of dysphoria including the big ones for me depression, anxiety and some lack of focus. I truly feel like a different person.
Like some, I married as a young person and have remained married to my wife for 25+ years, we have two children and a good family life full of shared experience, spirituality, laughter through good and bad times. My wife understood for a long time that I had gender struggles, and the resulting escapism and other behavior that those struggles brought on.
I have some basic and qualified support from my wife on my greater transition, we talked before going on HRT and she gave it guarded approval, but it's not easy on her. As my dress and grooming has gone from "feminine guy" to androgynous to feminine, it is creating stress that we are doing our best to manage and deal with it. The changes to my body, the removal of hair, etc , her support has gone from reluctant to better and back and forth. I hope we will be successful. I love her so much.
I'm very hopeful for the future and scared as well. I really need more friends and a wider support network, I feel fairly isolated in much of this.
Other than all that heavy stuff, I am a technologist, business owner, art lover, and I love sports. In addition to biking, various coaching and support activities of sports, I play tackle football on a league in the area (yes. tackle), I'm the no doubt the oldest person in the league and the only transgender person. Training for it with very low testosterone is really interesting, but then I guess woman Olympians don't have much of that either.
That's about it for an intro, thanks for reading it.
Robyn
