Whatever shape, size, or whatever changes you make over time, accepting your femaleness is main thing. Then you have the right to live your life the same way that any female does. Which basically means that if you are comfortable being a woman and not making any changes at all that is ok. If living the butch lifestyle like you have most of your life is comfortable to you go for it. I tried living the butch life style for 53 years, but because it was imposed upon me by society and not my choice, I discovered that living butch wasn't for me.
I am out full time as a woman online and off, but have never had the means to make any physical changes to my body. Someday I hope, God, health, and insurance permits. Socially, I am an auntie, a grandmother, mother, a father, a lady, a retired school marm. Basically I have become a little old toothless harmless grandma, and when I have to show my driver's licence which still lists me as a male and tell people that I am a transsexual woman, I get a big so what! I have never been threatening and am mostly a plain Jane.
The only place that I have had problems is when I have to get x-rays and they insist in putting me in a male dressing room when I have to change. Luckily, I have been a lone in the changing room the one time it happened. I have voted, done jury duty, used the lady's room all over, and passed through security at the federal building without problems. People might behave distantly towards me, but being a quarter Swedish, I have a tendancy to be distant myself, unless the Irish half takes over, and the bull-headed Norwegian sides with the Irish. Being 69, living in public housing, and living off Social Security isolates me to some extent. However having a 13 year old son in middle school, attending school functions, and his neighborhood friends coming over, and exposes me, as a transsexual woman, who is the father to the son, to being outed daily. Plus the fact that my partner, his mother, sees me more as a male who lives as a woman, and she is constantly calling me Michael instead of Michelle and using male pronouns.
I explain that I perfer female pronouns and I pronounce Michael as Michelle, when I feel comfortable about it. So for me dropping the trannsexual from my female identity is not possible. I have five other biological adult children and grandchildren living on the West Coast, plus brothers and sisters, and past students who I am out to.
Life is not always simple and we can only do what we can. I accept the fact that I am a grandmother no matter what others may think, and I also accept the fact that I can't control what others think and feel about me. They have the right to live their lives and I have the right to live mine. I also accept the fact that I may or may not be able to feminize my body at all, even though I wish to, but life happens as it does.
Besides dealing with eating problems, like hiatal hernia problems which have caused me to loose 50 lbs because I have trouble eating, diabetes 2, high blood pressure, something on my 2nd vertebrae, and muscle aches, there are other issues to deal with on a daily basis. Being on Medicare and Medicaid share accost makes health care a real test to deal with. I was in the hospital for 5 days and they could not deal with my eating problems because they only dealt with on them on a out patient basis and finding a doctor which takes my insurance and medicaid share accost which is not booked up for months is a problem.
We all have issues and nobodies issues are more or less important than anybody else's. We just have to deal with life as it is and be happy with ourselves. Having gone through a Buddhist phase in my religious journey has helped me to cope with dealing with having desires which I can't fulfill, of which I have many. There is not point to getting bent out of shape by the things we can't control in life.
