Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hi everyone, I've been a lurker for over a decade on Susan's, "read it" (censored for some reason), and all the usual trans places. I've known since being a kid that it was weird to pray every night to wake up as a girl. I almost came out in college but right as I was working up the courage, a lot of trans stuff hit the mainstream and I got cold feet after seeing the way my family/peers responded.

Since then, I got married, had kids, and got myself a lucrative career. From the outside, I'm sure I look normal and seem to have it all figured out. But I'm here and I'm sure I don't need to preach to the choir or anything about how looks can be deceiving.

At this point, MPB has done its damage, I am the boxiest box to ever exist, and most importantly, my life is about more than just me now. I would never take my three kids' dad away from them just to make myself happier. I love my wife and children. I'm content with my life and thankful for what I have. I just wish I could've had this exact same life, but as a wife/mom, if that makes sense.

I'm just here to peek over the fence whenever I have those late nights of being down and wondering how green the grass is over there.

  @katiebee
Dear Katiebee:
I am so very glad that you felt led to register as a member. 
It always makes me so happy see members arrive here on the Susan's Place Forum and
I am glad that you came out of the "LURKER" mode wishing you and
giving you my WARM WELCOME here...

I much enjoyed reading your introduction
    ....and YES, MPB can be a big problem for many MTF's but the good news is that
there are a variety of solutions available that can address the issues.

As you feel the freedom to share and post more of your thoughts here, you will undoubtedly find
like-minded members here that may become your Forum friends.

This website is huge, with a lot of information from Real People who have lived through these things for decades. There is much wisdom here. Feel free to browse, learn, and share your experiences too. We all learn from each other.

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You will find the Forum to be a Friendly and Accepting place that you can share whatever is on
your mind.... without any judgement from our members. 
    This is your safe place!

If you have any immediate questions regarding the Forum please feel free to contact me at
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My warmest regards, and WELCOME
Danielle [Northern Star Girl]
The Forum Administrator

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cc:  @Lori Dee  @Sarah B  @Devlyn @Jessica_Rose  @Mariah                     

Welcome to Susan's Place, katiebee!

Over a decade of lurking before your first post. That is a long time to carry something alone—reading other people's stories in the middle of the night, wondering if yours belongs here, closing the browser, going back to regular life.

And then doing it again. For years.

The fact that you finally typed something and hit submit means something, even if you're framing it as "just peeking over the fence."

You say you're content. But people who are content don't lurk on trans forums for a decade. Content people don't post at 2am about how green the grass looks on the other side.

What you're describing isn't contentment. It's endurance.

There's a difference, and I think somewhere inside, you already know that.

A child who prays every night to wake up as a girl isn't experiencing a phase or a curiosity. That's something bone-deep. I know, I did the very same thing.

You've known since childhood.

You almost came out in college. You were right there. And then the world showed you what happens to people like us, and you made the calculation that survival meant staying hidden.

That wasn't weakness. That was a rational response to real danger.

But it also wasn't a choice made from freedom. Fear made it for you.

And now here you are, having built exactly the life you were supposed to build. Spouse, kids, career. The whole structure.

It's not enough. Because it's not yours. Not fully.

I want to gently push back on something you said: "I would never take my three kids' dad away from them just to make myself happier."

There's a lot packed into that sentence.

"Just to make myself happier." You're framing your own identity—something you've carried since childhood, something that's kept you up at night for decades—as a frivolous want. Like it's a sports car or a vacation.

This isn't about happiness. This is about whether you get to exist as yourself.

Those aren't the same thing.

Minimizing it as "just happiness" is a way of telling yourself your needs don't matter.

They do.

"Take my three kids' dad away." Transitioning doesn't delete you from your children's lives. You'd still be their parent. The same person who loves them, who shows up for them, who knows their fears and their favorite things and how to comfort them at 3am.

The relationship doesn't vanish. It evolves.

I've been running this community for thirty years. I've watched countless families navigate this.

The kids who struggle most aren't usually the ones whose parent transitioned. They're the ones whose parent stayed but became distant, hollow, checked-out. They're the ones who grew up and later learned their parent suffered in silence for decades—and never trusted them enough to share it.

Kids are perceptive. They know when a parent is fully present versus when a parent is going through the motions.

And they're often more adaptable than we give them credit for—especially when transition is handled with love, openness, and age-appropriate honesty.

I'm not telling you to transition. That's not my place, and you didn't ask.

But I am asking you to examine that framing.

You've set it up as "myself versus my children." I don't think that's accurate.

It might actually be "my authentic self who can be fully present" versus "the version of me that endures but is never quite all there."

The physical stuff—MPB, being "boxy." I hear this a lot from people who've convinced themselves the window has closed.

You'd be surprised.

Hormones do real work, even starting later. Hair has solutions. Bodies change more than we expect. I've seen people start in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and find peace in their skin.

But more importantly—even if you never looked exactly how you wished, even if you were clocked sometimes, even if it was hard—would living as yourself be worth it anyway?

Not every woman is beautiful by conventional standards. Not every woman passes invisibly through the world.

They're still women. They still get to exist as themselves.

That last line you wrote sits with me: "I just wish I could've had this exact same life, but as a wife/mom."

That's grief, katiebee.

Real grief.

For the life you can see so clearly—the one that runs parallel to this one, where you got to be her. Where the kids call you mom. Where your spouse married the woman you are inside.

That life didn't happen.

Mourning it is legitimate.

But here's what I've learned in thirty years of doing this: the life you're grieving isn't only in the past.

Part of it is still in the future.

You can't go back and be, or have the freedom of a young girl, become a bride, carry a child, raise your own babies as their mom. That's gone or never existed.

But your kids are still young. There could be years ahead—school plays, graduations, weddings, grandchildren—where you're present as yourself.

The whole life isn't lost. Just the early chapters.

I don't know what you'll do with any of this. Maybe you'll keep lurking for another decade. Maybe this post is the first crack in something that eventually opens. Maybe you'll find a way to make peace with things as they are.

I don't know your wife, your specific situation, your risk factors. Only you can weigh all of that.

But I want you to know: the fence you're peeking over? There's a gate in it.

It's not locked.

And it's closer than you think. I think your introduction was first crack in your egg — cracking your egg means admitting that you're trans and not being in denial anymore.

You've been welcome here for the decade you were watching. You're welcome now that you've spoken.

And you'll be welcome whatever you decide.

I'm glad you posted.
— Susan 💜

PS: Over the past weeks, I've been walking with another spouse on the forum, helping her steady herself while her partner begins transition (https://www.susans.org/index.php?topic=252385.0). What has emerged from those conversations is a pattern that may resonate with you, too.

When someone has been carrying the truth of their sex since childhood, the people who love them often feel the ground shift long before anything actually happens.

Amy has been learning that fear usually isn't about the present moment — it's about imagined futures — and that clarity comes from staying with what is real today, not what might happen years from now.

She's discovering that when a parent or partner begins to live authentically, the relationship doesn't vanish; it deepens, because the person she loves becomes more present, not less.

Some of that may be helpful reading for you. Not because your path mirrors hers — it doesn't — but because the themes overlap: the difference between endurance and wholeness, the fear of disrupting a family, the grief for the life you didn't get to live, and the possibility that the future still holds pieces of that life.

Amy's journey is reminding her that authenticity doesn't take people away from their families. It brings them back to themselves.

If any part of what you wrote is the beginning of your own "cracked egg" moment, some of those conversations might offer perspective as you sort through what this means for you — one honest step at a time.

Hi Katiebee

Alana

Welcome Aboard Katiebee!!!

I am glad you are here and if I can offer any advice... it would be to read, re-read, deeply meditate upon and then... read again... the words @Susan offered you... I think they may very well speak to what you were truly seeking, whether it was in the front of your mind... or perhaps hiding in the back... as you made your first courageous post here... 🌻

I hope we hear a lot from you as you now have a place here, amongst friends, where you can finally express what has long gone... unexpressed 🌻

Onward We Go Brave Sister!

Ashley 💕

Hello, Katiebee!

Welcome to Susan's Place.

As you well know, this is a safe space for you to be your authentic self without any pretenses. Regardless of what you want or don't want to do on this journey, you are always welcome here. We recognize that every person's journey is unique to them and their circumstances. You will find no judgment here. We accept you as you are, the decisions you make for yourself, and whatever your plans might be for the future. We will offer whatever support we can.

Welcome to Susan's Place.
You are among friends here, now and always.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! I've always felt weird commenting in trans spaces since I don't quite fully belong. Getting older has definitely been a double-edged sword. On one hand, it makes it feel like the window has totally passed. On the other, seeing how fleeting life can be kind of ups the pressure on that "am I wasting years I could be enjoying" feeling.

I know from my years lurking that posts like this are often kind of funny because you see those users come back with updates 3, 4, 5 years later and they've fully transitioned and are living their best life. But I'm at a level of contentment (maybe endurance, true, but I am generally happy with my life such as it is) to where risking it all for that last 30% of joy is really, really scary. And with all of that, I also know that even though they'd love me and adapt, it would be tremendously hard on my family. I don't think transition is in my future (at least not unless something major changes). But if in 10 years I'm still here and have finally gone through that gate, I give everyone permission to go back at this post and tell me how in denial I was!

Dear katiebee,

I want to address something you said: "I've always felt weird commenting in trans spaces since I don't quite fully belong."

You belong here. Full stop.

Being trans isn't defined by what you do. It's defined by who you are. You've known since you were a child praying to wake up as a girl. That's not a feeling that requires action to validate. It simply is.

You don't need to take hormones to be trans. You don't need to change your name, your presentation, your pronouns, or your life. You don't need to come out to a single soul. You can live exactly as you're living now, for the rest of your life, and you will still be trans. That's not a consolation prize. It's just the truth.

There's no requirement to transition. Plenty of people in this community never do, or do so only partially, or only privately, or only decades from now. Your membership here isn't conditional on a particular outcome. You're not on probation until you pick up a prescription.

If you've genuinely found a way to carry this that works for you—if the life you have brings you enough that the trade-offs make sense—then that's a valid path. You're the only one who gets to weigh those scales. Not me, not the forum, not anyone.

I do want to gently note the framing though: "that last 30% of joy." You're still minimizing. You've done it twice now—first calling your identity something you'd pursue "just to make myself happier," now reducing it to 30%.

I'm not saying that to push you toward anything. I'm saying it because the way we frame things to ourselves matters.

If you've decided the trade-offs don't work for your life, that's legitimate. But make sure you're weighing what this actually is, not a discounted version you've talked yourself into so the math feels easier.

And your concern for your family—that's real. Wanting to protect your kids from difficulty, weighing what transition would ask of your wife, thinking about more than just yourself—that's not rationalization. That's love. Just make sure that love includes you too. You're part of that family, not outside of it looking in.

You mentioned the double-edged sword of time—feeling like the window has passed while also feeling the pressure of years slipping by.

I'll say this: the window for having lived your whole life as yourself has closed. That's true for all of us past a certain age. But the window for living the rest of your life as yourself? That one doesn't close until you do. Whether that's worth it given everything else in your life—only you can say.

And yes, I smiled a little at your last paragraph. You're self-aware enough to see the pattern, to know how these posts often read in retrospect.

That self-awareness is a gift, even if you're not sure what to do with it yet. The permission you gave us to call out your denial in ten years? That's not something people write when they've fully closed a door. That's something people write when they're leaving it cracked, just in case.

That's okay. Leave it cracked. Or close it. Or walk through it. You're welcome here either way—lurking, posting, questioning forever, transitioning, not transitioning.

This is your space as much as anyone's.

With love and companionship,
— Susan 💜

Quote from: katiebee on November 30, 2025, 04:30:02 PMI've always felt weird commenting in trans spaces since I don't quite fully belong.

To echo what Susan said above: there is no such thing as "not trans enough". Transitioning is never a requirement. Being transgender is just that, a state of being. It is who you are, and who you have always been. We are born this way; it is not a choice. What you do, or don't do about it, is up to you.

Never feel like you don't belong. You absolutely do!

Hi Katiebee,


Welcome!



Chrissy