I was just thinking that my only bridge to my past through pictures are the few I have on this website. I just bought a new computer because my other one died, so the only pictures that exist of me pre transition are on this site. I'm thinking if I'm going to completely delete my past look. I haven't quite got to where I'm going transition wise so I got some time to think on whether to keep a picture or not. Is everyone thinking of just dumping the past picture log or holding on.
I don't have many pictures to hang on to but I'll hang on to a few. It's important to remember the past.
well, as long as Susan's is around I guess I'll have a past
Nope. I'm keeping them all. I existed prior to transition - admittedly not as I would have liked but I'm not writing myself out of history for that reason. I have a lovely picture of myself with my grandmother (since deceased) and niece from several years ago that I'm never letting go of.
Not a ton of them exist, but I'm not dumping them. However, they won't be seeing the light of day. Hugs
Mariah
I'd still show some friends a few 'before' pics, because I'm proud of how far I've come. But for the most part they will be tucked away for safe-keeping.
I'm not about to delete who I was. In many ways I find it comforting to see who I was even a year ago and seeing how miserable I was compared to now.
I'm keeping my kid pics. I look like a girl in most of them anyway *shrugs*
I have other pics with me from moments in my life that I treasure such as holding my babies for the first time. I'm not destroying those. However don't expect those to show up as #tbt.
yes at least the one's in my possession but I'm not going to tell my parents to destroy their photos of me. They're sensitive to my transition and supportive of me. They do everything they can to keep my privacy a priority so I really don't have to worry about them showing my pretransition pics to the world, not that there's many anyways. I hated taking pictures before transition, plus I look like that person's cousin now so people wouldn't be able to figure out it's me anyways.
I've still got all my old photos and I've no intention of getting rid of them.
I dont have any pics of when i had short hair pre-transition/in boy mode in my teenage years(self-esteem issues) and the only ones are from when i was a little kid stuck to the fridge. Im keeping them since they dont give me any dysphoria.
I never liked how I look like as a man, so number of those pics is limited.
On the pics of me there is a progress noticeable as I take down weight, partly shave eyebrows, use skin care products etc. Will also have it on record what hrt and surgeries did for me.
So, won't toss it, but will be careful who I show it to. People invest time in building videos showing their progress; maybe I will find patience for that too.
Hi,
What makes us today is what we were before , from birth through out my life im sure not going to say this is someone else and why should I, all photos of my self are there to be seen and im sure not someone else ,
iv grown and little changes have taken place and what you would see before is not a great deal different form today as to my look facial features are concerned .
I was in the public eye before and still am and every one knows and those close to me are part of my life going back 57 years, Ill put it this way im not ashamed of who I am , though I may not have liked how I looked / and look now , people still recognise me just the same ,
...noeleena...
aside from my license and perhaps one more picture I don't have any of me anyways, I would not make others get rid of theres I just never want to see them, I even told facebook to block them, unfortunatlly its also blocking anything new now that I have starting presenting as myself, but pictures of me always make me feel weird so ya.
this ramble brought to you by Serena who swears she had a point to make when she started that paragraph but lost it half way through.
I had dump most of my photo before transition, I was having a thought of I want totally dump my past, I don't want to be recognize as I was, etc. And today I wish I doesn't done that, I should kept those photo. Recently, I just try to gather the remaining picture of me in the past, I could found like 5 photos. And I kind of smile when I look at those. I would tell anyone who think about dumping the past photos, you may like put away where you don't see it. May be in the future you might want to bring it up again.
I thinking of keeping the pictures I've got on Susan's. their the only ones I have. It would be nice to see me as I was pre HRT.
Not many pictures of me exist per-transition for two reasons.
My father was not much of a picture taker and
a small house fire destroyed most of the pictures.
The ones that remain.. well.. a few baby pictures and there I am wearing very gender neutral clothes, white or yellow so you cant tell my gender as a diaper hides things. Three pics exist when I was 5, and funny i am wearing a dress in each one of them, mostly smarter long sleeve dresses. My mother use to make children's clothes on the side and the one little girls was my size.. I often was used a test subject to see how they look. My hair was longer and at that age there no real difference between a girls body and a boys body besides the private bits.. so I actually passed. Today I love to wear dresses, maybe that's where it comes from.
My mother use to say I looked so cute in the dresses. She actually framed them and now it hangs near her bed. She is very proud of her daughter.
No offense meant to anyone, but I really do worry about the mental wellbeing of people who would choose to dump ALL their past photos. I can fully understand that one might want to thin them down to a few selected examples, and that those examples might not be shown to many people, but we are all in part the product of out past lives, and I worry that there is a horrible unreality and denial in the heart of those who cannot acknowledge that past.
Aside from the fact that it seems to me to be a psychologically worse situation than being pre-everything and in the closet, it also suggests that the person in question is in deep denial, and in all seriousness most mental health professionals would probably consider that to be a borderline psychosis. So I think this notion is actually dangerous to peoples emotional and psychological wellbeing. By all means lock them up and keep them very discretely, but we all need to keep at least a few to remind us of how far we've come.
Its an understandable temptation, especially in the euphoria of taking the final steps in your journey, but it really is a dangerous siren call which should be resisted if we are to stay healthy and rooted in reality.
I don't have any photos, gave the small few I had to my parents. It wasn't really because of what I looked like then or anything though. If I did keep them It would be like, here's me with all my friends that abandoned me, this is the love of my life that left me, oh this is the night the night I got bashed by five guys. Here's me when I attempted suicide.
Maybe if had some fond memories of the past I would have kept them.
I don't really like photos of me but I do still intend to keep them so I have a measure of how far I have come, as well there are some with deep significance like holding my children for the first time.
-Kaylee
I went through a stage of looking at my old photos and it was like looking at a stranger I didn't know anymore, but I seem to have got past that. A lot of my old photos are ones where I'm with my children when they were small and I certainly want to keep those.
I get that same feeling when looking at pre transition photos. I see someone else, a stranger. I still have no reason to get rid of those photos, though. It's how I got here, going through all of that, even the years of denial, overcompensation, living it made me who I am today, allowed me to see the world with the eyes I do now.
Funny post. I'm going through the diary and pics we made 35 years ago when we travelled around Australia in a very old Landcruiser and an even older caravan.
I'm loving them. I'm not sure who he was but he was a spunky guy!
I wouldn't be who I am today, without what happened pretransition. I have a pretty horrible memory as is, so I don't think I would be able to bare losing my old photos!
I've kept my past pictures right now, its fun to go through them some times just to see how different I looked. I also have some memories I'm very fond of that were captured in photos. I might make them less accessible in the future, right now most of my photos are still available on my facebook page.
I've kept my pre-transition pictures. There even some still on my Facebook page. I also have one hanging in the hallway of my brother and I white water rafting 20 years ago with out father. Even though my father and I don't currently speak (he STILL hasn't accepted my transitioning) it represents a great memory of my brother and I (he is very supportive) of time spent together. Even though the old pictures don't totally represent who I am, there were still great memories that I cherish and I don't won't to forget those good times :)
Quote from: Rejennyrated on July 12, 2015, 03:55:39 AM
No offense meant to anyone, but I really do worry about the mental wellbeing of people who would choose to dump ALL their past photos. I can fully understand that one might want to thin them down to a few selected examples, and that those examples might not be shown to many people, but we are all in part the product of out past lives, and I worry that there is a horrible unreality and denial in the heart of those who cannot acknowledge that past.
Aside from the fact that it seems to me to be a psychologically worse situation than being pre-everything and in the closet, it also suggests that the person in question is in deep denial, and in all seriousness most mental health professionals would probably consider that to be a borderline psychosis. So I think this notion is actually dangerous to peoples emotional and psychological wellbeing. By all means lock them up and keep them very discretely, but we all need to keep at least a few to remind us of how far we've come.
Its an understandable temptation, especially in the euphoria of taking the final steps in your journey, but it really is a dangerous siren call which should be resisted if we are to stay healthy and rooted in reality.
I think this may be a generational thing.
Having transitioned relatively young, there isn't much in the photos that I feel sentimental about. They're all mostly childhood moments that I don't remember, or that are meaningless to me. I don't identify with the person in those photos. When I see them, it's like looking at those stock photos they put in picture frames as placeholders in the store. I wouldn't keep pictures of random strangers around, so why keep pictures of pre-transition me?
I have a very small private album online that I never look at. Everything else is long gone, and I don't feel bad about it.
No! Not at all. I don't want to throw away 20 years of my life... like that person was still me I want to be able to see them sometimes. Sure its a little cringey at times but its important to preserve the past. I think I would be really sad and freaked out actually if I lost all my pics from before hrt and everything it would be like losing a part of my self.
I don't have any myself but my family does. Soon after I came out my mum actually asked me whether I'm okay with her keeping the pictures. I am but I just would prefer for them not to be displayed.
Quote from: ftmax on July 12, 2015, 11:04:59 AM
I think this may be a generational thing.
Having transitioned relatively young, there isn't much in the photos that I feel sentimental about. They're all mostly childhood moments that I don't remember, or that are meaningless to me. I don't identify with the person in those photos. When I see them, it's like looking at those stock photos they put in picture frames as placeholders in the store. I wouldn't keep pictures of random strangers around, so why keep pictures of pre-transition me?
I have a very small private album online that I never look at. Everything else is long gone, and I don't feel bad about it.
Hardly a generational thing. I may be older now but I originally transitioned aged 5 - in 1965 and YES it DID happen back then! It was just a lot less common, and because there was no internet we managed to keep it private so the world and his dog didnt get to hear that we existed!!!
So I'm by no means an older transitioner. In fact almost my ENTIRE life, with exception of two aproximately five year periods (0 - 5 and 17 - 23) I have been either andogynous or postop female. 1st transition 1960's 2nd transition early 1980's.
Sadly there were no blockers in th 1970's and doctors wouldnt treat people under 21 so at about 17 I detransitioned for a while only to reatransition in my early 20's but even the brief period when I was a rather confused young man is part of my story so I keep it for completeness.
Quote from: Rejennyrated on July 12, 2015, 03:55:39 AM
No offense meant to anyone, but I really do worry about the mental wellbeing of people who would choose to dump ALL their past photos. I can fully understand that one might want to thin them down to a few selected examples, and that those examples might not be shown to many people, but we are all in part the product of out past lives, and I worry that there is a horrible unreality and denial in the heart of those who cannot acknowledge that past.
Aside from the fact that it seems to me to be a psychologically worse situation than being pre-everything and in the closet, it also suggests that the person in question is in deep denial, and in all seriousness most mental health professionals would probably consider that to be a borderline psychosis. So I think this notion is actually dangerous to peoples emotional and psychological wellbeing. By all means lock them up and keep them very discretely, but we all need to keep at least a few to remind us of how far we've come.
Its an understandable temptation, especially in the euphoria of taking the final steps in your journey, but it really is a dangerous siren call which should be resisted if we are to stay healthy and rooted in reality.
I have to agree with this, it worries me too.
I keep all my photos, and don't mind seeing them occasionally. It's important for me to keep a link with my past and I don't like to create this big "before and after" separation of my transition. I view it as a continuous journey and just a natural progression from living as a girl to being a man and growing up. It's good to know where you started and how far you've come.
There's no reason to erase one's past, no matter how unsavory it may be. You have to be able to look back and say, "That is who I was...and look at how far I've come".
Besides, I've posted a few pictures from my pre-coming-out days to Facebook and the reactions from some people were priceless. ;D
Quote from: ftmax on July 12, 2015, 11:04:59 AM
I think this may be a generational thing.
Having transitioned relatively young, there isn't much in the photos that I feel sentimental about. They're all mostly childhood moments that I don't remember, or that are meaningless to me. I don't identify with the person in those photos. When I see them, it's like looking at those stock photos they put in picture frames as placeholders in the store. I wouldn't keep pictures of random strangers around, so why keep pictures of pre-transition me?
I have a very small private album online that I never look at. Everything else is long gone, and I don't feel bad about it.
I don't think it's generational. If it were, it seems like the older generations are actually the ones more likely to delete their past. Because the treatment for transssexuals in the old days involved a much more black & white view of the process, and they were encouraged to forget their past and pretend they're cis. Even for the older people who only transitioned recently, that traditional view still might've rubbed off on them because the public opinion surrounding transsexuals was different.
Anyway, I'm 25 and started transitioning at 15, but I feel a connection to my past. It's mostly childhood photos as I don't have much from my early teen years. I can look at photos and think "aw what a cute kid, I remember when that was taken." Having pictures of random strangers is a lot different than having old photos of yourself, even if you sorta feel like that person was a stranger in a metaphorical sense. It was actually you and those experiences happened, and loved ones also shared those experiences with you. For the sake of encouraging acceptance from family members, I think that's easier to gain when they don't have to wipe out the past and forget you ever existed before transition. It probably also helps with accepting yourself and being able to appreciate how far you've come.
The first time I saw my wedding photos since coming out to myself, I just sobbed and sobbed... but I can't see denying the past working out too well for me.
well, on thinking this over I think I would of been upset if I didn't keep them and wanted to look at them again.
I'm keeping mine, as a solid reminder of where I came from and the progress I made. I'd rather not erae my whole upbringing because the past is pretty important. (to me)