Susan's Place Transgender Resources

What were you doing?  Where were you in your life, your career, your family or even your transition?

Oh Miss, please Miss, I was just about to have my surgery and then my birthday in the same week.  The most  ecstatic  moment in my life that had ever happen to me and the best present I have ever given to myself.  My life.

Fond memories, how can I ever forget that time and to top it of my friend of 22 years is coming to visit me and celebrate those two special occasions.

Kind regards
Sarah B

I was in my second year of undergrad school....still coming to terms with being attracted to girls.  Had not even considered the possibility of transitioning

Dealing with pre K kids, ages 5,3,1,1, as a single parent. I also was working full time in a cannery.

My daughter was about 1.5 months old, my son almost 3. I was 22 and my wife 21. At that time, I was working midnight shift at a bank data center.

Lets see 20 years ago. My ex and I had been married for three years and were living Indianapolis.  I was working in an auto parts store.  I was in a mellow period of dysphoria and doing well.

Unbelievably 20 years ago I was already well on the way to being 10 years postop. I had also been living with Alison for over 3 years.

At around this time today twenty years ago I was sitting in Transmission suite one of BBC Television Center in London lining up tapes and pressing buttons to transmit BBC1 to the grateful nation.

I was 13. Way before starting transition since I didn't really have an exact idea of what was going on in my head. In August of 1991 we moved from MN to OK. Getting off the plane sucked. That level of heat was completely foreign to me at the time. I also had my first girlfriend not much later. She wanted me to grow my fingernails out, so I did. I never cut them short after that, so they're basically almost 20 years old.

Quote from: brittanyfear on January 31, 2011, 03:24:24 PM
I was 13. Way before starting transition since I didn't really have an exact idea of what was going on in my head. In August of 1991 we moved from MN to OK. Getting off the plane sucked. That level of heat was completely foreign to me at the time. I also had my first girlfriend not much later. She wanted me to grow my fingernails out, so I did. I never cut them short after that, so they're basically almost 20 years old.

Funny ... in 2005 we moved from OK to MN

I feel young...

I was two years old with a brand-new baby sister and I was having eye surgery done.

I was twelve. Those were not very good times, but still not quite as bad as it would soon get. Age 13 was when I learned to be utterly ashamed of my gender, as well as when puberty started to kick in. That was probably the worst year of my life.

I was in 4th grade and ironically that's when I first told someone I wished I was a girl =P

I was busy being 10. It's a trying time really.

I was in high school. This time of year, I had just gotten my cast off from when I broke my wrist & I was trying to heal and recover muscle strength to compete in the season before it ended.

Also, the Giants won the Super Bowl. Woot.

I was in my mommy's tummy growing the wrong stuff. Thankfully, I can't say I remember that tragic accident.  :laugh:

I just live with the scars from it.

This topic makes me feel really young.

20 years ago I was utterly obsessed with these gamebooks:

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fhomepages.tesco.net%2F%7Eparsonsp%2Fassets%2Fimages%2FSorcery_4.jpg&hash=cd01b922409f252ff78dda02c8b28771b8609bea)

And I'd just started high school.

I was non existant

2 years old and lovin it!

Just about to turn 18, still had great visions of the future, was with my first girlfriend and had just learnt that FTM's existed.

I was a year old. I guess I was learning to walk and I had started eating solid foods. Times were good. I had a staff of servants who bent to my every whim, wait, can I go back to that?!

I'll be your slave- is that similar?

Quote from: James instead of Al on January 31, 2011, 09:02:21 PM
I'll be your slave- is that similar?

LOL.   :icon_redface:

Jackie is grooming a new set of minions as we speak. She is, however, always accepting applications and she will get back to you.

20 years ago I had one son in college, one in high school and one in grade school.
I worked in a factory on second shift 10 hours a day to making money to support the family and to send my sons to college.
In just a couple of years the two older boys would both be in college.
My wife and I would celebrate our 20th anniversary in a few months.
I mostly worked, slept, ate and worked some more. And weekends was the time I worked on our home.

I was married over 9 years, had 2-1/2 kids, a mini van but no dog.  There might have been a cat somewhere in there.  I was living in the same house I am now and working as an electrician foreman.  I don't think I had yet heard the term transgender.  I didn't own a computer and had no idea what the world wide web did.  I hadn't met "anyone like me" and I felt the odds of doing so were remote.

I knew about Christine Jorgensen.  I had read and followed the story of Renee Richards.  I had years earlier found a book titled Conundrum by Jan Morris, during one of my many archeological digs through one of numerous local libraries.  I wondered if I was like her.  I was too embarrassed to check the book out so I read it there.  The library was the only decent source of information about the TG world I had back then but few libraries had anything about it.

The dream of one day finding a cure (that meant some magic potion that would make me a girl) was ever present but in reality I knew I would go to my grave as a man.  No way could I do what Jorgensen, Richards or Morris had done.  No way.

Quote from: Julie Marie on February 01, 2011, 07:30:29 AM
I was married over 9 years, had 2-1/2 kids, a mini van but no dog.  There might have been a cat somewhere in there.  I was living in the same house I am now and working as an electrician foreman.  I don't think I had yet heard the term transgender.  I didn't own a computer and had no idea what the world wide web did.  I hadn't met "anyone like me" and I felt the odds of doing so were remote.

I knew about Christine Jorgensen.  I had read and followed the story of Renee Richards.  I had years earlier found a book titled Conundrum by Jan Morris, during one of my many archeological digs through one of numerous local libraries.  I wondered if I was like her.  I was too embarrassed to check the book out so I read it there.  The library was the only decent source of information about the TG world I had back then but few libraries had anything about it.

The dream of one day finding a cure (that meant some magic potion that would make me a girl) was ever present but in reality I knew I would go to my grave as a man.  No way could I do what Jorgensen, Richards or Morris had done.  No way.

:D Which all just shows how wrong one can be...  ;D :laugh:

I was 5 and a half and all I wanted was candy, McDonalds, pizza and to play video games.

Fast forward to today and... nothing's changed.

20 years ago....
That would make me 22 going on 23.....
That was around the time I made my first attemt at transition.
I didn't know what I had to do other than find a psychiatrist. When I found him it went south imediatly.
He told me that I was just a sick young man with a sexual fetish. (but I didnt mention 1 time in the interview anything about sex) He told me I was going to go down a spiral of depravity and disfunction. He told me I needed to stop dressing and I needed to just find a good girl and marry her. Maybe have some children. That if I did the feelings would go away.
I beieved him. I bought it hook line and sinker.
I thought that he knew what he was talking about. I didn't realise that not every psychiatrist is trans friendly.
The poison he filled my head with kept me from my transition for anouther 19 years.
If I could remember the mans name I would send him a long bitter letter.

So twenty years ago I was letting a psyrink mind rape me and ruining my life as a result of his bad therapy..

OH... uhm. I don't remember. Probably throwing up or something else that 1 year olds are good at. Haha

Oh god how is it that I'm 20 years old. O_O

I was working and raising a family. Never knew I was trans. I didn't know such things existed. 


Gennee

:)

Could be off a bit but I think that is when I was in the first Persian Gulf war, was there for both storm and shield. In the Marine Corps stationed in 29 Palms (hell!).
Myles

Teaching at the U in the fall and spring, raising kids, touring Dead all summer long, piles of Dylan shows all over the US (that will go down as the real Golden Age of Bob Dylan and the start of the Never Ending Tour), working with friends in SF on the SF Trans Rights Initiative, lots of 'girls night out' in Des Moines, Minn/St. Paul and Chicago.

 20 years ago   ...... I was married (yuck!) and discovering how bad a match it was becoming
                      ....... had beautiful new 1 yr old daughter and was struggling to start a new career
                       ...... moved from Northern Cal. back to Chicago. (yuck!)
                       ...... my son was still a year and a half away
                       ....... I was wishing desperately that I could live as my real self

I was 7 years old.  So I guess that was around first grade?  I was being a confused little child, jumping rope by myself at recess because I didn't really want to do what the other boys did.  I had a few friends of either sex - I didn't discriminate, my only criteria was they had to be awesome.

20 years ago? I was only one! I was probably sitting in a playpen full of cheerios  :)

I was 6 years old, living in San Jose, CA. This was around the age I really figured out something was wrong. I remember getting the "wrong" toy in a kids/happy meal. It was a doll and I hid it from my parents and kept it. Amazing what little minds can comprehend.

Well, until march 3rd of that year I was in my moms womb ;D

20 years ago i was 5. i bet you could tell by photos (if you could see a few) that i already passed as a boy. me and my older brother looked almost exactly alike in hair and clothes. liked almost all the same boy things, if you could count just playing toys by myself at home, plus candy, life was awesome lol. and i had sort of figured out a year before what was wrong but couldn't understand til only several months ago.

I was 16.  It was a very difficult time.  I was a closeted cross dresser who at that time got into drugs and alcohol.  I expressed myself in my daily appearance as a wanna be rebel outsider to express my messed up situation,  I held this pattern for the next 15or so years.

20 years?  Gosh...
.
I was a Junior in High School, and burying myself in academics, cycling, music and video games
to such an extreme that there wasn't time to feel anything.  I did that for many years
before and after that as a way to avoid things I couldn't escape.  Glad that's over. 
.
I much prefer to remember the last year, and the new memories and friends that I'm making. :)
.
Anything before that is better left behind.

Crawling out of my mother's womb. Bahaha.

I was 38 trying to be sober. Had just moved house to one in the middle of a bush fire zone. Lucky it never came.

Cindy

20 years ago...I was 5 and only a few months away from realizing something was wrong. It was June of '91 that my family moved to where they still reside, and that is the period in which things started to become clear about who I really was.

20 years ago I was 7 years post op and married with a man and working as a nurse.
It was a nice time but it did'nt get a happy end with the man.

annette

Twenty years ago I was 30, struggling with my dysphoria and just going through my first divorce after 9yrs of marriage and three children. But it still took 2 more marriages and most of the 20yrs to come to terms with myself being trans, now life couldn't be better, a loving partner and my rebirth on March 10th  :)

1991... graduated from university, which basically meant the end of our gender-queer student group and moving back to "trying to fit in" because this time I would do it right... (oh boy was I wrong about that)

I was 4-5 so I dont have much to wory, just not to be catched with matches  >:-)

I was three and remember my mom was pregnant with my little sister. I even remember when she went into labour, I was sitting at home with my nanny and twin sister. My nanny said my mom was coming home with a girl and told us what my mom was going to name her. And every few minutes I would forget the name and ask my nanny again and said I will never remember it hahah. My little sister just turned 20 three weeks ago. Doesn't feel like it's been that long.  :-\

I was in my mummys tummy  :D

It scares me a little that i'm going to be 20 this year.

Was 3 years post op living with my then husband of a year living in london.

Hmm... when I was 11... hanging out with my next door neighbour's two girls that summer, doing each other's makeup, walking around in rediculously oversized high heels and singing along (very badly) to Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Later that year, started secondary school. Oh what fun that was. Like extracting teeth, with a rusty hacksaw, while gargling razorblades.

Getting ready for 8th grade year to be over.

Like Michelle, also waiting for the end of 8th grade.  I was SO ready to be free of my science teacher, Mr. Collum (Gollum, more like) who was about 5'2", 250 pounds, bald, Amish beard, and wore the overalls from hell.  I actually sat at the same table as Mark Manes, the only person who served time for the Columbine shootings since he bought the guns for the killers.  During class, Mark used to crush Tylenol and snort it.  Somehow, Mr. Collum blamed me for everything that happened and I got sent to the office more times by him than by any other teacher ever.

I was also waiting for my youngest sister to be born, and she was born the day after school ended, on June 8.  So it was a good time...  :icon_flower:

Changing diapers, first job, happy wife, androgynous as ever,

  I was 38,  my beautiful mother died just a few months before.   I was ten years with my company and was awarded two weeks vacation.  I took one of those weeks to attend a campout with other people that shared my passion for astronomy at this time of year, my first of many such campouts I still do.   I remembered showing up at the ranch that was hosting this event on Mother's Day and they had a sign to send your mother greetings by Western Union at the check-in desk.  I was sad because I could no longer send my mother any greetings and the news of her recent passing embarrassed the desk clerk when she asked as well. 
  This was the first time this introvert went camping with others since childhood.  That event helped lessen the effect of my GID and the loss of my mother for that week.  I made new friends there, some of whom came in as far as England that I have to this day.   I will meet some of those original friends at a similar event this summer, or mourn the loss of them that passed this year. 
  Joelene

How about 40 years ago: 2 girlfriends, a muscle car, dirt bikes,  100 meters dash, full contact karate, long hair, bell bottoms, Rolling Stones, zzTop, Woodstock, 917 Porsche-Le Mans, third eye,

Quote from: kate durcal on May 15, 2011, 08:29:32 PM
How about 40 years ago: 2 girlfriends, a muscle car, dirt bikes,  100 meters dash, full contact karate, long hair, bell bottoms, Rolling Stones, zzTop, Woodstock, 917 Porsche-Le Mans, third eye,

40 years ago, my mom was younger than I was 20 years ago...  :laugh:

Quote from: kate durcal on May 15, 2011, 08:29:32 PM
How about 40 years ago: 2 girlfriends, a muscle car, dirt bikes,  100 meters dash, full contact karate, long hair, bell bottoms, Rolling Stones, zzTop, Woodstock, 917 Porsche-Le Mans, third eye,

Kate,
  You should start another thread!  1971: Graduated High School, Beatles break-up, Stones, Led Zepplin, Jethro Tull, and I joined the Navy.  How to dress for that 40th reunion this summer?!!!  My first class reunion attendance!  EEK!!
  Jolene.

Twenty years ago? My beloved Meredith was one year dead at that point, and I was trying real hard to work myself to death so I could join her.

Quote from: JungianZoe on May 15, 2011, 08:35:31 PM
40 years ago, my mom was younger than I was 20 years ago...  :laugh:

Lovely eyes girl? I can tell a lot about people by their eyes. In my mind I am 19, my body say 30 something (40-31-39) 3 mile run, 90 push ups, no drinking, no smoke, cholesterol, sugar and blood pressure normal, no glasses, full head of hair, etc. Pursuing a master degree in chemical engineering (This would be my fourth advance degree), fluent in 5 languages, plays 2 instruments. But my drivers license says 60 something. What is my age ?

20 years ago I was still learning colors and shapes and crawling being 9 months old at the time :p

Seeing the sun for the first time in a week here in Jersey.

I was either in my mom's stomach or in her arms.