I am going to make some personal observations here based on more than forty years of having lived a relatively normal, and exceedingly satisfying. life as the simple older woman I have grown to become. As I type this, I am on my way home from a delightfully pleasant visit with my husband's son, his son's wife and their two children, our grandchildren.
Happiness is watching the smile on my husband's face as his five year old grand daughter strokes his beard and says, "so soft...", or pats on his stomach, smiling and laughing and squealing, "Belly!"
Happiness is watching our son, (Yes! I now have a son and, a daughter-in-law)...play with his daughter, threatening to put her inside his belly while she laughs and screams in delight.
Happiness is watching our now 14 y/o grandson mature into a strapping young man excelling in soccer and his academic pursuits. He has joined NROTC his Freshman ear in HS and plans to go to college on a military scholarship to study computer sciences
These are just a few of the simple joys that come with leaving all things trans* far behind us and long forgotten. These are the hard earned rewards that Androgenouspainter "would kill for".
Do not feel guilty for your hard won success. Relish it. Revel in it and pass it on if you can. Do not be seduced by some siren's song, attempting to lay a guilt trip born of jealous envy upon you. You owe these cyber strangers nothing! You, who have made it to that almost mythical land of "stealth" and return to offer a hand of help or a word of advice...what have you received in return for your troubles?
My question to you all is, "What is trans*?" Is it some perpetual state of being? Is it some "identity" different for all, yet sufficiently tangible and/or homogenous to form a "community", to which you owe some allegiance?
I did not correct my physical deformities to join some club or "community" where others tell me who I am or how to think, or to whom "I owe some debt". No! I went through my own personal hell, (without "their" help, thankyouverymuch), so that I could live MY life, MY way, as the happy, getting older grandma that I am, and enjoy MY life with my man and our family , without some "wanna-be activist in training" telling me I owe some nebulous and essentially non-existent "community" some unspecified debt of servitude or "respect".
This is your life to make of it what you will. Like anything else in this life, you will have to learn what is right for you and work for it. Those of you who have had it relatively easy, and have been blessed with parental support from early on, do not throw that precious gift of personal privacy away lightly based on the words of a stranger. Once it is gone, it will be gone forever. Use your head and do what is right for you.