If you could go back in time to the day you began your transition, what would you do differently?
Or what advice would you give, based on your experience to others, beginning their transition?

I would lower my testosterone levels before, adding any estrogen, because I ended up with full blown andropause symptoms and I think estrogen made it worse.
Worst few months of my life.

Well seeing there's an option to go back in time, I'd go back to the time before I had the male puberty and not have all the issues that T poisoning left me and I'd start my transitioning from there.

If I could travel back in time I would go much further back then when I did start transitioning but I would have been more honest with my exfoster family than what I was. Back when I was at the start of transitioning, even before the hormone pills I had huge trust issues and every dicision I made was to avoid conflict. If I had been more honest my transition would have been easier on my family. I saw the stress it put them under by throwing them into the complication rather than easing them into it.

I wouldn't have told my mom. She's blackmailing me and she's the only one who knows. But my family is very dysfunctional as well.

I would have loved to have never received any bad t hormones. My mother knew I was female & a girl since childhood however in those days there was very little support for TG people. She tried her best to find a physician to help me develop into a woman but no success. It would have been so nice to receive only the right E hormones so my body could have developed more normally.

Ditto, stop the T Hormones before they get going. My other problems were mad far worse by its presence and by starting as early as I could I would have been happier much quicker. Having said all of that, I would be who I am without the experiences that I have had and may not have had opportunity if I hadn't been assigned male. So as much as my being assigned male originally was a curse in a few ways I suppose it was a blessing even if I can't truly see that. Either way starting when I did is better than waiting even longer. I'm not sure how much longer my body could have survived waiting longer.
Mariah.

Quote from: FrancisAnn on December 12, 2014, 06:05:36 AM
I would have loved to have never received any bad t hormones. My mother knew I was female & a girl since childhood however in those days there was very little support for TG people. She tried her best to find a physician to help me develop into a woman but no success. It would have been so nice to receive only the right E hormones so my body could have developed more normally.

I would have started hair removal earlier. It takes FOREVER.

I knew I forgot something. I would have done that too. Especially on the face where some are not as idea for laser as they were at first. Getting the face finished before HRT would have been a good thing to do.

Quote from: suzifrommd on December 12, 2014, 06:44:09 AM
I would have started hair removal earlier. It takes FOREVER.

I'd tell myself to be on time for work, I'd tell myself the EXACT dates in advance that I'd start passing and go full-time so that I could quit eating myself up with uncertainty and that "I'm NEVER going to pass!" feeling, and most importantly of all, I'd tell myself to NOT pick up that stupid deck of cards from the floor which ended up getting me fired.

I am finally back on track now, 16 months after that firing, but still, that's 16 months worth of salary that could have been used to get me out of debt, and be saving for SRS. Had I not been fired from my well-paying full-time job, I'd be booking an SRS date by now, and it would be completely covered by the company health insurance. Because I got fired, now I'm out on my own, still $4000 in debt, with only a part-time job, and looking for a way to save up freaking $15,000 for SRS. Not fun.

To be fair, I did learn a lot from that experience, and it's exactly because I'm now working somewhere else that I'm able to be stealth, which I NEVER could have been if I'd stayed, but still, I am really not happy that I lost that job where SRS is covered by health insurance and there was anti-gender-identity-discrimination built right in to the company's policies.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on December 12, 2014, 07:23:26 AMI'd tell myself the EXACT dates in advance that I'd start passing and go full-time so that I could quit eating myself up with uncertainty and that "I'm NEVER going to pass!" feeling

Great advice.

I'd have approached transition less cautiously if I could do it all again.  Screw starting with extremely low dose (which I did to appease family who I now know were pushing for that because they hoped transitioning would be a phase and I'd give up on it - I wanted to go straight for hard stuff), as the more I think about it, the more I consider those months of extremely low dose to be an utter waste of time.  I still advocate for low dose as a means to test the waters for those who are unsure, or for those who want the mental benefits while keeping the physical changes to a slow minimum, but I think at the time I went into my endo's office, I was ready to have her back up the estrogen truck and tell me to open my mouth real wide.  There was no uncertainty on my part.

So, I guess what I'd do differently is realize - sooner - that transition is about me.  As a non-selfish person in general, I still find it hard to accept that my transition isn't something that has to be done in consultation with every member of my family to find out what their thoughts and feelings are and worrying about whether I was hurting their feelings or making them unhappy.  Transitioning - like dying - is something that one goes through alone, but surrounded by others.  Make sure it's done how you want it to be done, and not some compromise that serves no purpose other than to make you unhappy with the results and to make everyone else unhappy because you haven't ended up staying as the cis-gender person they wanted you to be.

I would let mother find out on her own, if she ever does, instead of letting her know early on, about me being a girl. I wish I had taken my thoughts and aspirations seriously when I was a toddler. I would have started my transition sooner than this then... I think. I can't really know though. Maybe I'd ended up letting my mom, or even dad too, know sooner. I don't know how I would have handled things if that had happened.

I would have straightened out my gender markers and all my grade school and high school paperwork first. Rather than working backwards through the document trail.  At that point in time, I would advise all my friends who were in the same situation to do the same.   

-- And I would not go visit NoNo's across the border because it was a bad influence and kept us out late and caused me and others to not study. Would also advise those girls who were getting silicone shots in their hips, legs, chest, arms, cheeks, forehead, chin --- don't do it!! I would tell them that the beauty is fleeting and you can die or end up looking bizarre.  Thank you God for giving me a great fear of needles!

seems starting earlier is the most popular.
I kinda wish I started earlier but then I would have had erectile dissfunction to the max, but this makes me think, that I would also go back to when I was 14-16 years old n get myself on HRT, or at least on to bicalutamide, I would also tell myself to stay away from cyproterone n spironolactone, because they stopped me from getting erect, I would also tell myself that hydroxyprogesterone seems to work best for me, because ever since I switched from the other AAs to bicalutamide n my progesterone to hydroxyprogesterone, I've been able to get erected.

But knowing my old self, I would probably tell myself to get f#%*ed.
I was a real angry ass about my dysphoria back then, o, o, o and that also reminds me, I would have got myself off of pot sooner n saved the money for surgery, if I would listen to myself.

But I would probably screw up the timeline or something, n end up not transitioning, unless I did it when I was crying n praying about it, I'd probably listen to myself then.

O if only. 

Most of the same, I guess.

But I would advise this: Start with hair removal yesterday. It is probably the most difficult and most time consuming of all things you can do. I started long before HRT, and after 5 years I am still busy maintaining sparse hairs that pop-up. I cannot imagine doing a real-life experience with a five 'o clock shadow. Some girls even have a beard shadow while having SRS, it is the last thing you want. I knew I had to start early. Glad I did.

same

Quote from: Leila on December 12, 2014, 02:30:16 AM
Well seeing there's an option to go back in time, I'd go back to the time before I had the male puberty and not have all the issues that T poisoning left me and I'd start my transitioning from there.

I wouldn't have humiliated myself making nice to my in-laws while they asked me nasty questions and attacked me after I came out. Turns out if they were just going to disown us anyway, I might as well have gone easy on both of us and just walked in, said "Guess what? I'm a big ol' transsexual and will likely never speak to you again" and left.

I think I pretty much nailed it the first time.   

I don't like to play the "what if" game anyway- it never ends with me in a better place.

Not get FFS
Ditch my toxic acquintances before they ditch me

As far as my second/current attempt at transition goes I would change nothing - it is going pretty darn well as far as I can tell.

My first attempt at transition however... I started age 23 at a time when there wasn't a lot of support for or understanding and tolerance of trans people. The hormone treatment wasn't as effective. I had a $#&% load of personal end emotional problems, I was transphobic and overly sensitive to everything and anything. So if I could change that time in my life, knowing what I know now I would do the following...

• Stop hating myself
• Believe that I was passable since, duh, I was
• Have confidence to be myself
• Talk to my endo about changing my HRT regime... notably look at implants since they were a thing even back then
• Stop thinking my friends didn't want me, they were the most wonderfully supportive people anyone could have asked for and I pushed them all away
• Fully transition... I could have done it at work as I was covered by anti discrimination
• Call myself Grace... not Julie!!!
• Dress myself properly, of course people aren't going to think I'm a woman if I don't freaking dress/present like one
• Get my hair styled, seriously WTF was that?
• Not give a $#&% what other people think
• Learn to be patient
• Don't come out to all and sundry in the first few weeks of starting HRT
• Be happy, you miserable sod!

As this is my second attempt at transitioning, if I could wind the clock back to 25 years ago, for what I know now, what I should have done then was  to stick with the transition and not take the easy option of reverting to the male role and moving to Australia. I mean it was a bit stupid looking back as I had been living full time by then for more than 2 years, had thrown away (or had my girlfriends shred), all my male clothes, was well underway with electrolysis (this was before IPL existed). After I was outed at work, I got terribly depressed, yet I had a group of incredibly supportive cis female friends and all wanted me to dig my heels in . The problem is back then I wasn't destitute, but I didn't have a lot of money to spend and without a job and a mortgage to boot, and being in the UK then, the HRT regime was not as good as it is now and of course we didn't have the Internet and there was lots of prejudicial people about.  Of course I then got offered the job in Australia, so I justified the move to working towards transition in 3 years. The trouble is the years slipped by and I though the dysphoria had gone. Little did I know that it would burst back 10 times stronger nearly two years ago. (I think it was triggered by a major crisis in my personal life) Mind you Dr Russel Reed (my UK Physchiatrist )at the time was very supportive of me then undergoing the transition. In fact at first he had tried hard to dissuade me, then really convinced that I was 100% TS , really supported me in my transition) and gave me my first letter for surgery. This actually helped me get back onto HRT the second time around back in Australia. But  what I am missing now (other than the sisterhood of the amazing women that I have met from Susans)  is  that special group of cis females that included me in their sisterhood gatherings and especially Maggie and my really best friend Alison who went out of their way to include me in everything they did as well as providing huge amounts of feminine advice and emotional support. I did have one TS friend(that interestingly contacted me on Susans last year, but when I followed her up by mail, I didn't get a reply). One interesting thing for me over the years though despite now large amount of Estrogen is that I am still primarily attracted to females. With the new HRT regimes I thought this might change, but for  in reality there is nothing like the feeling of soft skin on soft skin, the love and attention and caressing one woman can give to another woman and the emotional linkage one gets together. By the way I include other all Women (Both TS and CIS females in this attraction for me). For me, being kissed softly all over, or kissing a womans skin and feeling breast on breast is just an amazing feeling.
Judith