Hi, my name is Dorit (pronounced like door-eat) from Israel. I am a TG woman that began transition a year ago at the age of 70. I have been active for years on another forum, plus one in Hebrew. I would occasionally visit here over the years and thought it was time to become a member. I am three weeks after FFS and two months away from GRS. I very much appreciate all the posting here, it has been a big help to me in my transition. Now I hope to be able to contribute too. I just have to figure out how to navigate this place!
It seems I should add a bit of my story.
One of my earliest childhood memories is at about 5 years old wearing my older sisters skirt and dancing in front of a mirror with delight. From then on I remember my internal battle with gender identification, wanting to dress as a girl and be one of them. I also had a lot of what are feminine personality traits, was told that "boys don't cry'" etc. and fought to repress them. The death of my mother when I was 14 did not help either, as I was very attached to her and now had no one I could relate to. I reached a critical point as a teen in college, very depressed and full of self hatred for my wanting to be a girl. I had a psychotic breakdown, accompanied by a lot of self harming, and was institutionalized for six months. When I was stable enough to have therapy, I told the psychiatrist that I wanted to be a girl, that I hated my genitals, and hated myself. This was 50 years ago, no understanding, no answers, just another line in my mental illness folder.
So I went back to school to try again, but found myself heading down again. In a desperate attempt to find myself I left the university on impulse one night and joined a hippie commune. This is 1969. There I met a woman 10 years my senior, she saved my life. Her total acceptance and love for me allowed us to live a life out of the box, but filled with a measure of happiness. We are still together today, 49 years later. From the beginning she saw my scars and let me wear her clothes and still loved me.
As we all know too well, these kind of gender issues that one is born with do not ever go away. I internalized a certain amount of self hatred and anger at myself for being like this and not being able to control it. It also results in a lot of anger. I even went through a religious period where I would ask God to forgive me for my thoughts and desires.
About 10 years ago I began to understand myself in a different way. Thanks to the internet, I could begin to see that I was born this way, had no say in it, and that now psychology was relating to people like me in a very different way than 50 years ago. I began the journey of self acceptance, again with the complete support of my SO. One year ago, with the guidance of a gender therapist, I began my journey of transition. I had to come out to children, family, friends, the entire small village where we have lived for the last 35 years. I had the courage to do a public transition because for the first time in my life I was being set free from all the shame, guilt, and self hatred. What a joy! I also new that after all these years, in the last chapter of my life, I could experience life as the woman I had always thought I was.
I have been living full time as Dorit for a year now. I am pleased that I have mostly experienced acceptance and love from those around me, but also some painful judgement and rejection. I have been on HRT for a year, had FFS one month ago, and am scheduled for GRS in the US in December.
It has been forums like this, plus modern medicine and psychology that have given me my life back at 70. I am deeply grateful that I was able to live to see this day!
