Do you bury your past or embrace it?

[Nina]

I have no photos, ID, or documentation from the past, but I do reflect on the past once in awhile.

[Northern Star Girl]

Our past is just that, our PAST... and without it we wouldn't be where we are today.
Every once in a while I will turn the pages (actual paper pages) in my private/personal journal and diary that I started keeping up to date when I was in 7th grade.   There is a lot of revealing detail in the what I wrote then that orchestrated my transition in later years when I was in college up to now.   
There are family pictures and other various pictures, report cards, school picture albums, events that I attended, friends that I had made, old employment resumes, my HRT progress reports and photos, etc....  .... basically all my life experiences that I have documented.   

I do not bury my past, I do indeed embrace my past, it is and will always be a part of me. 
On cold rainy nights I will sometimes cuddle in my comfy chair in front of my fireplace and sit and read for hours, sometimes bringing tears to my eyes and sometimes a smile to my face.   Keeping a private and personal journal and diary, at least for me, is very beneficial personal therapy...  it lets me see problems that I encountered and then solutions that I took to overcome those problems.

Just my opinion, that is all...............
Danielle

[Cailan Jerika]

I embrace my past. Since I'm AFAB bi-gender (both binary male and binary female) it doesn't bother me at all to embrace my female history, and it feels great to finally embrace my guy side. There is nothing in my past that bothers me all that much, and so much to celebrate. I certainly wouldn't take down our wedding picture, nor my senior photos. Everything that was good, which is 99% of it, stays.

So, I embrace everything about my past. Even when I get my name changed (I think it will happen next month!) I am keeping my female birth name, just adding on a male name.

[Robbyv213]

I don't think the past is anything that should ever be buried or hidden away. Everything you live through your history is what makes you who you are it develops you you become stronger from it.

I feel like I hear all the time how people completely destroy who they believe they were before they transitioned and I feel that they destroy a part of themselves when doing that.

Let me explain for example being non-binary or identifying as trans female or trans male or whatever the case may be from individual to individual that is still just one aspect of who you are overall it doesn't make you who you are, just like sexuality that's one small aspect of the whole that is you.

So what I'm trying to say is that I will still be me even after a transition I will still have my past I was still me and my past but I am also more myself in my future if that makes sense because I will now be presenting and appearing to the world as I feel I always should have but everything in my past was still me. Like my choice of music won't change my love of fitness and bodybuilding won't change I'll still be a video gamer I'll still love all those things that I love previously even if it makes me more of a tomboy than a girly girl. So I guess that's what I'm trying to say or describe is that you are who you are in your past and in your future regardless you're still going to be you and those things that cause all of our symptoms will hopefully no longer be there in the future and we will be able to finally feel that our body and appearance matches how we were truly supposed to look and appear and that it matches how we feel on the inside.

I don't know if I'm making any sense or if it's coming off in the manner that I hope would be understandable to get the point across that I'm trying to make.

[Sarah B]

Hi Everyone

There is no way that one can runaway from our biological sex or what ever our gender is or is not going to be.  My past was a happy one and there is nothing out of the ordinary, my father was a general labourer and provided for the family and mum was a housewife that raised us four children.  We basically wanted for nothing, food, clothing, a roof over our heads, school and some presents along the way.  Life was basic.

Our father died when he was 40, he was a sick man (two cerebral haemorrhages, he was lucky he survived those).  So mum took up the reigns and continued to provide for her children.  I completed high school at boarding school and my brothers left school early.  They got jobs and they continued with their lives getting married and having children.

Me, I got a certificate in Civil Engineering and I worked for the next 10 years and of course you all know what happened at the end of those 10 years?   That's right I changed my life around.  During those 10 years, I was a competitive swimmer, an Australian national gold and bronze medallist winner, I scuba dived, I flew gliders and I parachuted out of aeroplanes.  I was also a swimming coach that taught and trained national swimmers.

So all in all my childhood and the early stages of my adulthood were normal. My past is an open book and it is the foundation of who I have become.  There is nothing to regret and I totally accept and embrace it whole heartedly.  The only difference in my case during those years all I wanted or longed to be was a female and one other thing.  I wanted to go to university and during those 10 years  it was not possible where I was.

I know, I did not like my picture being taken and funny enough I like photography, so there was not many photos of me being taken of me at that time.  If I did see any photos of me I destroyed them, so there is not many of them left.  I cannot recall if it was because of me that I knew that I wanted to be a female and did not want any photos of my previous self or I did it sub consciously to protect myself in the future.  There are a few exceptions and I will not delete or destroy them.

There are no ID's or documents that exist before I changed my life around.  They are lost in the sands of time and good luck to anyone who wants to try and dig those up.

Danielle says it eloquently (paraphrasing) that;  "our past is our past and we would not be where we are today, without it".

So my past will always be a part of me and I embrace it whole heartedly.

Love and Hugs
Sarah B
Official Greeter

[Asche]

I agree, I am what my past has made me, and I have no intention of telling people any different.

However, in the current political climate when you might need to present your birth certificate to use a toilet, I figured it was better to change my birth certificate.  I also fear that if things keep going this way, especially if the transphobes take over the US Federal government, people who are known to be trans risk being sent to concentration camps or worse.  (Things are reminding me of what Germany was like in the 1920's and 30's)  So while it wasn't the primary reason I got SRS (vaginoplasty), I do feel a bit safer now that a strip search won't out me.  (I still might need to flee the country on short notice.)