At the risk of repeating myself, I want to store this day more completely in my blog here.
Today felt like a real turning point.
I attended our county office All Call fully as Krista, in front of roughly 400 employees. One of the first things I noticed was that quite a few people seemed not to recognize me when we passed in hallways or outside. The people I actually spoke with did, though, and many of them affirmed me in small but meaningful ways—warm smiles, fist bumps, handshakes, and words of support. A few people looked away, and I'm choosing not to assign meaning to that.
One moment really stayed with me. A very conservative friend who had once been quite angry with me, but who later talked things through with me, gave me a huge smile. The speaker also talked about the importance of showing up authentically, especially when we are different from others. Later, our superintendent said he wants to see no more student suicide in our county, and I understood that as including real support for trans students too. After the meeting, out of all those employees, he came over to me personally to check my preferred name and offer his support as both a friend and supervisor.
The rest of the day reinforced the same feeling. I used a gender-neutral single-stall restroom near IT, stopped in and chatted with coworkers, and nothing felt unusual. I went into a STEM meeting on Zoom meeting as Krista. A conservative professor from a local Christian university called me Krista without hesitation. In another meeting, Google Meet displayed my legal name, but the person I was speaking with still called me Krista. Then I joined a statewide environmental literacy meeting and, as expected, there were no comments at all. I was simply Krista.
My biggest celebration is the full support of my wife this morning at home, and then she showed up after All Call to check on me.
I moved through ordinary professional life as Krista, and people responded to me that way.
I'm also thinking more seriously about wearing my wig and small breast forms on most days. I'm out to my daughters, but I still feel a little shy about that part of my presentation with them, so that may be the next conversation.
For now, I'm happy to keep using "Krista (dead name)" for a while. It helps people who already know me make the connection instead of wondering who Krista is. A legal name change feels inevitable at this point, but I don't feel any need to rush it.
What made today meaningful wasn't just that people were kind. It was that I felt like I had crossed into a new phase where I wasn't testing out Krista anymore. I was just living my day as myself
