Meet Luna (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Luna''s video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/f09iNHM5FYw

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Hi, I'm Lana, and my pronouns are she/her and I'm a transwoman.

I want to talk about how HRT saved my life. When I was like, I must have been like 15, 16 when I came out. I was miserable all the time, and up until then, I didn't really understand why.

I just didn't really feel right ever. I was like 14. 14, 13 years are hard. I came out as bi and I was like, this is something. But I still don't feel whole, really. And I just sort of continued to feel that way until I figured out that I was transwoman.

And everything in life just immediately started to make more sense. I was happy. I felt like myself and my social life was just right and I had never felt that before. But dysphoria was really, really hard.

I spent years where the only thing I could think about was going to the bathtub and castrating myself, because I just needed relief from that. And the urge to do that. It was something I managed to resist because I knew that I would probably bleed out in the bathtub had I tried to do that, and that would have been not right.

So when I started blockers about two and a half months ago now, I felt so much better almost instantly. And when I started estrogen a month ago, I felt even better.

My life is so much higher quality and so much happier, and my body feels like my home for the first time ever. So. If you ever question that and I think you should pursue it, because I found so much better of a life for myself by doing it when I actually came out, my family was, you know, pretty shocked and pretty confused. Took them a while to understand, and I got delayed for a few years because I. Well, I had an unrelated medical issue that made it so I was not physically sick, physically or mentally stable enough to start for about two or three years.

And then immediately after that, I was like, I'm finally ready. Let's do it, aAnd coronavirus happens and I am not going to go get the various blood tests I need at the very beginning of the pandemic when we still don't know what's going on. So that delayed me another year. But we're here now. That's what matters.

A lot of us, my family, just needed time to understand, and my mom took on some papers and beliefs that weren't well founded like Lisa Littman's idea of like rapid onset gender dysphoria, and that wasn't really her fault. It's easy to make these mistakes if you don't have like a good source for someone telling you that this is wrong. It's easy to make that kind of mistake, especially ones like, you know, a well accredited DR prestigious university.

Even if it all turned out to be bullshit later, admittedly, like so it was about reeducating my family. It was about being patient. And then it was about the medical issues where I fell very, very sick because of my allergies, actually, because vaping was just starting to become popular. And in my high school, people were vaping indoors and I was just getting really, really sick in school. And it actually damaged my body so much that I was pretty much immobilized for several months. And yeah, so it took me a very long time to recover from that, both physically and psychologically.

So that delayed me for a while because I didn't want to start the process in an unstable place and then fail and have to start again, because after the other challenges I had, I figured that type of trauma would destroy me.

So I waited and that was hard. That was probably the hardest part, knowing that I had to make the choice for myself to wait, because if I didn't, I would be putting myself in an unsafe situation by doing it.

My relationship with my family, it struggled for a few years because they didn't have the understanding they needed to support me. And I wasn't in a place where I could really teach them. So we struggled with that for a long time.

But eventually it all worked out in a sense. And it also really got kicked off when I got this job with the government and I said, I'm not going to do this as a man. And this is it. Like, you can't stop me and this is going to be how I live. And that seemed to turn around for them, I guess. And now they're really supportive and it's really great.

I'm just less afraid now. I know I still you know, I'm still going to be clocked as trans, but I'm OK with that. My body feels like mine. My. Head feels like mine. My thoughts feel like mine now. In the past, they didn't really feel like they fit and they didn't. And now they do. And I know that's a bit Rambley, but I feel like myself. And that has been the biggest joy of all of it. Really.

My dreams are really to continue to pursue my studies in environmental resource management. And, you know, maybe un-destroy the world from capitalism can be pretty great. But in regards to myself, I really just want to keep living my life. And I'm you know, I haven't made any decisions about surgeries and whatnot, but I know the options out there and I feel good about them. I just you know, we'll see how my body and mind feel at the time.

If I could talk to myself in the past, I would say that it's going to work out. There is a reason you feel disconnected from society. You're not wrong. You're not broken. You struggle to socialize for a reason. It's not a mental health condition. It's not you just being wrong. It's the fact that you're not who you really are and you will get there and it will be OK.

What I've learned is that I can be myself, that I don't need to stop being myself, that I have freedom and I have a life and that I, I get to live it how I want.

Don't question people's identities. Even if you're part of the community, there may be a person's identity or sexuality that you don't understand. But that doesn't mean it's any less valid than your own. By slicing up the community, drawing these like battle lines between like who you think is valid and invalid, that only hurts us.

People with neo pronouns are valid. People with more complex sexualities are valid. And to try and say that we have this line of acceptability that's only going to hurt the community, only going to make it easier to hurt us.

People's identities are valid, and none of us are in a position to tell anyone how to live their lives.

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Meet Kaylee (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Kaylee's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/T2X7WupmH8w

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My name's Kaylee. Kaylee Mae. My kids call me Mae. I'm almost 40 years young, so, you know, halfway through life, I go by she/her. I've been out for nine months, 10 months, and on HRT for nine months just the other day.

The last few years I've been a building manager, and I thought I was pretty depressed. I thought I may have had ADD. I thought a few different things. So I tried to, you know, med myself, see doctors,  get meds for that.

None of that was helping. And I thought back to grade 2. When I was told, you know, you can't hang out with the women and that. And I realized that there's a lot more going on there. And finally admitted to myself that, yeah, that's that's what I need. And the day I figured that out for myself, I haven't stopped smiling. It's been amazing. 

When I started transitioning, it was pretty easy. I was surprised, actually. I went to my doctor and I told them and I was a little taken aback when they answered "You're Trans?" like their head went back.

Well, yeah. I mean, do I have to look a certain way or something. And she said no. OK. So they referred me to an ENDO an I did a blood test. I did one more blood test. And then I waited three weeks maybe and I started HRT. And I knew already in the last few years that's something I really wanted. 

Voice training is probably my biggest fear. I can go bra shopping with my wife. I can go get my nails done. I can dress as nice as I like, but I'm still shy to try and do the voice training. I don't know why, but that's the hardest part for me. 

In a way I was debating on if I should do this interview or not, because I hear so many stories of people that lose their lives. You know, they go through a very hard childhood, lots of medical issues. And I've been very fortunate to had almost none of that happen.

And I am sad for some people. But then some people talked to me and told me that you need to give others hope that we're together. We've been married 13 years and our relationship is stronger now than it was before. There so much I can relate to. I mean, and we fit the same clothes. So that's amazing. 

Challenges in my life have not been too many I mean, I have an amazing wife who supports me, two beautiful kids that support me, and they learn about this in school. When I told them it was, one of the hardest things was to tell my family and I thought my kids, I would have to explain a bunch, and as soon as I had told they said, Oh, well, dad, you're transgender then. I read about this in school, and they're only 12 and 13 years old, and I was really surprised that they're teaching that, and it made it a little bit easier for me to explain to them. So it was really nice that the teachers had already gone through some of that, 

At this point, things with my wife are amazing. It started. Well, I mean, just a given. It started pretty strange. I didn't know how it was going to go. In the past, we had experimented with a few other women. I wanted to make sure that things would be OK. I couldn't have done it without her. I don't think I would have. She's my rock, my stone, my whole life. So if the support wasn't there, I don't know that I could have done this. And now things are just we cuddle on the couch. For me and her, it's the greatest night we can have.  So it's nice to be able to do those small things. Holding hands is just so different now, stuff like that. But the little things mean a whole bunch. 

So if I had to give some advice to somebody that's married or in a situation sort of like me? I would say not to go too quick with things. I mean, even if you're going to medically transition, especially, it's a long process. It's years and years. And if you can, like, I really didn't want to scare Kassandra off at all.

It would have really hurt. There's no - there's no need to rush. It's a very long process. So just let it do its time. And I think that that's the best chance to keep your relationship going. And even if you just end up best friends, just if you do things too quick, I think that it could really scare someone off or or catch them off guard in a way that they may not bounce back from. 

Thinking back about it, when I was eight or nine years old and I was learning to break hair and I was sitting with the girls in the class and my teacher pulled me aside and one little comment stuck with me for 30 something years, that you can't do that. You're a boy. You need to be over here. And it was just on the backburner for the next long, long time. And finally, I did something. And I mean, I feel so good. I've never felt this good in my life. 

I see so many other trans people in a lot of the the discords that I'm in. And the one thing that people can't hide is your eyes. Even as mad or upset as you are, their eyes get so big and so happy. And you see the difference in these changes that people go through and the eyes tell the story. I think right there alone. 

I love so many things about, you know, I'm very, very visibly trans. I go out, and I don't try to, you know, where I blend in. I just walk around and I talk to everyone. I really like doing makeup. I haven't had any lessons yet. So it's kind of like a crapshoot figuring it out. Not easy. Same as clothes. I love to go shopping. And I think that Value Village and stores like consignment shops are a trans person's best friend. 

Actually I went to one and it was really neat because I seen a group of six or seven trans women together. And during COVID, that was my only real life... So it was really nice to see that. And yeah, I love shopping. Anything with the face I love to do. I just everything that I've missed out on, I'm starting my hair is getting a little bit longer so I'm able to do a couple of things with it. Everything. I'm just so happy. There's so many things that make me happy about being transgender and more than I thought. 

We're superintendents, we've been superintendence for about 12 years, almost since the time we've been together, and it's really nice.

I've been... through the whole thing I've been working and I get to see a lot of residents. So I've done things slowly. I didn't want to scare anybody or myself, for that matter. I started, you know, just wearing glitter, nail polish and mascara and small things like that. And residents started noticing. But I found that nobody wanted to ask. They just kind of kept being themselves very nice. Most people, having great. 

Work or is super supportive with me. Nothing's really changed at work. In fact, I find people are nicer. I don't know why, but it just probably because I'm being me who I'm supposed to be. So I think it's a really nice thing to have a very supportive company and coworkers. That's great. 

There's a few challenges. The one biggest one, and it didn't bother me for the longest time was, my dead name was I was fine with that. And just the last little bit, it's been hard because there's some people who you've known for a long time and they're not ready to call me that name, and it's hard sometimes, I mean, everything everywhere now is Kaylee. there's no other person here. So it's just reminding them, you know, just a gentle reminder, I don't get offended very easy at all. And I'm a very easygoing person. That's probably the biggest hardship for me. 

There's a few people too that kind of maybe they're not as friendly with me anymore, but they don't say anything. We'll take it. And that's fine. They do their own thing and I'm OK. Not everybody can like everybody. And I think the world's going to like that. It's meant to have some people who like me, some people who love me, and some people who prefer not to talk to me. And that's OK.

In the future... I love office work. I always have. And I also love to gossip. So I would like to get out of superintendent and go work in a nice office setting where I can dress super nice, not have a uniform every day and gossip and just.

Hang out with more, more of a group of people versus just doing a random work order like some of the things at work, losing a lot of muscle, I have to do huge compacter garbage, things that are not as easy to pull anymore. I have to shovel snow in the winter for a massive property, not just in a driveway. So a lot of that stuff gets harder. And I would like to be in an office setting again where I feel super comfy and happy.

I just want to say that I love my wife more than anything in the world. My kids come very, very close second. She is the most important thing for me.

[Cassandra] I'm Cassandra. I'm Kaylee's spouse. I guess I'm supposed to call her now.

We've been married for. Eleven years and together for 13. So it's been really good.

[Kaylee] So one big thing is, is sex with my wife has gone. A lot better, it's not every day, twice a day thing, it's once, once a week maybe, but it's so much better and it's brought us closer.

And I think that's really important to connect like that. It's more meaningful and more time involved. It's really, really nice. And along the lines of that, that's kind of how I made sure that she would be OK with me coming out.

We did experiment with a couple of women. To see if that's something that I guess that I wanted to see. She's a very, very quiet reserved woman, and I wasn't sure if that's something that she would be OK with. And she's definitely OK with that. So I, yeah, I identify as a lesbian. And if she wasn't into women, then I couldn't.

[Cassandra] Well, first, it was pretty weird, I thought, because we used to always joke with me that you wanted to do everything, if he could ever be a girl, he'd want to be a girl.

I mean, it just. It was a shock to him when he decided he was going to. And our relationships been 100 percent better than we thought it would be. I'm fine for 100 percent, so.

After being married for so many years, if you really love the person, you should stay with them. If you don't, then there's no point in staying with that person., Be yourselves. And I'm happy for all of the people that are transgendered or trying to change themselves for the better.

[Kaylee] We have two beautiful kids. They're amazing kids.

Everybody says that about their own kids, I guess. But they really are special. Before I bring them in, I just want to say one thing real fast. They got no Christmas gifts. They saved their money. They got a lot of money. They saved their money till just the other day they randomly found their, PS5 in a store. They lucked out. So they're so happy. They are very patient boys. That kind of just gives a little bit about them. But yeah, I really like if I could introduce our boys to everybody, if that's OK.

Here, come in front here guys.

[Jaden] Hello

[Cassandra] Come sit.

[Jaden] Fine

[Kaylee] This is my eldest, Jaden. Look in the camera here. He is 13 years old

[Jaden] No, 12

[Kaylee] ...going to be 13.

And this one is Zander. Say hi.

[Zander] Hi. I'm going to be 12.

[Kaylee] They were born less than a year apart. The Irish twins, they call it.

[Jaden] No, it was three hundred and seven days.

[Kaylee] So 16 days less than, err, no six days less than a year.

[Zander] No.

[Kaylee] Yeah.

[Zander] 365 days in a year.

[Kaylee] Yeah, less. And okay,, so they've  got some questions maybe for you. 

[Zander] What? I don't... Hi. 

[Kaylee] Excuse the COVID cuts. We haven't made it to the hairdresser yet, so they're pretty good shag. Do you like being a teenager?

[Jaden] Yeah, I guess.

[Kaylee] Yeah. How about you Zander

[Jaden] I'm not one yet

[Kaylee] Are you looking forward to it? Make sure you talk here.

[Zander] Uh... Games. I like the games.,

[Kaylee] Video games and video games. So we went to, Jaden I'd like you to show them this picture. You hold it up close, OK? Zander, tell them where we went.

[Zander] We went to Niagara Falls. To this picture place and they dressed us up and all that.

[Kaylee] They dressed as a what?

[Zander] The wild west.

[Kaylee] Yeah, the Wild West. And what do you guys call me now? What's my name?

[Jaden] Mae. [Zander] Mae.

[Kaylee] So they call me Mae. I'm Kaylee Mae. So I thought Mae would be nice. I could never steal her as as mom and dad would be a little strange. Some places I go so Mae seem to fit and they're doing very good. Especially he reminds his older brother when he slips up and, "it's Mae, it's Mae!"

[Jaden] I don't really care that often. Because he's still him I guess you could say.

[Zander] Yeah, same, I don't really care.

[Kaylee] In the end of it. I think that we're a super easygoing family. Very, very straightforward. Not a care in the world, really. Just I try to raise my kids how we were both raised, very happy and easygoing. You know, if something's not right, don't hang around there. There's no need to get upset about stuff. Just move on and. Yeah.

So I think that most of the people in the world just think they need to live their lives and everybody's different. So there's no need to charge anybody. It takes more effort and more time from them to go out of the way to maybe save some hurtful things. And it's much easier to just live your life, smile, be happy every day. You never know, you may not wake up tomorrow. And I'm happy when people ask me, how is your day? I say, well, I woke up today. So that's the best start of the day. I woke up and I go to bed - I'm  happy going to bed. Anything else that happens, I look at it as positive as I can, because you only get one life. You're only here for a very, very quick second. And the grand scheme of time. So you just live it. Smile. Treat everybody like like you would treat your mom or your dad or your brother or your best friend or even your dog.

I mean, just treat everybody the same and smile. And it really rubs off on other people. You do one small thing and you may not get it back from them. But the butterfly effect kind of goes down the line and they think of it as well.

And, don't dress your age, dress how you feel. You can't honestly dress how you feel because I dress -  I'm sorry if I dress like really provocative or slutty, I don't know which is a good word to use.

And I feel like I'm a teenager who should be dressed like I can't help but just dress how you feel. Don't let anyone tell you you can't wear that, you're 40 years old, or, Yeah. At the end of the day, one thing that's really important for me is a community to have, if you can find a community and most of it, especially with COVID right now, is online. But there's some really nice LGBTQ and especially just transgender servers. 

I'm in a few of them, and it's great to be able to... people have their stories, their medical information. They they have big pride balls, once a month, stuff like that, where you can all just get together and talk or feel like a part of a family there. And there's lots of people who have no one in their lives. And I couldn't imagine going through this without having some kind of contact. So find a group of people or a person or a pet or even a plant. Anything that's alive that can listen to you, but they don't even have to talk back to you. It's just something that you can talk to. And I think that that could help a lot and and prevent a lot of sadness and maybe questions. Yeah. That's the kind of person I am just always happy. I don't think I've stopped smiling for the last nine months. Every day. I just you know, it feels so good to smile now and I can't help it. It's just who I am.

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Meet Madison (She/Her)

What follows is a transcript from Madison's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/0Oy38CL_Zm0

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Hi, my name is Madison Poser, I'm 29 years old. My pronouns are she her. I work as a graphic designer and I am a proud transgender woman. 

Back in 2017, I was working as a graphic designer at a firm in town, and I had just lost my job and my girlfriend had just broken up with me all within like the span of a week. And so I started hanging out with my friends, Alexi, who was also unemployed at the time, so we both had a lot of free time on our hands. And if the topic came up about like gender and she had asked me if I might be transgender after I had told her about some of my desires to like wear women's clothing and how I think about it all the time, wanting to be a woman. And it took my friend asking me if I'm transgender for me to realize. That that was a possibility. Up until that point, I hadn't even considered it. 

So my friend Alexi would actually help me with shopping for women's clothing, and she helped me try on makeup and all these other feminine things. Any time I go over to her apartment, I'd get to dress up as my true self. And it was like so amazing and it made me so happy. And she would refer to me by she/her pronouns and by the name that I had chosen, which was Emma originally, because I thought it was funny, because it went with Emma Poser. It was kind of like a pun. I'm a poser, Emma Poser. So that was initially why I chose that name. But then after some time, I decided to go with Madison because I didn't want my name to be a joke my entire life. 

So, yeah, we would go shopping at thrift stores and anywhere I could find some cheap used women's clothing because I wasn't employed at the time and I would starting out, just stick to her like glue. I was terrified of being seen in the women's clothing section. But over time, it started to get easier and easier. I'd start to stray further and further away.

Eventually, I just went shopping by myself. I bought a dress by myself. And it was so like empowering. I immediately drove home and I dressed up and felt amazing for the rest of the day. It was very empowering. Yeah, there's lots of like moments, like hurdles, I guess that when you pass them, you just feel like a sense of pride in yourself. 

The first few challenges that I faced when I was first coming out, I would say were my parents. The first time that I tried on nail polish, which was like one of the first things I sort of experimented with, I came home with it on my hands and my dad saw. And his reaction wasn't the reaction I would have expected.

My entire life growing up, I thought my parents would both be like super supportive if I ever came out as gay or whatever. And so I wasn't like too worried initially. But as soon as my dad saw that, I had nail polish on. And his reaction that made me really scared to come out to him. 

I was more comfortable coming out to my mom, I actually came out to my mom pretty early on. We were both down at the dock out at our cottage, and it was just me and her. And I just started out the conversation by asking her if she knew anyone who was transgender. And she actually said yes. One of your relatives, distant relatives who lives in Sault St. Marie, is actually transgender, a trans woman.

I didn't even know they were my relative. I had never met them before. Like they were distant relative. I had met that relative like about a year later at a trans coffee meet up here in the city. And it was just really great getting to meet them. And I thought that was so cool. 

And she then asked me, why, why do you bring that up? And and then I just sort of said, well, I've been experimenting with my gender or questioning my gender a little bit. And I'm considering the fact that I may be transgender. And so that's sort of how I came out to my mom. And she was, she got fairly quiet. Yeah, sure. She wasn't sure how to process that because she wasn't expecting it. Obviously, I hid it pretty well. But over time, she she became one of my biggest supporters. And it's actually why I changed my middle name to my mom's first name. 

While I was working as a graphic designer, I didn't actually come out. I was working at an organization here in town, and that was when they had let me go. And that was when I started to experiment. But I was still working sort of freelance for them. Still going by my old name and pronouns, and I just wasn't out yet to anyone for my old job. And then I got a job offer in Ottawa for a two month contract, so I decided to go down there. I accepted that job offer and I still wasn't out. But my brother lived in Ottawa, so I saw that as an opportunity to come out to him while I was down there, because I actually lived with my brother while I was working in Ottawa. Him and his girlfriend, about a month into my contract, 

I had been continuously trying to like pump myself up to come out to my brother, and I just kept putting it off. And then one day I was at the house with his girlfriend and we were just like in the kitchen cooking something. And I decided to come out to her first because I realized that it would be good for my brother to have somebody to talk to who wasn't me about this after I've come out to him. So I came out to my brother's girlfriend and she was super supportive and she said she honestly wasn't worried about my brother reacting negatively, which really put my mind at ease. So it made a lot easier to come out to him.

One night I was just was sitting with my brother in the living room, we were playing Mario Kart and. I told them I had something important, I wanted to tell him, and I told them that I had been questioning my gender. I had this little script that I used for pretty much everybody where I'd say and I've been questioning my gender for the last few months, and I've come to the conclusion that I would be happier living my life as a woman. If you have any questions, I can answer them. I know you're going to need some time to process, but I just want you to know that things won't change too much between us. So so I pretty much told him that. 

And he he was supportive right away. He gave me a big hug, told me he'd be there for me, and that meant the world to me. So I've always sort of looked up to my brother. 

In March of 2017, that was when I first started experimenting with my gender, and then several months went by. Around August, I met with a doctor who was able to sort of help me with getting hormone replacement therapy and explaining everything about transition to me. January 17th, 2018, was the day that I started hormone replacement therapy. So it was less than a year since I realized that I was transgender, that I started transitioning.

And it was February of 2017 that I started my new job at the graphic design firm in Ottawa. I wasn't out socially at that time. I still wasn't really very feminine. And my voice was very deep. My hair was very short and actually falling out. I was like kind of going bald at the time, like early, early baldness, which was kind of terrifying. But the hormones did their work, which was which was a relief. So it actually took me a while to come out and start presenting as a woman in public.

It wasn't until I started going to school for business at Sault College, and actually my first time presenting as a woman out in the public space was at a destination wedding in Mexico. When the bride and the groom, I came out to them a couple of months before I actually went to the wedding. And they said, they encouraged me, to be myself for the wedding and wear a dress and makeup and all the other good stuff. So I did that. It was terrifying. Walking from my hotel room down to the foyer where the rest of the guests were was like the longest walk I'd ever taken.

But I had my friend Alexi there. Thankfully, she really helped me get through it. And she was like always by my side. I mean, just encouraging me and keeping me sane. So one of the biggest highs that I've ever gotten being trans was the moment that I looked in the mirror and saw a woman looking back at me. That was like the the greatest moment. And I knew that everything was going to be perfect. Everything was going to be all right. 

So there's lots of great things about being trans and being a part of this great community. The LGBT community and the trans community was one of them. I got to meet so many amazing people and they were all so supportive. Early on, I was introduced to several trans people who helped me figure out who I am and help squash any doubts I may have had about being trans and really just supported me. And I returned the favor for others trying to support them and explain to them. Sort of the same thing, answer questions and be supportive. 

So I've had some people ask me on social media, they would message me on Instagram, and most of the questions I would get are. How do I come out to people? Or like, I'm scared of coming out to people, How did you do it? And I would actually send them the little script that I had written out that I used for coming out to friends and family. 

A lot of the other questions I would get are people who just have doubts about their feelings about being trans. Where they are worried that it's just a phase or something, and I'm able to tell them that these feelings are natural. A lot of trans women have doubts. Trans men as well have these doubts. I had doubts early on as well, in the end. I'm so much happier living life as a woman and being seen as a woman and presenting as a woman. And that sort of has made me realize that I'm meant to be a woman. 

I find myself quite fortunate to be passing as a CIS. Several people have been surprised when I tell them that I'm transgender and I will never hide that fact. I try not to hide that fact. I wear pride pins and I'm very open about my transition because I find that visibility and exposure for people really helps them sort of understand what being transgender is all about, and it helps them accept it and support. And that was the case with my dad, who was not very comfortable with the whole thing early on. But as time went by, as he started to see me more and more as a woman, makeup, wearing dresses and skirts, all this other stuff, he started to come around and really understand sort of what I was going through and that this wasn't just a phase. 

I've had to remind myself several times during the pandemic that I need to provide self care for myself. Putting on makeup, even if I'm not going out, can really improve my mood. So reminding myself, even if I'm staying at home, laying in bed all day.

One of the things I would tell myself if I could go back in time would be to start applying for the surgery funding right away, because it can take a while. And you may not think you're ready right away and you don't have to be ready right away. I waited about a year before I actually applied for any surgery, and then it took almost another year for it to get approved and go through. Even if you're just starting out, but you know that you're transgender and you may want to get a surgery in the future, you should apply for it sooner. Even if you're not ready for it, because you can always cancel you don't have to go through with it if you don't feel like you want to. 

I would really love to travel. I want to see more of Canada. I've actually been considering traveling, doing a road trip along the East Coast or the West Coast and just sort of seeing what's out there and potentially finding a new place for me to move to and live, because I've lived in Sault St. Marie and I love Sault St. Marie. It's a great city. But I've lived here my entire life, and I feel like there's something else out there for me. So I really want to travel and I would love to continue to help with Pride Fest here in the city, because I became a committee member for Pride back in twenty eighteen, and I've been doing graphic design work for them. 

We created these lawn signs last year and this year, which were a big hit, and I redesigned their logo. So really just like continuing to be a part of the community and giving back. I definitely want to want to continue that. That trail. 

I would say the best bit of wisdom I can provide from my own experience transitioning is to just have patience, have patience in yourself, have patience in others. Other people may need more time to get used to the changes, and everybody transitions differently. It's a different pace for everybody. So don't feel discouraged if your transition isn't going quite as quickly as others because you'll get there.

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Meet Dianne (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Dianne's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/3FEOBZpNkUg

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My name is Diane Skoll. I’m a transgender woman. I live in Ottawa. My day job is as a software developer. I have a side hobby as a stand-up comedian. I transitioned fairly late in life. I was 48 when I started living full-time as a woman and I’ve been doing so since 2015. 

As for my identity, I’m not non-binary. I’m definitely female identifying, but I actually have a child who is non-binary so I’m fairly familiar with that aspect under the trans umbrella as well, but for myself I’ve always identified as female. Ever since I was quite small, I knew something was up. 

Well, it first started when I was about six years old and I kind of had these weird wishful almost fantasies of being a girl. And I didn't understand this. This was in the 70s. There wasn't much information, certainly not for a six year old, so I just ignored it, suppressed it, and then when puberty hit that's when it really hit me that something was different about me and so I initially assumed that I just liked to cross-dress. I didn't know why I liked it, I just knew that I liked it. And then as I got further through puberty I just put it down to like a kind of a kink or a sexual fetish and so I didn't really think about it more than that. I went through what I think are fairly typical phases of buying clothes and then purging them, sort of a fear of loathing and self-disgust, and the cycle went on a few times. And then I met somebody when I was 19 years old and we actually got married when I was 23 and I assumed that having a partner would make these feelings disappear because again I thought they were just sexual and I thought I could just get rid of them. But clearly that didn't work. I still felt urges to present female.

I had told my partner before we were married. I told her that I liked to present female but I didn't tell her that I was transgender because at that time I didn't understand that myself. Anyway we had three kids and so for about 18-19 years I just suppressed everything and then it just all blew up in a huge way, overwhelming gender dysphoria, and I had to confront the issue. And so it wasn't until my late 40s that I really understood who I was and what I had to do to live an authentic life.

Living with it was difficult because I just suppressed it for most of my married life but when I did finally accept it, I remember vividly the exact day actually it was a Christmas party in 2013 at a trans support group. I went to their party and I realized, hey this is deeper than just wearing women's clothes I’m a woman. At that point my marriage was in trouble not only because of the trans issues but for a whole bunch of other reasons. So my partner and I were seeing a marriage counselor at that time and in one of the sessions I said look, I’m a transgender woman. I’m not just a cross-dresser. And so the counselor was very taken aback and so was my wife at the time. But I had to be truthful. So I started taking steps to physically transition. I started seeing a gender therapist. I started doing hair removal laser hair removal and then I came out to my mother. My father had died in 2013, so he never knew about this. I came out to my mother and she was very shocked and surprised because I’d never given any inclination of this before as far as she could tell but she was supportive. She said, you know if that's what you are and that's what you have to do, then I’ll support you. Same with my sisters. I came out to them and they were supportive. And I finally came out to my kids who also initially were very taken aback and my youngest was quite upset because she didn't understand. She was quite young. She didn't understand what it meant. She thought I would be disappearing and some strange person coming in my place. But she quickly found out that no, I’m still the same person inside, I just look and present a little bit different. So my kids were all fine. But it was the death knell for my marriage, which was in terrible trouble anyway. And so that just killed it. So my marriage ended in October of 2014 and in April of 2015 is when I started living full-time as a woman. And I have done so since then, and I’ve done a lot of steps of medical transition as well. I know not every trans person wants to do that but for me it was fairly important to do that and I just felt so much better once I was out and living as myself

I’m very lucky and privileged in many ways. For example I’m only five foot two inches tall, so like, I can pass for female at a casual glance very easily so I’ve never had people hassle me or give me a hard time. And I realize that is not the experience for a lot of trans people, and so I feel incredibly lucky for that. The hardships mostly were my own internal fears more than anything real. So I was very worried about being read or being in physical danger when I was out. That was a huge concern for me, but as I started living full time and realized that people weren't paying attention to me, I was kind of invisible which is the way I like it, that fear subsided.

My divorce was like incredibly acrimonious and stressful and awful. So that was a real hardship. But I think that would have happened anyway, transition or not. So it did add stress but I don't think it was caused by the fact that I was trans. 

To get over the fear of interacting with people I said well what's the scariest thing I could do and I decided to take an improv course where I would have to interact spontaneously with people up close. And I loved it was awesome. And so that was a huge joy, discovering this part of life that I really liked. And just being able to be myself and have friends who knew me as myself was a huge joy. And the absence of the crushing gender dysphoria that I had experienced was amazing. That was like as if I’d had like a terrible terrible pain - chronic pain - all my life and it suddenly was lifted. It was amazing.

Well my cat gets me out of bed, so that's an easy one. I think my guiding principle in life is just to try to be good to other people and try to enjoy life as much as possible. If anything, the pandemic has shown that life can be very unpredictable. So you might as well make the best of it while you can. So I try to be positive. I try to have fun and enjoy my life and do things I like.

I’m lucky enough that I actually really enjoy my day job as well so that's a big positive. That hugely motivates me to get out of bed every morning. So my day job is, I’m a software developer. I actually didn't study that. I studied electrical engineering, but I wound up in software and I’ve been doing that for about 31 years I guess. For 19 years I owned my own company. We did anti-spam products and services and I grew it from just me to 12 people. I sold that company back in 2018. The market had changed and it just didn't look like there was much growth potential. And since then I’ve been doing contract, software development contracts for various other companies.

I don't know that I really had a clear picture of what it would be like when I when I started out. I knew a lot of trans people because I belonged to an organization called gender mosaic. So I saw all these different trans people and how their transitions had played out, and they were all pretty different. Some people had a very easy time of it, some people didn't. Some people were happy afterwards, some people were not for various reasons. So I didn't really know what to expect when I started out and I didn't have a clear picture. As it evolved I realized that I’m much happier. That's huge. I’m way happier now that I’ve transitioned. 

I also, it's funny, I started out wanting to be like super feminine presenting. I hated my voice so I actually took singing lessons to improve my range and try to get the pitch up and sound more feminine, but as I grew more comfortable in my transition I kind of stopped worrying about that. I realized you know what I’m happy in my life. This is who I am. If my voice betrays me then fine, I’m okay with that. I can live with it. Just because changing my voice drastically when I was speaking to people that I knew felt really really weird. I felt really strange doing that.

So to answer the original question what did I expect versus how did it turn out, I didn't really have many expectations but it's turned out for me really positively.

I don't dream about trends related stuff in the future anymore because I’m in a pretty good place as far as that goes. So basically I have opportunities for a couple of long-term contracts that I’ll actually find out about next week. So I’m hopeful I’ll get one of those. So that'll be my work life settled. I want to advance in comedy, like I have done paid comedy on a weekend at a club so I’m not totally amateur, but I’m nowhere near what you would consider professional or well-known, but I’d like to get better at comedy and kind of advance in that world as well. I’d like to travel. 

I have a partner. we have a very good relationship so I’d like to keep building that. I don't know that I’d ever want to get married again, but I do like being in a relationship with somebody.

What I would tell my 10 year old - 10 year ago self, would be get out of this marriage ASAP! It's toxic! So that's the first thing. And also, I would say to myself that, don't be so afraid of transitioning. It's not a leap off a cliff. It's not going to destroy your life, it's actually going to be a positive, so just have the courage to take that step.

I don't know what I tell myself 10 years from now, but I would say well I hope you had a good life and fun and did well in your work and your comedy and had a good relationship.

Trans people are at heart pretty much like everybody else. I don't think being trans is a mental illness. I don't believe that at all. I think it may well be a brain difference, but I don't think it's a defect. I think it's just a difference. And so I would want people to know that despite all the things in the news about how bad things are for trans people, and how much we suffer, which I’m not trying to minimize because all of that is true, there are a lot of trans people who are happy and leading productive, meaningful lives. And that doesn't get covered in the news because, you know, the news is "if it bleeds it leads" otherwise we're not interested. 

And I’d also want people to just chill on some of the hot button issues like just chill about the whole trans people and sports issue and the bathroom issues and all the cultural war issues that are going on. Because in reality those things are not a problem. Nobody dresses up as a woman to go into a woman's washroom to assault a woman. That's ridiculous. Just look at the reality. Look at the statistics and calm down.

So after I did improv I did quite a lot of improv for a few years. I decided to try stand-up comedy. I thought, well that's also performing and I really like performing. So I did stand-up comedy. About five years ago was my first set and I discovered I loved that even more than improv. The first time I got a laugh, it was a huge shot of adrenaline and endorphins, so I’ve been doing comedy not as a profession obviously, but as a hobby, for about five years, and I love it. I’ve done stand up in clubs all over Ottawa. I’ve done stand-up on zoom, so all over the world. And at first I didn't do trans-related material because I didn't know how people would react. I just did observational comedy. Then I decided to do trans-related material and it worked really well because I think when you do comedy about real things in your life you can make it much funnier. And in a sense being trans is kind of funny and weird. It's a lot of things, but it's also strange and funny. So I had a huge vein of material that I could mine for that.

And so I found people really enjoyed that. I had a lot of positive feedback about it. And I’m not really activist - you know I don't do - I support trans rights but I’m not really vocal about marching and that sort of thing. That's just not my personality. But I find that when you get a room full of people laughing with you who may not know a trans person - may never have met a trans person - they realized, hey this is... she's just like anyone else not some strange creature to be feared, but just like anyone else. And I think that actually goes a long way to helping trans visibility and helping people understand that we're just normal people with one slight difference.

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Meet Stefanie (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Stefanie's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/R6j6S2Z57qY

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So, my name is Stefanie Pest. My pronouns are she/her and I live in Essex, Ontario, Canada. I have been working in the automotive industry for 37 years.

I was born an assigned male at birth. Nobody asked me anything as a baby and the only thing that doctors, you know, assign sex with, is your private parts. Nobody asked me if I was transgender, which I found out later in life, much later in life, that I am a transgender woman.

My identity became known to me when I was 46 years old, which was 12 years ago. However, when I was seven, I realized that I just didn't fit into a boy role in society. That was a struggle for me for me for my entire life until I discovered that I was trans.

I would seek out women's clothes just to express myself in a female way, which was very helpful in my understanding of who I am.

I was born in the 60s, so society at that time frowned upon, you know, something other than what you see.

Through puberty it became more intense, that I wasn't really a male. And it was difficult to, you know, function. And that was never revealed to anybody. I went through all the male rituals, pretty much pretending, but that was expected of me, a young teenage boy, then later a man. It was expected of me to marry a woman, have children and so forth.

And through all that time it was a struggle. It's like something I thought I would have to live with forever, which was very despairing. But then internet came, and you find out things; that you're not alone, that other people are struggling too. So, my gender identity as a trans woman became evident to me. My bell was rung, and you can't un-ring a bell.

So, I am married, and I told my wife that moment I found out. She looked at me and said, "my dear, I knew that." She knew before I did, and she became very, very supportive of me. It was very difficult for both of us to go through that process but it's very, very critical that you have this communication between partners that you're sharing your life with. That was the key to our success and in our marriage, we are still married, and we love each other so much.

So, coming out as a trans woman was not immediate. This was back in 2008 when I realized that I was a trans woman and, what to do? What is the next step? Next step was, I need to transform my body. So, you search for ways to do that.

I chose to do things on my own because I was not sure society would accept who I am authentically. And so, I didn't go to a doctor and I decided to self-medicate with phytoestrogen. These are herbal pills that mimic estrogen and they were helpful because before that I was, you know, because of my depression I would have antidepressant drugs and they never ever work. But when I started taking phytoestrogens it seemed to make, you know, a change that... a change occurred. A good change. I felt more content with myself.

But it was not enough. I always wanted more. And so, it came to a point where I did have to go to a doctor, and they prescribed pharmaceutical estrogen. I went to see an endocrinologist who I'd been saying before because I suffered from prolactinoma which is a tumor in your pituitary that produces prolactin which is a female hormone that women produce when they're pregnant. So, it was an indicator that maybe yes this is for sure valid; my identity is as a woman.

When I started those estrogen, that hormone therapy, I noticed a magnificent change. I became more content with myself and my life changed dramatically. But I was still not out to the world I was only out to my wife Michelle and I have two boys that were in school and we were in an empty nest situation. And so, it was easy for me to be Stefanie at home, but in the world in a society I was still my former male self.

It came to a point where I did feel confident enough to come out. I came out to my children. My oldest was married so there were three and we got them together. And we this was on a Victoria Day in 2016 that I came out to them and they were very supportive. But when they discovered that I had known I was trans back in 2008 they became sad because I had to hide this from them.

In hindsight I probably didn't have to. I knew that I had the love of my children and that they would be supportive. And then I decided, oh I must do more, always more, and I started electrolysis and laser treatments to remove my facial hair, my body hair, to be more feminine

Yeah so, the beginning of my coming out actually had a signal that I was ready to come out.

There was a survey produced at our plant that wanted to find out about the makeup of our worker workforce, you know, male, female, religion, and all that stuff. And so, when it came down to the form saying, you know, your gender, I kind of was wondering what to put there. I wasn't completely out so I decided to go see our women's advocate, which was unusual for a male to go see somebody like that. But they were very, very supportive and um I didn't know if I was the first one that came up with this but they told me that it was perfectly fine to put whatever I feel comfortable putting on that form. So, I made a new line and I put trans woman and that felt so so freeing, to do that, exposing myself to a survey which is a private matter. But for me to do that was a big step and that was actually only a month before I told my kids and I think that might have been the trigger that I was ready to come out and face the world as Stefanie. a trans woman, so then I decided to actually come out on my birthday July 7th.

I went to the commissioner. Here in Ontario, it's required to give an oath to say that you are changing your name, changing your gender, and I did that on my birthday in 2016. I came out to my co-workers at Chrysler a few weeks after that. We had a shutdown and I told him the day before that when we come back from our vacation that I will have transformed from a male to a female. And I had much, much support from my coworkers and I was gladdened by that. That was another stigma that we have in the trans community that we're not accepted, and I was very, very fortunate that the people around me supported me in that way.

So, the other thing while I was at the women's advocate and discussing my gender identity with them, they told me that I was not the first. There was a trans man that had come out maybe a year before I did. And they suggested that I contact this person because they were running a peer-to-peer support group for trans people in Windsor called trans spectrum. And I was shocked, you know, I was overjoyed that there was somebody else that was going through the same thing I am.

And so, I decided to reach out to this person and attend these meetings that they had. I think it was once a month that we would go to and other trans people would come and we would, you know, relate our experiences, you know, being trans in our community. And that was the start of a wonderful friendship.

It also was the beginning of my advocacy because listening to other trans people, and this was my first exposure to other trans people, I had no exposure previous to that at all, and I was amazed at how privileged I am, that I didn't go through some of the discrimination and prejudice that most trans people experienced. My decision at that point was I have a voice that may help my own community; my new community that I’m a part of, that I could speak and have that courage to do that for others that do not have that ability with the privilege, the white privilege that I have, the privilege of a really good job, a loving supportive family, this is not a common occurrence in our trans community. And that needs to change.

In our trans community we have people that are not able to speak for themselves because of the stigma that we face in society right now. We are dependent on the majority of the population, which is the cis population,

those are people that are assigned a sex at birth and are content with that, as opposed to trans people and gender diverse people that are not. We need the cis population to educate themselves. We need them to advocate and become allies for the trans community at levels that most people don't wish to do, to protect the, you know, the most vulnerable in our society. I’m not just talking about trans people, but people living with disabilities. There's so many people that require these barriers to be taken down so that our society can flourish.

I am so happy to be a part of the family that I am in. My wife Michelle has been by my side since the very beginning of my trans journey and I want to thank her for being such a loving partner to me and my children, Michael, Courtney, Patrick. That they have been so supportive of me and they still call me dad, because that's who I am. And I can't express it enough how much love I have for them that they are part of my journey.

I would like to say that through my coming out only five years ago that the people that I have met I have created an extended chosen family that has shown me love and respect of who I am. And I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart, and I know that those people have gone forward and been allies to our trans community. I would wish that would grow exponentially and that would change the way we see the trans community now in society. That we should be accepted as the people we are.

We are human just like everyone else.

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Meet Jennifer (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Jennifer's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/1hGAUlQDkQA

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Hi, my name is Jennifer.

I am 54 years old, from St Catharines, Ontario, and I am a proud transgender woman. This is my fiancée Evelyn, and we are engaged to be married next may. 

I identify as bisexual. I am attracted to both men and women. 

After coming out I joined a women's group that was incredibly accepting here in Niagara. About a year after joining the women's group, I was asked by the founder of the group if I would become a moderator, which is someone who helps with the group itself, hosts events, sometimes fills in for the founder of the group when she couldn't be at the meetings. At one point the founder of the group became pregnant and she asked me would I run the group while she was off on maternity leave and dealing with her child. This gave me the unique opportunity to host these groups for a period of time, and during that time, one of the meetings, Evelyn came in. 

Because I was made to feel welcome, I felt it was my responsibility to pass that on and make everyone else feel as welcome when they first come into the group. So I always made it a habit of spending some time speaking to that person that just came in for the first time because I know it's terrifying. So I made it a point to speak to her and make her feel comfortable as possible and I kind of had this feeling inside that hey we kind of connect on a certain level. And she kept coming for about another three or four weeks and I actually came home from a meeting one night and I spoke to my mom and I said, I think I met a woman that I’m very interested in I think I might actually ask her out.

The funny thing is a few weeks before that I had basically given up on dating. I actually announced to the group that I'm done I’m not going to ask anyone else out ever again, I’m not going to put my heart out there ever again because I had it crushed. But I came home and I told my mom I think I might ask her out for a coffee. And literally that Sunday - we meet on Tuesday nights, I was gonna ask her that Tuesday night - on Sunday Evelyn called me and said would you like to go out for a coffee? And so she beat me to the punch. It was funny. We went out for coffee and it was like two school girls, but we were laughing and giggling so much at each other we were both so nervous and that's basically all that happened right and so we talked a little bit and we kind of hit it off. And then we started going out afterwards on a couple of dates, and then finally we went to Niagara Falls for dinner one night and walked down to the falls, and that was the first time we kissed and it's been wonderful ever since that day. And last September the love of my life asked me to marry her and so this has been an incredibly (I know it's been difficult because of COVID but) last year was a wonderful year because my wife, my future wife asked me to marry her. So I’m very happy about that. 

I realized that there was something different about me at a very young age, I would say probably maybe eight or nine years old I realized that I was different from all the other boys as it were. I didn't quite fit in. I was always more interested in what girls were doing and what they had to do. I think the first time I realized something was different was going to school one day at the very first day of school and realizing that, hey all these girls look so pretty and wearing pretty clothes and it's like I’m just wearing jeans and a shirt, and I’m going I wish I could wear what they were wearing. And I think that's one of the first inklings I had that something was a little different with me. 

I grew up in a Catholic family and was going to Catholic school and Catholic high school and always realized there was something a little bit different about me but couldn't quite identify what it was and back in those days you never heard the word transgender in school especially a Catholic school the word just simply never came up. And it was very difficult for me growing up because I didn't have anyone to go to - to turn to - and to find out why do I feel so different inside. And that caused a lot of pain, a lot of suffering and I realized that I was very attracted to the female sides of things that I didn't really fit in with the boys that much. 

As I got older I kind of did a little bit more research and found out that there were people that didn't identify with the sex that they were born with that their gender was different and kind of understood a little bit more about what I was. And it did make it tough. We went to church every single week and there always seemed to be every so often this sermon in regards to how the gays and people who identify as transgender are abominations in the eyes of God and this made me very confused because I thought well how can I be an abomination of God? God creates everybody in a certain way and here I am being told that because of how I feel inside that I’m not rocking by God. And this led to suicidal thoughts as a teenager, in fact on two separate occasions I grabbed a bunch of pills and a bottle of alcohol and was gonna end my life on at least two or three different occasions. I got perilously close to doing so but I’m very glad that I did not, because life got better eventually. 

I suppressed these feelings as much as I could but every so often I would engage these feelings. I would go out and buy clothing and try it on and it just felt so wonderful to do so. And wasn't anything sexual but it just felt like this is what I believe I should be I’m definitely feel like I’m a girl. And I had to suppress these feelings because of the school I was going to, the people that I live with, my parents, I didn't feel comfortable coming out to them, then life kind of got in the way. And I met a woman, got married to her, had a child, did the whole life thing, tried to present as male as best as I could, I even joined a service group that was all men and tried to be - tried to give back to the community and the funny thing about it was is that I did this and I worked with a lot of young folks and I used to teach kids how to umpire baseball games believe it or not. And it was always the female empires that I seem to take the most care for, and I realized as I like I felt this way inside.

And eventually it got to the point that when I was approximately 50 years old, I had a life crisis a life-threatening crisis I had been diagnosed about 10 years earlier with type 2 diabetes and everything was going well I was in good health and then all of a sudden everything went to heck in a hand basket. And my health started deteriorating. I couldn't keep my sugars under control. My stomach was always hurting. I had all kinds of pain in my abdomen, and my doctor couldn't figure out what was going on. And after about three to six months of suffering with his pain and with the high blood sugars, he sent me to a specialist who diagnosed me with a rare type of diabetes which probably nobody's heard of. It's called diabetes 1.5 or also known as LADA which is Latent Autoimmune onset of Diabetes in Adults. And it's an autoimmune disease that mimics diabetes too but it's actually slightly different and it almost killed me. It was threatening to kill me at least. 

My pancreas was being attacked by the insulin that I was taking and um I was at a point where if it had continued much longer, I could have gotten to the point where my pancreas couldn't have recovered. And that kind of shook me and I realized at that point that all these feelings that I had inside that I’ve been suppressing, it's over I had to be happy I needed to start living my life the way I wanted to. All my life I felt that I kept this hidden and down and anyone who would talk to me would say that there was always this thing underneath the surface that I was hiding from people, and that I didn't seem happy. That I didn't seem... I had anger issues, I didn't seem happy, I didn't seem like... I didn't like myself, I don't know how other people could have liked me at that point. 

So finally I decided that it was time to come out to the world in the fall of 2017 I started coming out to my family and on February 17, 2018, a day I picked intentionally because it's my birthday, I had what I called my rebirth day, and I identified myself to the world as Jennifer for the first time ever and started living as female from that date forward. And it was the happiest day of my life. My family totally accepted me when I came out which has made my life very comfortable and to celebrate I went out and got my hair done that day had my makeup done and my family took me out to the mandarin for lunch that day. It was a very, very special day. 

I came out to my bosses at work about two weeks earlier telling them that I would be coming out as female after February 17th. And my bosses were very accepting and so much so that my boss sent me flowers the first day that I came to work as Jennifer, so they have been behind me 100% right from the start, which has made things very easy for me. 

When I decided to come out, I know a lot of women will wait until they can somewhat pass as female before they came out, but I decided I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait till I passed, so I came out right away and I know I didn't come anywhere close to passing as female and of course it made it difficult walking down the street and going to supermarkets and whatnot and getting the stares, getting the dirty looks, getting the comments. But I was taught by my mother to always walk with your head held high and a smile on your face so um I’ve always had that in my heart, is that despite all the odd looks just keep walking. You know you're a woman, you know it inside, just keep walking and own it. Be yourself. Always be yourself. And I don't care that I didn't pass I was proud to be transgender and yeah eventually the hormones kicked in and the hair started growing in and I started liking the woman that I seen in the mirror a lot more and I started giving her a lot more smiles as the days went on.

[Evelyn] She's had she's had her rough days. She's had her good days, she's had her bad. I do my best to keep her focused. And I try to keep her, like, I just try to calm her, and like, I always tell her that you're a wonderful person or you you're, you know, you're special. You know, I just try to help her through what she has, the rough time, rough days. 

[Jennifer] Part of that roughness was suffering constant delays in my gender confirmation surgery. I was eligible for surgery almost a year and a half ago and unfortunately my endocrinologist was at the point of retiring and as such I had asked him to send the letter to the government in order to fund my confirmation surgery. And on three separate occasions over a period of seven months he had failed to do so. And so I was getting depressed because it felt like I was never going to get this surgery. And Evelyn helped me through these depressive moments and it was really, really bad. And it was tough because it's like, it felt like it was taking forever to get it. And finally my psychiatrist got involved and basically pushed him in order to get the letter written and my psychiatrist also wrote to Montreal in order to kind of ask them hey listen this woman's been waiting for seven months for this doctor to send the paperwork in is there any way that you can rush her surgery through because she shouldn't be penalized because this doctor didn't do his job. And so they did. But guess what, COVID hit, and so it delayed everything again, and so a surgery that I should have had over a year and a half ago only got done last month. So it was a rough time there was very dumb times and Evelyn to help me through it.

[Evelyn] Yeah because a lot of the words I says, it'll come there's always an obstacle. Obstacles always stop something. Like, but it will go through. It's just going to take time and then, like, the same thing I said because COVID showed up it's just delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying, but I just kept telling her it'll come, it'll come, it'll come.

[Jennifer] And yeah. And it did and she was right. 

My life is wonderful. My work is going very well we're very busy at work and I’ve never had any issues with any of our customers. Most of my customers... I work in customer service so I speak directly to all of the customers for our company throughout all of the United States, Canada, Europe. And they've all been very accepting all of them know basically that I’ve come out. 

I had one of our customers one time send me an email and she referred to me as man in the email and I said, I was having a very bad day that day, and I basically replied back or said, thank you for the email and especially thank you for the ma'am I really needed that today. And she goes, well of course you need that! I have a transgender brother and I know what kind of crap they go through, and she goes, I am behind you 100%, and if anybody has any issues, send them my way! I’ll give them a throat punch for you. So that was wonderful. 

So all of our customers, all my customers that I deal with I’ve been very accepting. Life has been wonderful and it seems to be getting better all the time. I have family members that have been very supportive. I have a biological son from my first marriage, and I have a chosen son, who is transgender and he's a very big part of my life and um he is going to be part of our wedding party, so I have a lot of interesting people in my life that make it worth living and make me very happy to be in the community that I’m in. 

Probably the biggest dream, and everybody knows that talks to me, is to eventually build a gay commune on a big farm somewhere and have all of my friends come and live with us. But probably the most important dream to me is to grow older with this woman. We don't never say grow old because we don't want to grow old, we just want to get older. And just try to meet as many wonderful interesting people as I can. Hopefully to share my experience as a trans woman with other people to hopefully give them hope for the future. And to try and live as authentically as I can myself. And be out there. Hopefully as an example as to how wonderful being trans can be. 

I would probably want to remind myself in the future that, you are worthy of love. That you deserve the love that you're receiving. That you are a likeable person. That you are a lovable person. And that the love that you're receiving is because of the person that you are. And that you deserve to be happy, finally, in your life. You deserve this happiness. 

My future, I would say, is very bright. I’m waiting to become a grandmother. I’m trying to convince my two sons to get busy and to try and fulfill that. But other than that I’m... basically I’m at a place where I’m incredibly happy and I’m hoping that stays the same for the rest of my life. I’ve just recently had gender confirmation surgery. In fact just a month ago yesterday I had gender confirmation surgery. I am at a place where I am now comfortable with my body. I am very happy. I basically just want to grow old with this woman and I want to hopefully spread the love that I’ve been given by all these other people as far as I can spread it. So that is what I’m hoping for the future.

Always come from a place of love in your heart. Always think about the person first that you're speaking to because the words that you can say can really hurt people. And we need to make sure that when you talk to somebody, it's always from a place of love and not from a place of hurt. Just because you have certain beliefs doesn't mean that those beliefs have to be pushed on to other people. 

Trans people exist. We deserve to exist. We're not going to be erased and just because you have certain beliefs doesn't mean that your beliefs have to affect my life in any way shape or form. I’m just trying to exist, trying to be happy. I’m not going to push my values on you. I don't need your values to be pushed on to me. I have a right to exist. 

The best way that people could help me is just to be supportive of the trans community. I’ve had a lot of love and support but I know there's a lot of trans women and trans men out there and non-binary people that don't have the love and support of their family or their friends. In fact my trans son doesn't have the support of his mother and so these people need help. These people need support and so if you see somebody suffering try to be there for them. Try to be that person that they can go to and share their feelings with. And open up to them. Try to be there to support others because even if you have it good and easy not everybody's in that same boat. So try to be a supportive of your community as much as possible.

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Meet Kelly (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Kelly's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/yqWPlKvYnEs

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Hi, I’m Kelly. 

I’m part of the Trans Canada project, and this is my story.

I’m not the kind of girl that wants to be on the shiny side of the camera.

I was born prince albert Saskatchewan way out west, and north, and a while ago. Not telling how long ago; it's a girl's secret!

I’ve kind of known that I was not really a boy since I was about four or five. I didn't have the vocabulary to describe it. I had no idea what it was I just felt wrong. I didn't feel like I fit in.

I’m not really sure how to describe it. It wasn't until puberty that I really noticed I was developing in a way that really wasn't what I was expecting and I kind of expected to grow up to be a girl and I didn't. And honestly, I was devastated. High school was a bit of a blur I kind of forgot and kind of dozed my way through high school. I could have done substantially better, but I was quite upset with my lot in life.

I had a great childhood, great parents, a brother who still adores me, and loves me, and counts me as his sister now, which is absolutely precious to me. He's a wonderful human being, and my parents are actually coming around. I didn't go through a really hyper masculine phase like some people do but I did find a girl that I connected with really well, and we got married and we had six children (one at a time) and I loved being a parent. I really, really wanted to be the mom. I really wanted to carry those kids inside me, and I was jealous of my wife and a little jealous of the daughters that we had.

Again, for the longest time I wished I was a girl, prayed that I was gonna be a girl, went to bed crying and praying that I would be you know instantly a girl, the next morning everything would be fixed. I was miserable but I didn't have a bad childhood and I didn't have a bad life. I had a decent career. I had a great family, had a great wife. I had great parents. Like I said, my brother was awesome. My in-laws were great. I had some really good friends that I made at church and at work that have stuck with me to this day, a long, long time later, but I had this horrible secret in the back of my head and it eventually started gnawing away in a way that made it more and more difficult over time to function. It was stealing bandwidth. It was stealing space, processing power, time. It was consuming more time, until I got so consumed with it and so upset with it that I really lost track of everything else in reality and I wasn't a good parent. I wasn't present. I was so consumed by this I ultimately tried to commit suicide. It scared me. It kind of woke me up.

This was 2008, and I sought help.

I went to my doctor and told him that I was suicidal, and he prescribed anti-depressants and we talked to a psychiatrist. I started talking about getting involved with a counselor of some sort to talk about it, but I never told anybody I was trans.

After doing some research on the internet I discovered that there was such a thing as transgender and it blew me away, because that was me. I didn't know what it was before. I had no language for it. I just knew that I should have been a girl. I didn't know there was such a thing as transgender and there was a way out, but it didn't feel like there was a way out for me.

I eventually went to see a specialist, a gender therapist, and we talked for months and they concluded yes, I am indeed transgender. I do indeed suffer from gender dysphoria and there was actually a way of treating it in a way that would be positive for me in the future, with hormones. I suppressed that for a number of years and the depression got worse not better. I tried various different types of therapy, but I never told any of the medical professionals in my life that I was transgender. I didn't think it was possible for me to come out, for me to transition.

There are stories of all kinds of transgender women living wonderful lives and having come out and having achieved what I never thought was possible for me. I eventually, after a lot of soul searching and a couple of other brushes with suicidal thoughts, came out to my mother, who hugged me and said welcome to womanhood. And yet I was still not going to do anything about it. I told her that I came out to my wife and she said that explained so much. I’m glad you told me. And I promised her that I wouldn't do anything, and we stayed married three years after that.

Our marriage wasn't doing particularly well at that point and a lot of it had to do with my depression and my inability to function well as a parent and as a marriage partner. My transness was consuming so much of my mental bandwidth. There wasn't enough left over for all the other things I had to do as a parent and as a marriage partner, as a friend, as a sibling, as a child of my parents. I let a lot of people down, including myself.

I finally told my doctor that I was transgender, and he said thank you for trusting me with that. I still wasn't going to do anything about it. I talked to my endocrinologist about it, who had discovered my cancer and helped me get past my thyroid cancer, and she basically said no, I will not prescribe hormones for you, I don't treat people like you. I was devastated. I actually wasn't even asking for hormones. I just wanted to tell her that I was transgender.

It wasn't until my wife and I separated and I moved in with my parents that I really got serious help with a psychologist, and got into some intense therapy to deal with the depression and my psychology with my psychiatrist dealing with the medication and me being away from the toxic environment at home and my kids being away from me who was being toxic at the time as well.

I was able to start healing I wouldn't have been able to do that at home. My wife started healing as well, from the relationship that we had that wasn't good for us. I lived with my parents for two years and I finally told my parents that I was trans and that I wanted to do something about it, which is different from what I said four or five years before when I talked to my mom the first time. I finally found the courage to talk to my psychologist about being trans and then finding a transgender therapist that I could talk to about gender-specific items, things, and found a doctor that was specializing in transgender patients and hormone therapy and an endocrinologist that actually supported that.

Ultimately in December of 2020 I moved to my own apartment back here, near my kids and my wife. My wife and I got legally separated. We dealt with that and very shortly after, within a week or so of moving into my own place, I transitioned fully, full time. I ripped the band-aid off. There was no reason to wait. There was no reason to hold back. I was absolutely desperate to be myself. I was holding back, and holding back, and it was painful, and it was destructive, and I finally had the courage and the opportunity to do it, and when I came out to my brother, he basically said okay so you're my sister.

I told my wife that I was going to transition, and she was actually supportive. I told my kids and they said “okay”. So I told a number of friends that were quite supportive and I told my clients and one of them basically said “I don't really care what you wear. I just hire you to solve problems”. So I was in a position where I could transition and I did and I did aggressively and completely and after being on anti-antidepressants for so many years, and they helped regulate my mood; they helped soften the roller coaster - emotional rollercoaster I was on.

The anti-androgens really calmed me down. They so totally got rid of - the only way I could describe it is a kind of an angry little buzz in the back of my head that I never knew was there until it was gone - and the blessed peace that came from that! Oh, I do not miss testosterone at all! The estrogen took a little longer to do stuff.

I live almost daily in a state of joy. I don't remember ever being joyful before. Happy, certainly. Content, absolutely. And you know … but actual joy? I didn't know that was possible! I didn't know that was a thing, and to feel so completely myself for the first time in my life, I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know I could have that. I hated what I looked like. I couldn't stand looking in the mirror my entire life. I didn't take care of my appearance. I didn't look in the mirror. I did not want to have anything to do myself with myself.

I didn't really know why. I never really was able to put my finger on it. I didn't have the vocabulary to describe it until I found out that I was trans, and even then, I was just unhappy with who I turned out to be. Now I wake up in the morning, my hair is all frizzled, I have no makeup on, and I look like crap, and I go look in the mirror, and I smile! It makes me happy. I never had that before my entire life.

I get up early in the morning now. My brother said, “I’m more surprised that you get up in the morning early than I am that you're a girl”. I used to stay up till three four o'clock in the morning and then sleep until two in the afternoon I was completely useless around the house. I was losing business. I was losing friends. I was losing my family. I was so depressed I couldn't function. Now I get up early in the morning, put on some music, dance, and then communicate with a bunch of people - network with a bunch of people. I was such an introvert before. Now I’m joining women's groups and networking with people for business and for pleasure, just to meet people. Just to be part of something. I’m happy with myself. I’m actually happy, and I can say that and it's true. I’m content with myself and I find joy in life. Not many people get to say that.

And I’m lucky that I survived my depression long enough to be able to get here. I have a future. I actually have a future now.

I wish I’d done it earlier. But I didn't. But I’m so glad that I transitioned, because for me the alternative… the alternative was not being around at all.

This is so much better.

This is my life. This is my story.

And I smile now. I’m happy with myself. I’m happy with my friends. I’m happy with my family. I’m happy with me.

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