Happy Birthday to Me: Lessons Learned from One Year of Gender Transition

07 July 2023 marked the first anniversary in my gender transition. By the time I reached puberty in the 1980s, I was aware I needed to transition from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman. But I did not begin my transition until last year.

I waited 52 years to transition because I believed I was not allowed to do it in my social environment. I continue to struggle with a sense of “not allowed” to this day, despite the clear improvements in my mental health.

I can only thank my wife for encouraging me (cajoling me may be more accurate) to remember my femininity — and to embrace it — over the past year.

Although I count 07 July 2023 as my new birthday — because I began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that day — I began laying the foundation for transition in early 2022 after a breakdown in late 2021.

Looking back, I cannot fathom how I lived my old life. Today I am vibrant. Today I look forward to life, not to death. Today I am glad to be alive and glad I made it through the pain.

I learned four primary lessons since early 2022. As I share them, I sense many will think “yes, of course!” What is obvious to many struck me as revelatory. But I never truly lived until I began to live as a woman. I only existed, and then barely. Life lessons do not come to those who cannot — or will not — engage with life.

Nobody else will advocate for you

My career pre-transition was characterized by periods of working extremely hard — typically for people unscrupulous enough to take advantage of my desire to please. It was one such company that precipitated the breakdown I suffered at the end of 2021, after which my wife encouraged me to address the last piece of my mental health I had not.

As I learned to appreciate who I am, I learned another block to my progress: that I am never good enough. That thought powered my 25-year career in technology — companies adored my desire to pitch in wherever necessary. That thought also sank my 25-year career — I put everybody else and everything else ahead of my own health. Doing so indicated clearly I did not value myself, which encouraged employers not to value me, either.

As I began to say “no” to requests I could not handle without undue effort at my expense, my employers were shocked. Who was this person unwilling to work on a weekend? To take on extra work with the very real risk of burnout? It was not easy, but I forced myself not to work if I knew I would suffer.

By doing so, I showed employers I valued myself and my time, and that I expected to be treated as an equal in our relationships. I learned the first very important lesson of my transition:

If I do not advocate for myself first, nobody else will advocate for me.

Trust in the Universe

When I began Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” course, I found an eloquent expression of an artist’s need to trust that art is a vital part of life, and simply to make it. I spun the transgender experience into Cameron’s work, but the analogy worked beautifully.

Later, I realized the analogy worked so well because trusting the Universe is a vital part of life — there are many aspects of our existence over which we have absolutely no control. Each human’s life intertwines with every other, from the beginning of the species to the end.

I’ve written extensively about how each of us must learn to trust work occurs in our lives even when we do not observe it directly. This past year demonstrated even when I felt ugly, useless, and alone, I continued to improve. I continued to grow. Each day brought small changes, but over time, they added up into an existence I didn’t realize I could experience.

The Universe wants us to succeed. If we can accept the gifts we receive as praise, offers for help, and recognition, we learn to use them and to build the life our tools are capable of creating.

Don’t plan the unplannable

One of the greatest lessons I learned through gender transition is that nothing will go according to plan. This was true during my transition, but as an overall life lesson, the truth of the Universe is that we live in it; we do not command it.

Much of my life has been characterized by rumination — worrying about and reliving events hours, days, weeks around it. I would make plans, backup plans, contingency plans, and emergency plans. If something was to go wrong — which I believed it would — I could be prepared.

What usually happened is that an unanticipated bump in the road would derail every plan as all went to hell. My plans were useless. What ruminating did was add to my stress. As plans failed, it added to my stress. As I watched my life spiral out of my control, I experienced more and more stress.

My failure was not to recognize I was never in control for my life to spiral out of it. The two lessons above — that I must respond to the situation as it occurs and trust that no matter what happens, I can handle it — taught me there are aspects I will never be able to plan.

My child will get sick. The internet will go down. Other people will not come through for me. As a result, what I must do is watch, understand…and respond appropriately.

The Universe may want me to succeed, but I can’t know what that means until I see what I have to work with. The longer I fight with the Universe about what “should” have happened, the longer I go without what could happen.

Life is not good

The most insidious morality tale we tell our children is that life is happy. Life is not meant to be happy. The Universe flows through cycles of ups and downs. But the pain we experience derives from our interpretation of events, not from an objective standpoint of good and bad.

I may be content during life — to the extent I learn the lessons above and act in accordance with the events in the Universe. If I choose not to accept the metaphysically given, I will suffer as the Universe patiently confirms my inaccurate interpretation of reality.

But the purpose of life is not to be happy. When we seek only to be happy, we realize that death — nonexistence — is the only moment at which we stop experiencing the cycles of the Universe. Instead, if we recognize the purpose of life is to seek what does make us happy, and to struggle forward to achieve it, we can celebrate the successes and mourn the failures. But we continue to move forward.

Looking back, I realize my life before transition was terrible. My life during transition has had terrible moments. I look forward to the rest of my life, knowing full well there will be parts of it that will feel terrible. But I could not go back now. To do so would kill me.

My life today is as good it was before gender transition. But I had not engaged with my life before transition. It is only by fully engaging with life — as a woman, as Amethysta — that I learned life can be worth living.

And now I intend to live it! Here’s to many more years.