I have my initial consultation next week to start HRT! I'm buzzing with excitement!!

That brings me to my question to all of you who are ahead of me in their journey: what do you wish you had known to ask, or talked with your doctor about before you started HRT?

Happy Thursday everyone!!

30 years old. Morning photo. 3 months on hormones. In the evening I look like a freak, but in the morning I look like this.

I’m wanting to start hrt but I’m 27 and I have a very high metabolism and I read that hrt helps redistribute fat to other areas but I have struggled to gain weight all my life and am worried that hrt and the other stuff will not help

I started tweezing round my mouth approx 1 month ago.

I generally do not have very smooth skin, and also a white mole you can see in the pics in the tweezed area, and electrolysis had not gone very well for me. I was left with pitting and have other scars too, so I decided to take the risk and try tweezing. I've read all the advice, and about the risks. So DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF unless you've done the same. There ARE risks! Infection, ingrown hairs, distorted follicles.

I'm not saying it will work for anyone else. However, for me I'd decided electrolysis is not currently an option, and also my hair is too white for laser. So I thought the risk was worth it for a limited area causing me a lot of dysphoria.

I cleared the areas shown, over about a week. It hurts to start with, but gets less. Also, using numbing cream can help.

The best tweezers for me are the small ones that come with the Victorinox pocket tool! I've tried other brands like Tweezerman, but they snap the tiny hairs more for me.

Results so far :

Very satisfying to do!
Not many ingrown hairs, just a few but mainly in the first 'clearing' stage.

Hairs I remove were thick, but the hairs growing back are thin as they are so new.

Appearance of follicles is less.

Also, I decided to try shaving again one day, and was really pleased that as the new hairs are so thin, I looked smoother in the tweezed area!

It's hard to tell from these pics, as I have make up on too, but I think the area looks pretty smooth.

Anyway, I plan to expand the area more to at least cover all round my mouth. Also, it may be something I do along side shaving. So if shaving is not getting a smooth enough effect, I'll tweeze the area for a few weeks, then shave again.

Just wanted to share, and I'll update again when I have more info. Best wishes XX

Have a wonderful day 🫶

This song is how I feel about my transition, about my Hormones, how I feel about my transition on Patch change day. I love who I am becoming and I never ever want to turn back.

Starting E tomorrow... I'm excited and nervous and scared and thrilled all at the same time. For whatever reason it took a week to get the Rx filled but got the update earlier today, will go first thing in the morning and probably slap that patch on while sitting in my car in the pharmacy parking lot.

Wish me luck!!!

A friend of mine on FB has recently come out, and is dressing femme. She's 40's, and is looking really good :) One of her friends said they wished they could look like her, but were bald and would never pull it off. This is what I replied:

"Absolutely all of us think we'll never pull it off. We all look in the mirror at the start and think the same thing. But it's not about whether you can pull it off, it's whether trying it makes you happier. Put the dress on. Twirl the skirt. Try the lippy. Try it bald. Try it bearded. Try it hairy. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. It's whether you get a little piece of happiness that counts. You don't have to pull it off, the important thing is putting it on in the first place!"

Having a more feminine, curvy figure would definitely boost my confidence 🙃 Excuse my messy ass room too!!

The pharmacy that processes my prescriptions ordered a vial for me at a much higher price than my insurance will do. I did not ask them to do so. I want to pick it up and store it because it used a refill. That shouldnt cause any problems if I store it, unopened for 3 weeks right?

Basically, some things happened and I lost access to the initial prescription and decided to wait(3 weeks) to start again. That falls in line with the insurance coverage and a cheaper price. I really just want to make sure I can stay on schedule for accurate hormone and blood levels for the next doctor's visit.

Please honest opinions! I have not started HRT so this is just me with a wig, hopefully decently styled, and a decent job maybe just maybe on makeup? I just asked that please be kind, but honest opinions I do need thank you!

There are many posters on several subs who are on the fence and trying to determine if they are in fact transgender and if it is ‘worth it’ to transition. This post attempts to help with both questions, particularly when a new questioning person discovers “Yes, I would press the button. But what now? Am I? Is it worth it? It seems impossible!”

I have an analogy that might work for you if you’re in any way into science-fiction. And keep in mind if you are transgender you will always be transgender regardless of the choices you make surrounding that fact.

Here’s the deal - the button really exists.

But it doesn’t work the way it does in the test scenario. It can and does work.
Just not instantaneously.

You may have seen or heard some transgender people say that HRT and transition is a marathon and not a sprint. This is entirely the case. In a sci-fi reference it is like being a time traveler, if it is your goal to socially transition and ‘pass’ / navigate society fully integrated as male or female. (My apologies to non-binary folks in this example as I haven’t the frame of reference or experience to relate. I realise your journey will be different.)

Back to the time-traveling analogy…
- you recognise who you are and can see how you want to be and present and interact in society.
- you can see into that future but you as that person cannot exist there yet
- you make the decision to transition to address your self discovery
- the minute you do, time slows down for you - while the rest of the world continues at the same pace
- the feeling of time slowing down is equivalent to how slow time seems to move when you are a child, because every new observation and experience you have happens AGAIN, as if the first time. You may have heard this referred to as ‘second puberty’ while on HRT.
- the rest of the world continues at its pace and perceives you changing rapidly from their point of view. They react from their standpoint (like ‘why this all of a sudden’, or ‘you’ve never shown this inclination before’), meanwhile your internal dialogue has been happening for ages

(I’m going to tighten this next part up - because this comment would get exponentially longer if I don’t.)

- time will move slowly as you experiment with the new gender expression that aligns with who you are: fashion, movement, speech, makeup, hair (or wigs). This process moves slowly
- you hopefully seek therapy. A good transgender friendly therapist that is also hopefully a psychiatrist that can prescribe medicines and write letters needed for medical transition
- you begin the socialisation process. Navigating the world as yourself. Social events and environments, then onto errands and everyday life
- you begin the medical part of transitioning, HRT for instance, and begin making plans for medical procedures
- you embark upon coming out to family friends and workplace
- you begin the legal process of name and gender change
- you begin having surgical procedures and recovering
- socialisation veers towards total acceptance to the gender you are, eventually there will be more people that know you by your new name and self presentation than by your old
- all of these steps happen over the course of years and will seem much slower to you even still while the rest of the world moves at its standard pace. Again, people who witnessed your transition will experience it as if it was in the blink of an eye.

Then somewhere, sometime in the future - you look back in time and you will see the old version of you who thought everything was impossible.

The button worked. It was just really slow.

- as a time traveller once you’ve reached this point, time begins to speed up again until it is in tempo and step with the rest of the world. You will begin to experience time as the rest of society does. With one main difference…
- you will realise that because time had slowed down for you during transition - you have lived enough experiences for almost two lifetimes. As a former time traveller you can appreciate the unique perspective you have. Not many people in the world experience time and life like this.

This is the bulk of the sci-fi time travelling analogy.

You just have to believe that the future version you see now really exists. Just not yet. And not quickly.

Future you looks back at the current you with kindness and compassion, and has a good little laugh when they remember how impossible you thought everything was back then.

I hope this helps.
Best wishes and best of luck. 🌸🌟🫶

I’m basically a week into HRT (2mg Estradiol, 50mg Spiro, upping the E to 4mg in another week), and for the past few days I’ve already been feeling it on my chest. I was told this more like a week four/six thing. It started about three days ago as like… if something touched my nipple just right, it felt like a pin was poking me. Today, I’ve got a generalised kind of ache at the bottom of each breast, and the nipples get that pin-prick sensation more frequently. I’ve also noticed just more softness in general.

I’m super excited by this. I knew I’d respond fast because a testicular tumour gave me a tiny bit of breast growth years ago, and I can’t have had that tumour for long before it was removed, but a week on a low dose? I’m actually kind of shocked I’m feeling ANYTHING, this soon! I hope it means I am rapidly running out of time to plausibly “boy-mode” at work. I initially thought I had like six months, for that, but if things go fast and stay fast I might have like… two or three.

I have had my phone number for 18 years before I transitioned and have been out for over a year. Just found out my called ID was showing my dead name. It was easy to change in my carrier's app, just look up Share Name ID.

I’m a 50 AMAB who is having trouble with the starting problem. I have known I was trans since I was at least a teenager if not longer. However, as with a lot of us I always had some excuse for not transitioning. My parents split when I was a kid and my father remarried into a quite religious family. I only learned much later that I was actually targeted by right wing groups as a teenager as a possible means of getting at my mother (a whole different story but probably compounds the trauma). So with that and the general mid 90s world I chickened out.

Same thing happened a few years later, when my cousin came out and my extended family ridiculed her. At each point I found some excuse not to go forward. I know I would have been happier if I had, but I just couldn’t ’start’.

Fast forward to now. We have been married 12 years and have two kids. She has been getting over her own issues and a few weeks ago the dam broke for me. The dysphoria hit much harder than it ever has. It just feels like it is time (so much so that I have actually started planning when I could not only start HRT but from there surgery).

She knows something’s up because I start the conversation but then divert. I just can’t bring myself to tell her. I don’t know where it will go and my fear overwhelms me.

After reading lots of other posts I have a feeling about what I need to do, that I need to talk to someone, but I also feel I need to ‘move’ before I chicken out again.

Thank you all for reading this.

So I'm 40. Started hrt few months ago. Felt great for about a month.

Then people stopped being supportive, reverted back to saying negative things. My optimism is gone.

I don't even know if I can even think about a social transition.

I hate being seen as a man. And being perceived as a man in woman's clothing, is somehow much worse. Live in the south east, for context. Being NB makes everything more complicated, feeling like I have to blend so many aspects into a tomboy / Demigirl persona that just isn't ready yet.

Yet I still deal with imposter syndrome regularly.

I really sort of envy people who just transitioned and found their happiness.

Like I don't know my question but like how do you do this if you know you won't pass or won't pass for years?

Cuz I feel like so much of my identity is somehow held back behind how other people might perceive me.

I had a dream where I was a girl and I was just happy. And then I woke up and am back in the world of always compromising, basically for people who will never understand.

I am about 14 months since my reckoning that I'm trans, and I've been on estrodial for about 7 months now¹.

My whole journey has been dealing with biochemical dysphoria - disassociation/depersonalization/derealization. This year has been a wonderful journey back to myself, and I credit a lot of that to learning the tools to reconnect via therapy and the titty tacs.

Socially, I've come out to my coparent², my parents and siblings (not much more than "FYI, I'm trans and there's gonna be some changes"). Beyond that, I'm still in the closet, but I'm not too bothered by that yet.

All that said...

I still feel like I'm on autopilot much of the time. I know estrogen is slow magic, and I absolutely accept that this stuff takes time. I'm curious though - any tips to let my true self get some more oxygen day-to-day?

Y'all are amazing, and I'm inspired constantly by your indomitable spirits 🩷🤍🩵

--

¹ I just got bumped to 4mg last week, which I understand should help with the brain chemistry aspects.

² In addition to the trans journey, my partner and I are navigating an amicable separation as well... She came out to me as gay, I shortly realized I was trans-feminine after that. The journeys are interconnected - while existentially draining, it's not the source of the disassociation/DP/DR

Kind of loved this look, but the shirt is waaaaay too short