in the women’s changing room, a woman complimented my swimsuit 😭
it felt so great to be able to swim and move freely without shame - I don’t think I had ever gone swimming before and not felt some significant shame about my body.
I’m still overweight, and it was hard in the past for me to see that my body shame was about the wrongness of my male body (e.g. not wanting to ever take off my shirt) and not about being overweight. (Probably relevant that I still felt that body shame even when I was “anorexic skinny” to use the words others have used to describe me during that time, whereas now I feel much more body acceptance despite still being overweight.)
anyway, yay - life is great
When my egg first cracked and I removed my body hair, before any other changes, I was struck with this incredible feeling of “ohhhhh I don’t hate my body, I hate my (assigned) gender”.
Like there’s still a lot I wish was different and the hormones still have a lot of work to do, but seperating out the feeling of gender dysphoria from the rest of the body image stuff was a really powerful feeling.
God, how’d you find the confidence? Good job! I’m still changing clothes every time I take my dog out. And you got a compliment on an outfit thing you picked?! The world really can be good
oh, I was joking with my partner last night that I sometimes feel like the most insecure person on earth 😅 I don’t really have that much confidence, tbh - transition was like closing my eyes and stepping off a cliff’s edge and every moment felt like I was going to die. Now I’m just in free-fall, and I’m not dead yet - so I guess I just got used to it a little bit. Each day is better than the last (on average).
As usual, though, the things that help are mostly material: having $ to afford hair products, skin products, healthy food, HRT & supplies, surgeries, etc. as well as things like genetics. When I was 19, people sometimes accidentally used “she” pronouns for me, so I think my body was fairly feminine and sort of resisted androgens for whatever reason. (Just to be clear though, I am a late transitioner and I started transition fully confident I would never pass.)
It could be reduced to “I’m just lucky” - but it’s probably a little more complicated than that (e.g. I made choices to prioritize my career over my gender, I gave up my dreams and a full ride to college to avoid debt and pursue immediate financial stability, etc. which along with luck led to being in a position where my sacrifices paid off to some extent).
But yeah, I’ve passed in public with my voice and face for over a year now, and I’m post-op and recovered enough that I’ve been cleared to go swimming. In many ways it feels like I’m just beginning my life for the first time. My anxiety did go way down from estrogen alone, so maybe that’s where I got my “confidence”, girl juice goes brrrrrrrr 🤪
That’s incredible! Thank you for sharing.
I have not had similar issues, I have never been accidentally called my preferred gender. It’s given me a lot of cover to hide behind. And I don’t live somewhere yet (moving this year) that is positive about Trans healthcare. My doctor essentially told me “good luck, you should wait until you move, the only referral I have will slur you”. But I’m hopeful.
One girl to another, really, do you ever feel pretty? Does the weight of it all drop for a moment and you can look at yourself and say that you like, at least some, of what you see? I’ve just reached 30, and the feeling of ‘too late’ sits on my mind often
You’re younger than me (jealous), and also younger than when I transitioned. I know people a decade older than me who transitioned and passes and lives happily as a woman.
And yeah, sometimes I look in the mirror and think “whoa, she’s pretty!” but it’s rather uncommon. I find it’s more common when I see myself in a mirror from afar where I can’t undo my gender by noticing the fine details.
What I can say is that it’s worth it regardless of where you end up or what your results are - for the vast majority of us, being on the right sex hormones will be a massive improvement to our mental and physical health compared to repressing. (If you want to really understand the severity of this, imagine you took a cis person and gave them surgery and hormones to force them into life as the wrong gender & sex - when we have done this in the past, those cis person becomes depressed, anxious, and they usually die tragically young - and it’s no different with trans people.)
Also, I started estrogen in one of the worst states in the US to do so, and even though I eventually fled that state, in the meantime I went through years of social and medical transition while living there. It’s still worth it, even if you just DIY the hormones and wait to socially transition - but I suggest getting on estrogen ASAP by any means necessary.
Thank you for the information and the advice. And the hope. I think we all need a little hope right now.
I’ve looked at DIY estrogen, but I worry about my existing health. I’m not unhealthy, but my family has heart disease and I have a fatty liver (I don’t drink, or, don’t drink more than twice a year at most) and need to look further into any (unwanted) side effects
Thank you
Liver problems would probably rule out taking a certain anti-androgen (bicalutamide) since it is bad for the liver, but otherwise the only liver concern for HRT is with oral estrogen, and tbh oral estrogen is the worst route of administration anyway (doesn’t create stable blood estrogen levels, and can be much slower at feminizing, much worse at suppressing testosterone, etc.).
In that case I would just recommend monotherapy estrogen injections. What that means is you inject enough estrogen frequently enough that your brain gets the memo that it doesn’t need to produce more sex hormones and shuts down testosterone production.
I lived for over a year on monotherapy injections until I could get an orchiectomy (which is a relatively affordable and simple out-patient surgery that removes the testes).
In my opinion (esp. if just temporary until you get surgery), this is the path with the least health risk and fewest side effects.
The common alternative to monotherapy is to prescribe lower oral estrogen doses and an accompanying anti-androgen.
In the US that’s usually a combo of oral estrogen (usually starting at 2 mg / day) and spironolactone for the anti-androgen. In Europe they usually use a synthetic progestin for the anti-androgen (there are pros and cons to progestins instead of spiro, but overall it’s probably better).
Spiro can cause lots of unpleasant side effects, but it’s more of a tax on the kidneys. Still, I think monotherapy is better than unnecessarily risking side effects and having slower feminization to boot. The concerns doctors have about too much estrogen are not well evidenced in the case of injecting bioidentical hormones - the studies that spook doctors were all of Premarin (synthetic horse estrogens) which were taken orally and were found to cause increased risk of various diseases, but no studies have found this to be true of bioidentical hormones, let alone when those bioidentical hormones are injected instead of taken orally (which causes the liver to filter >80+% of the estrogen).
In terms of heart disease, testosterone increases heart risks and estrogen lowers it - starting estrogen injections would probably decrease your heart disease risk. The idea that taking HRT increases heart disease risk is actually a debunked myth.
There was actually a recent study (from Oct. 2025) that found that within 12 months, HRT causes the heart to change in ways researchers didn’t even expect:
The troponin threshold to predict cardiovascular events is lower for women due to the greater cardiac mass typically seen in men.
Since estradiol and testosterone were not thought to directly impact cardiac mass, researchers expected that troponin would remain similar to individuals’ assigned gender at birth.
However, they found the opposite to be true.
The clinical research team found that troponin levels shifted towards the affirmed gender after 12 months of hormone therapy.
Troponin decreased in transgender women to a level not statistically different from cisgender women, but which was 78% lower than in cisgender men.
In general, cross-sex HRT brings your biology and thus risks in alignment with those of your gender (e.g. estrogen causes trans women to have higher chance of stroke and lower risk of heart attack, but not any different than the risks cis women have).
Here is a decent intro / guide showing the effects of taking estrogen:
https://www.rainbowhealthontario.ca/TransHealthGuide/gp-femht.html
You may notice that almost all of the changes are reversible, the only non-reversible change from taking estrogen is breast growth, and that’s mostly after a certain point (i.e., you could take estrogen usually for around 3 months without any permanent breast growth, then at that point you just have to decide whether you want to continue or not).
If you want to learn more about HRT for trans women, I highly suggest reading this article for the nitty-gritty details:
https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/
Also, if you’re scared of needles and not sure you could do injections (like I am, I nearly faint when my blood is drawn), don’t worry - you can use really thin and small needles to inject subcutaneously (into the fat) rather than the scary big and long needles used for intramuscular (IM) injections. Most of the time I do injections now I don’t feel any pain at all, and it’s very do-able (just a hurdle, something to learn and overcome - but totally achievable).
Let me know if you have any questions anytime, feel free to DM me too!
I have a lot to read up on, thank you for linking those.
I needed to hear this today, and to have this interaction. I’ll keep you in mind for sure, you seem very knowledgeable and have been oh so kind
You did really good.life can be good
thank you 💖
