Image from Marcus Spiske on UnSplash A transgender life is never a sprint, it is a marathon.  From the first time we slide on the hose and view ourselves in a mirror, we never believe the gender journey we have started would last as long as it did. Initially for me, I was on a very short term program when I would cross dress as a girl one day and live off the proverbial buzz until I could follow my dream and cross dress again.  I wonder now if I had known the journey I followed would have so many bumps in the road and would have lasted so long would I have still done ..read more

  Image from Engin Akyurt on UnSplash When someone says living a life as a transgender woman or trans man is a choice I get a huge chuckle.  I wish the people who think my life was a choice, needed to live a small time in my shoes and  then they could truly decide my life was never a choice. I was living in my gender prison. In many ways, I could describe my confines to a bigger version of what was called my personal closet. Either way, I was stuck in a very dark and isolated space where I was all alone. Especially in the pre-internet days when I was living. When the i ..read more

  Image from unknown origin.  I often wonder if during all the writings I do, as I  describe how I succeeded in living my dream as a transgender woman, do I emphasize the bad decisions I made.  Needless to say, I made plenty of choices I wished I had back to try again. First of all, I suffered from the same problems nearly all novice cross dressers or transgender women go through. Unlike cis gender girls our age, we didn't have the peer pressure or knowledge to help us be girls or women. We were not invited to the sleepovers where the girls experimented with makeu ..read more

  Image from Kevin Laminto  on UnSplash For the longest time, I considered the idea I was two separate people. On one hand, I was living the male life I was entrenched in and on the other, I was attempting to carve out the precious time I needed to explore my cross dressing self in front of the mirror. Trying to live a life on the gender border between male and female as very difficult to say the least. When I was in male mode, I spent every spare moment wanting to cross dress again at the least and trying to imagine what living as a girl would be like the rest of the time ..read more

Girls Night Out, I am on the bottom far left. Similar to so many other cross dressers or novice transgender women I have heard from, they dream of enlisting a cis-woman to aid in their appearance. I was included in having a similar fantasy. All the way to the point of begging my fiancé to completely dress me as a woman if I rented an out of the way motel room for privacy. Sadly, for me, she agreed and she did do her best to dress me as the woman of my dreams.  I say sadly for two reasons. The first being I did not see that much of an improvement over what I was able to do for m ..read more

  Civil War Cemetery image from the Jessie Hart Archives   In my life I have found several really rare times where true opportunity actually knocked on my door.  As I indicated, the situations were exceedingly rare and required split second decisions on how I was going to proceed. Possibly the first main one happened when I went with the "A" list trans women from the cross dresser - transgender mixer I was at in Cleveland. It was the night I gathered my courage, put on my big girl panties and was able to enjoy a professional makeover at the mixer. The result was I look ..read more

  Ohio River image from the Jessie Hart archives.  For a gender dysphoric person, the scale seems to be balanced against experiencing any gender euphoria.  In my case, destiny allowed just enough gender euphoria for me to continue down my gender journey. As I questioned what I was doing, the "why" of it never really came into question. I just knew deep down I was on a process I could not control. It would control me. Deep down inside, regardless of any doubts I may have had dissolved when I felt so natural when I was dressed as a girl. In other words, I was home when ..read more

Image from Nathan Wright  on UnSplash What is the old saying, "When one door closes, another one opens." I think the saying is especially appropriate for transgender women or trans men. Along the way, I have documented several substantial times when I slammed doors during my past and opened new doors.  Probably the first time I closed a door was when I was going out with a certain set of party friends who ranged from cross dressers to transsexuals who were planning their genital realignment surgeries. I wasn't very interested so much in the cross dressers but on the other ..read more

  Recently I received this comment from Kendra referring to one of my political posts. Since I am a firm believer in  equal time, here is the comment: "I am sorry you believe that nonsense about Trump. I am also TG, and I feel none of what you are speaking of. We conservatives are actually a loving caring group of people. Yes, many don't understand the lifestyle, but no one wants to hurt us. Please do not fear us." Thanks for the comment and the first fact I would like to counter with is I do not fear conservatives and I have often thought of voting for Liz Cheney if she had ever m ..read more

Liz on left. Date Night.  Most people undertake a risk or two as they make their way to the undertaker in the end.  When you come right down to it, which person you chose to marry is a risk as well as which profession you choose. Transgender women and trans men seem to have an added layer of risk in their lives. Along the way as we pursue a gender transition, we have to make many difficult choices which aren't really choices at all. They are paths we have to follow or face devastating self harm to ourselves. Which results in extremely high suicide rates in the transgender c ..read more