Style Weekly
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Transgenderism Story Strikes a Chord
I read your article about the TG, Nova Edwards ("Born Again," Cover Story, Oct. 31). I am a transsexual woman as well. Although the article gave a fair and balanced perspective from different sources, the perspective from another TG seemed to be missing. So, here's my take:
I spent 58 years of my life pretending to be a male. I was married for 32 years of that life to the most wonderful, angelic woman I ever knew before she died from cancer. From age 6 on I knew without a doubt that my body wasn't right for me.
But the pressures of a 1950s society forced my questioning deep down into my psychic subterranean world. I experienced many bizarre aspects of personality that were explained to me through a year and half of therapy with a TG therapist after my wife passed away. Once I awoke from my self-imposed male prison, I transitioned into my true self-identity of womanhood.
I have never felt so happy, centered and alive as I do now. Being the proper gender that your brain and personality need creates a whole new life, the life that all transsexuals were meant to live. The whole thing is about a true self-identity, not about a "disease" nor "abnormality" nor "evil."
Society creates more problems for the diversity in human nature than it cures.
If I had known this 50 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of emotional misery. Better late than never, I guess. All I can say to Nova is: "Welcome home."
Joyce Colson
Vancouver, Wash.
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I spent 58 years of my life pretending to be a male. I was married for 32 years of that life to the most wonderful, angelic woman I ever knew before she died from cancer. From age 6 on I knew without a doubt that my body wasn't right for me.
But the pressures of a 1950s society forced my questioning deep down into my psychic subterranean world. I experienced many bizarre aspects of personality that were explained to me through a year and half of therapy with a TG therapist after my wife passed away. Once I awoke from my self-imposed male prison, I transitioned into my true self-identity of womanhood.
I have never felt so happy, centered and alive as I do now. Being the proper gender that your brain and personality need creates a whole new life, the life that all transsexuals were meant to live. The whole thing is about a true self-identity, not about a "disease" nor "abnormality" nor "evil."
Society creates more problems for the diversity in human nature than it cures.
If I had known this 50 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of emotional misery. Better late than never, I guess. All I can say to Nova is: "Welcome home."
Joyce Colson
Vancouver, Wash.
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