Advocate and Activist

First I am a Transsexual Woman. I have known as early as I can remember that "it" was not and did not define who and what I was. My journey was one of abuse, suffering and pain which started as a very young child. It continued because I gave into the demands of others out of shame and fear and began pretending to be what I never was and never wanted to be. While my male body matured the true female one that lived inside that shell of deception I had created also matured. I struggled to survive in my lonely closeted world. This struggle was slowly killing me both physically and mentally. Finally my whole deceptive world collapsed. Too many medications to count, too many hospitalizations and fourteen suicide attempts because I saw that as my only escape, I found myself alone. I lost everything, family, home, job but mostly, myself. Alone ready once again to end it, I sat and went over my life. I saw, my three children, while I made a poor father I have been told, they were successful adults and seemed happy except with me. I saw my accomplishments, my education which had helped give me a life while not wealthy was comfortable. I saw the beautiful places I been and the things I’d seen. I also remembered the suffering and pain of verbal, physical, mental and sexual abuse all because of who and what I truly was yet seen and defined as something I wasn’t. I saw my happiest moments were when I was real, out openly and freely as the girl as a child and the woman as an adult. I then discovered the reason for my depression; I was living a lie. All my therapy had been based on putting Mike back together when it was Michelle who was struggling to live. I wanted to live but did not know how because I had given in. I knew then the answer, I finally accepted who and what I had always been. From that moment on I have never gone back into that shell of deception. I live openly and freely as the woman I was born as. I am at last free and happy.

On July 31, 2008 I walked into the OR of Mt San Rafael Hospital, the last thing I remember was my right arm being strapped down and my Surgeon telling me that everything would be fine. I woke in recovery and in my anesthesia fogged mind I realized I was at last complete. Excitement and happiness fill me completely and I cried. Marci that day did not create the woman I have dreamed of being, I am that woman, and I always have been since a very young child. What Marci did with her wonderfully skilled hands was at last give me a body that this woman can at long last live comfortably within. That day a new journey did not begin, the journey of this woman’s life only continues. I am not a new and different person, a woman who now needs to find who she is and what she wants to accomplish, no I am still that woman.

" I stand in the wholeness of self-love and acceptance. Refusing to no longer hate any parts of myself. And now those parts of myself that use to wage war with each other, stand in agreement and face the same direction. I now move forward with purpose, potential and power."