Are You Transgender? You are My Heroes and Heroines!
I have spent the last five years learning about my gender ignorance and it was massive!
At 65 years of age, I finally came to grips with a staggering personal reality, I am transgender. What I have learned through endless hours of reading since is that I am incredibly proud to be transgender! FTM or MTF I have witnessed endless testimony by individuals who have sacrificed the easy answer to the gender biases of society to declare they are transgender.
Damn the consequences.
Every one of them is my hero and heroine.
I now know the pain they suffer as well to simply be themselves. I personally have experienced the agony of seeing our society question our very existence and our validity of our reason to be.
To the cisgender world I declare:
I am here. I am real. I am valid. I have a joy for life that I just want to share.
I don’t want to take anything away from anyone else. I simply want acceptance.
I will pay my way, just give me a job.
I will leave you alone in the bathroom, just let me use it.
I mean you no harm, just please don’t hurt me.
I am capable of tremendous love, just give me a chance.
I don’t want anything from you, please don’t condemn me.
I just don’t understand why I am so threatening to you. I am not taking your food, I am not stealing your child and I am not blocking your path to heaven. I simply want the opportunity to live my life in peace and to share the joy I am capable of.
To my Trans Brothers I say that you are:
The true definition of courage
The true definition of strength
The true definition of brave
And you do this without losing your heart or your soul to be who you are. That is what a real man is.
To my Trans Sisters I say:
I see you hidden under layers of male indoctrination and societal denial
I feel the warm of your heart waking from a long winter’s slumber
I hear your soul as it escapes from decades of imprisonment
You have spent a lifetime learning what it takes to be a man, I applaud you as to you become the person you deserve to be and the woman that you are.
To my brothers and sisters, I say:
You inspire me every day.
Your courage, your heart and your soul is sadly unrecognized by a society that is in sore need of it.
Please stay strong, keep your heart and find your joy.
Emma Holiday
Writers note: I was inspired to write this after reading a very special open letter by BFoundAPen found here:
Thank you Brian.
If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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