Hello and welcome to The Spectrum. Back in September 2025, I produced a three-part series called “Emma’s Story”. It told the anonymous story of a transgender woman using an AI avatar to hide her identity. Today, I’m going to reveal who Emma really is.. 

Emma is….me.

I’ve not directly shared this before because I’ve been privileged to not have my past be obvious. I never expected that when I started down this path and it’s been a double edged sword. It’s made it easier to simply live my life, but giving that up isn’t easy. There are two reasons I’m doing this now. First is that I’m asking other people to share deeply personal stories like Billy did in the last episode. How can I ask them do that if I’m not willing to do the same? The second reason is that I hope my story can help those who don’t understand transgender issues understand them a little better especially at a time when there is so much confusion and disagreement about transgender people.. 

My ancient past was a painful and difficult time. The odds are pretty good that talking about this is going to be emotional. I don’t plan to edit that out because it’s real. If that makes you uncomfortable, then this might be a good time to click away to another video.

If you watched Emma’s Story then you know my story. I was the person hiding behind Emma’s AI avatar. I wanted to share my story but, at that moment in time, I wasn’t brave enough to do it openly. I didn’t want to put my wife at risk despite her telling me she was ok with it and it was hard to give up the privilege of being able to blend in. But, I can’t sit by any longer.

I won’t repeat the same material again from Emma’s Story. If you want a biography of my life, you can get it there. Instead, I’m going to focus on why I made the decisions I did and how they impacted my life.

I may not have learned a word to describe myself until I was 12 but I knew I was a girl from my earliest memories. But, it wasn’t until I was 25 that I reached my breaking point. At that point in my life I was doing everything in my power to keep the rest of the world from seeing beneath the surface. When everyone looked at me they saw a man but when I looked in the mirror I saw someone who wasn’t me. My mind and my body didn’t match and the struggle to pretend it did was tearing me apart.

I’m not a religious woman but until I reached my 30s I was much more open to organized religion. Although I was nominally raised Catholic, one of my sisters married a Baptist preacher and, for a time, I was very open to their message. Even after I drifted away from it because I thought their anti-science positions were wrong, it still affected me.

One of the things that held me back from pursuing transition was the anti-transgender rhetoric. They could only see the physical, and if someone’s mind didn’t match their body, they assumed the mind was broken. But, from my perspective, the mental perception of self was unchangeable. I tried and tried and tried to make my sense of who I was fit my physical body. I could never make it happen. At best I could submerge it for a few months at a time but it always was there. That feeling of being an outsider in my own skin never truly went away. Every day I tried to believe that the person I saw in the mirror was supposed to be me and every day I failed.

As a teen I would pray that God either fix my body or fix my mind to make it compatible with my body. I didn’t care which happened even though the second one felt like a kind of mental death, a loss of self. That’s how much it hurt inside. I was open to mental death, a loss of identity, if it could make the pain go away.

Despite years of praying, years of trying to change who I was, nothing changed. Neither my body nor my brain changed. 

I would have these internal debates: I had a perfectly normal body aside from substandard vision. I had a perfectly good mind. I had been a good student. People told me I was smart. I was the valedictorian of my high school class. I could tell right from wrong. I had no doubts about being a moral person. If God existed then God made me this way for a reason. Was I supposed to find the mental strength to learn to live with this situation or was I supposed to find the strength to transition and show the world who I really was? The brain was normal. The body was normal. They were just mismatched. And, try as I might, I could never make them happy together.

So, which one was correct and which one was broken? As far as I could tell they were both correct. Other than a deepening depression that had a very obvious cause, I was mentally healthy. I was physically healthy. But, my brain defined who I was, not my body. The reason that I could never change my sense of identity was that to do so felt like suicide and I was never able to do that to myself. 

The other thing that held me back was that there were almost no visible transgender people. The few that got coverage on television were usually not exactly role models. They scared me. They were damaged people that the sensationalist media was using for ratings. At the time, I didn’t know that. I just knew that if that was my only option then I didn’t see any hope for going down that path. Books didn’t help. There was so much conflicting information I didn’t know what to believe.

That’s where I was in October 1988. I couldn’t change my brain and I didn’t think that changing my body to match was a viable path. My problem is that the coping mechanisms I had been using weren’t working any longer. I was seriously depressed. I saw no future for myself that didn’t involve permanent mental anguish. I wasn’t thinking about suicide, but I was getting to the point where I didn’t care if I lived or not. I felt a tremendous apathy about life. I felt like I was slowly, and maybe not so slowly now, sliding into a hole and I feared if I got all the way in, I’d never get out.

That was where I was. I couldn’t move forward but staying where I was was becoming increasingly untenable. I finally made the decision to see if transition was possible for me because I feared what might happen to me if things remained the same. If the thought of mental suicide made mental change impossible, the thought of physical death made me realize I had to see if the path of physical change was possible. I knew that there was a real chance I could lose everyone in my life. I knew that I might lose my job. But, the only other option was to live in a permanent state of depression. I chose the only path left to me where I might be able to find peace and if the cost was these other things, I’d have to pay it because I was talking about survival. It wasn’t a decision made lightly and it wasn’t a decision that had a certain outcome. It wasn’t a whim. It was survival. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I knew I had to find out if this was something that could work for me.

And, it did. It’s now nearly 37 years since my formal transition. There has not been a single moment where I’ve regretted the choice I made. I’m not happy about the anguish I caused to  my family but most of them came to understand that I made the right choice. I’m closer to them now than I ever was before when they could never see the real me.

I don’t know why I had an easier time than so many others I knew. I didn’t lose my job. I lost two family members but the rest were there for me. Most of my friends rallied around me. I was blessed with support that so many don’t get. To this day, I can’t tell you why that happened but I’m grateful that it did.

The one thing I do know is that the moment I made the decision to align my body with my brain, the depression lifted. My life has had its challenges but for the most part they are the conventional challenges that everyone faces.

I was uncomfortable around people I didn’t know. But, I found that as I became more comfortable with myself, I was much more comfortable with meeting people. I found that the wall I’d spent two decades building around myself to keep people from seeing the real me came down with almost no effort. I didn’t have to tear it down. It crumbled once the exhausting mental effort of keeping it in place was gone.

I’m definitely an introvert but I’ve come to learn that that doesn’t mean I don’t like being around people. It means that I need quiet time to recharge mentally and I can actually enjoy being around people – at least in small doses :)

I’ve never been one to seek out attention and I know that might sound odd given that this is a YouTube video but I’ll explain. I’m not doing this video to gather attention to myself but because it might help others. It’s why I did my story anonymously last year. I wanted to help but I also didn’t want attention on myself.

The funny thing is, back in 1991, I was interviewed in the hospital by someone from People Magazine. I was too boring for them. They never ran that story and I was actually kind of glad that they didn’t. I never expected to be able to just blend in and live my life. I transitioned on the job and everyone in my life knew about me. That was why I agreed to the interview. I was already on public display so what could it hurt? My therapist also did some of the more sympathetic talk shows. She asked me to go on one with her. After thinking about it for several days, I declined. The idea of being that public was not something I wanted even though I thought my story might do some good. I just wasn’t comfortable with that much attention.

When I moved to Virginia, I found that my situation changed. Nobody knew my past unless I told them. I was just living my life and the emotional pain that had been with me for so much of my life was gone. It was so much better than I had ever expected. Over time, as I continued to heal emotionally, I found a safe, comfortable life. 

One of the things that surprised me after I transitioned was the attention I got from men. It kind of scared me. I had spent my whole life trying to avoid attention and I wasn’t exactly comfortable with it. I hadn’t grown up with the socialization that cisgender women do so it was a challenge for me to deal with. Although I was still attracted to women, I found that I was responding to male attention. I thought that maybe I was bisexual. My primary rule that I set for myself back when I decided to see if transition made sense was that if it felt ok then it was ok and if didn’t feel ok then it wasn’t. To my surprise, this seemed ok.

At least until it wasn’t. I found that I kept repeating the same pattern. I’d start to pull away after a couple of months and I always convinced myself that it was some specific thing about that man. Usually I ended it before they did. One notable exception to that was a relationship that got more serious and I told him about my past. He freaked out the next day and that ended that. Eventually, I recognized the pattern of pulling away and realized it wasn’t the individual men; it was men as a group. Truthfully they were all good people. It was just that I wasn’t really attracted to them. I still don’t know if my initial attraction was real or if it was me trying to be “conventionally normal”. But, whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t true now.

That led me to the lesbian community which ended up reconnecting me to the transgender community. It also led me to the woman I married.

Although I was a lot more comfortable around people, it was still hard for me to connect with them at a deeper level. I had spent so long keeping people at arm’s distance that it was hard to break that habit. For all the healing I had done, I was still cautious around people and I think that made it hard for them to connect with me. I had just about come to accept that maybe a long term relationship just wasn’t going to be in my future when Lauri walked into my life and totally changed it.

We’ve been together for nearly 18 years and married for 10. Our personalities are so different. She has an effortless way of relating to people that I’ll never possess but some of it is rubbing off on me. I think we’ve both helped each other grow as human beings. In many ways, it’s hard to remember a time in my life when she wasn’t there. Strangely, part of me feels like our relationship started just a couple of months ago and part of me feels like she’s always been there. If it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be doing this podcast. 

After all of that, what can I say?

First, gender affirming care saved my life. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t transitioned but it almost certainly wouldn’t have been good. At best, I’d be a shell of a person counting the days until I died and at worst, well, the count would be over. I am so glad that never came close to happening.

I think there are two big parts that contribute to the success of my transition. I can’t overstate how much the support of friends and family helped. Being able to concentrate on what I needed to do and not having to worry about them or defend my decision once they had time to process it took a huge mental burden away.

The other part, I think, is being willing to see myself at least somewhat objectively. I might have had this mental picture of myself in the beginning as this very feminine woman but my body was never going to match that physical reality so I decided to work with my physical reality. I didn’t want a lot of unwanted attention so I deliberately dressed to avoid it. It mostly worked. The funny thing is that when things had progressed to the point where I could, I found that it wasn’t me. That was actually a bit disappointing to find out that being that kind of woman wasn’t who I was. But, that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered is that I had found out who I was and I was happy to be this kind of geeky woman with an odd sense of humor. It felt like I was home.

I studied Aikido for many years in the 1990’s. It was invaluable in helping me integrate the physical and mental sides of myself. I truly felt like my body and mind were together.  I enjoyed participating in sports to a degree I never had before. Not because I was very good but because the sheer joy of the mental and physical integration was exhilarating!

My journey is, hopefully, far from over. I continue to learn and grow as a human being. I hope that never changes. My life has changed in ways I never could have predicted. It isn’t perfect but it so much better and more rewarding than I could ever have conceived 40 years ago.

Like any person who has reached their 6th decade, I have regrets. I regret that I caused any emotional pain to my family but they were afraid for me and they know I didn’t do it to hurt them. I regret that I spent so long afraid of what I knew I had to do. What would have happened if I’d told my mother when I was 12? Or even younger? I don’t know. Knowledge about transgender people was in its infancy so I can’t predict what would have happened but it would have been nice to not have it bottled up for 25 years.

But, I can’t change the past. I’ve lived and continue to live the best life I know how. 

Having a transgender past is different from being gay. Most transgender people don’t transition to be “transgender people”. They transition to align their physical reality with their mental reality. For nonbinary people it’s probably a bit different but for transgender men and women, we often just disappear and are never knowingly seen again. It’s only been in recent years that positive role models have become visible in our culture and for reasons that I don’t understand this make a part of our society extremely uncomfortable.

I might be taking a risk with this video in that I’m giving up the anonymity that I’ve been privileged to have but really it’s not that big a risk. The federal government already knows who I am and if the people running the government want to make my life miserable they will try. Maybe this will speed up that process. But, hopefully it will help the viewer understand what transgender people experience and why the care we receive is so critical.

I’m just one of countless numbers of transgender people who successfully transitioned and went on to live happy and fulfilled lives. I say “countless” because there is no good way to count us. Most people who were able to just blend in to society – well, that’s why we did this. We disappear and are never really seen again. The odds are very good that you have met a transgender person and been completely unaware of it. All that is left for the rest of society to see is those that stand out for whatever reason. Some because of physical challenges; some because they were already in the public eye and some because they were brave enough to advocate publicly for all those who weren’t as fortunate.

One question I expect is on the minds of those who don’t have any experience with transgender people is, “Why couldn’t you accept your physical body the way it was?” I can’t really say why. Our sense of identity – that sense of who we are – forms at a very young age. Mine certainly did, and despite trying for more than twenty years, I couldn’t change it. I didn’t choose to be a woman. I simply was one. I tried and tried to change it but I couldn’t and I know many others who say the same thing. 

Given the animosity directed at trans people in our current society, I can’t imagine that anyone chooses to transition unless it’s the only choice they have. That was certainly true for me. Transgender people have become more visible in the last 20 years for a variety of reasons. There is more information available today and people can recognize it in themselves more easily because of that. Some of the stigma has been removed making it safer for people to come forward – at least until 2025. Many in our society are working to reverse that. If they succeed it will make the lives of every transgender person harder and I fear it will lead to the deaths of some. All every transgender person I’ve spoken with wants is to live an honest life and not to be forced to pretend to be someone they aren’t. That shouldn’t be a controversial issue. Hopefully this will help people see that.

I welcome questions that come from a place of wanting to understand. If you are someone that has already decided that transgender people have no place in society then just move along. Your comments aren’t needed or helpful. People like me have existed since before recorded history began and in every culture. We are born this way and while I wouldn’t wish the pain I lived with on anyone, it doesn’t have to be that way. Getting people the care they need as early as they recognize the need for it, can do tremendous good. Nobody wants anyone to make the mistake of getting a surgical procedure they come to regret but speaking for myself and for the many people I know who have been down this path, it is life saving treatment.

Thanks for your attention. I hope this was helpful. Until next time, take care.