Welcome

While I'm working on my website (Coming Out Trans) I thought I should also find an avenue to write about what I think about topics, transgendered or otherwise. So here goes...

About me: I am a transgendered person in my mid-to-late 40's, for the most part closeted. Most of the time you will see me as a married father of two college-age people (I can't call them children anymore, but they are my kids and I love them to pieces and am so proud of them). My wife is the most wonderfully accepting woman in the world who is struggling to figure out how to deal with this fact. We've been married over twenty years, and while she had discovered my trans-ness in the early 1990's it wasn't until 2006 that I gave in and accepted that I was transgendered and came out to her in the fall of that year.

Our youngest child, our son, is also suffering from depression which in the past has made him suicidal but he is doing a lot better these days. He came out about his depression a couple of weeks after I came out about being transgendered to my wife, so my wife had a really rough year. Oh, my kids do not know that I am transgendered, and we're not sure when is the best time to tell them, if ever.

I've also been active online since I accepted myself as transgendered and have made a lot of good friends through various on-line forums for others like myself.

Because of my situation I am extra interested in the plight of spouses of transgendered people (such as my wife). I think it's an underserved group that could benefit from a much better support structure than currently exists. I describe the coming out process to a wife as a small change for us but the equivalent of dropping a bombshell on them. We transgendered people have struggled with this all our lives, so coming out to someone represents overcoming our shame and fear and getting to a level of trust that we're exposing something so personal. But the receiver (our wife), who may have no inkling, finds their whole world turned upside-down. My heart goes out for all of those wives who have gone through this, and I am awed by the number of women who choose to stay with their spouse despite this.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I will have more to say about things here; perhaps some of it will be coherent, and even useful.