Happy Rebirthday!

It's no secret that this blog has been a bit of a ghost town for the past year. Most of what I would have put here, I either shared with friends on Tumblr, or wrote in my diary, or maybe expressed one on one with a friend over instant messaging. Regardless, I felt like I should try to post a few things here about what's going on in our lives.

So... this is the first of what I think may be several posts marking my first year on hormone replacement therapy, and how it relates to what came before. Because it marks the anniversary of the day when my rebirth began, I'm going to call it "Rebirthday."

This time, I’m going to be talking about my boobs, so if any of you feel like that’s TMI or triggering in any way (and if it is, I’m sorry :(), maybe don’t click through the “Read More.”



Ever since I was barely a teen, I’ve had gynecomastia. In middle school, when I was still 100% in denial about the fact that I was trans and desperate to deflect all the ridicule and attention I was getting from bullies, I crossed my arms to hide my chest every day in the locker room. The dudebros would ask me “where my bra was,” and I would look away, ashamed, and wish I could crawl under a rock and disappear.

When I was a Mormon missionary, I lived for a few months with a fellow missionary that was super-committed to his nightly strength training routine. He assured me that I could get rid of my “man boobs” with enough dedicated upper body exercise, and I worked out with him for a few weeks, desperate for it to work so I could feel like “one of the guys”. (spoiler alert: it didn’t work, and if anything it may have actually made them more prominent)

A few years later, when DW first saw me naked, I was extremely self-conscious. In the months leading up to our wedding, she’d gone to a tremendous amount of effort to make her body more appealing to me for our wedding night, and here I was, looking not at all like I thought an ideal husband should look. She didn’t care, because she’s not that shallow, but I still felt very inadequate. I think maybe in some ways it set (or at least echoed) the tone of our relationship for a while to come.

When I was in my mid 20s, after several years where my dysphoria had been largely absent, it came roaring back when our daughter was born. I remember sitting in the hospital that first night, DW and baby asleep, trying her breast pump on my own chest, thinking maybe the suction would make my boobs a little more prominent, wondering what that might feel be like. A few months later, I was up late one night, wearing one of her nightgowns and trying to make sense of my feelings of gender incongruity. The baby woke up, crying for her bottle, and I knew if I delayed too long, her cries might wake up her mom. So I went into her nursery without changing back into my own pajamas first, even though I didn’t know how to explain to DW what I was doing and why. I picked that little life up, cradled her in my arms to give her the bottle, and she nuzzled against my breast, just like she would to her mother’s. It made me want to cry, because I wanted so badly to be able to nurse her myself, to have that connection, but with that feeling came a rush of shame. (Moreso when her mother actually did wake up anyway, and walked in on us like that. But I digress)

Fast-forward a decade and a half, filled with a lot more stories like these. I’ve finally come to accept myself as transgender, and gotten to the point emotionally and spiritually where I’m not conflicted about it anymore (although telling my parents? That’s still daunting). Now, finally, I can begin to unpack a lot of my complicated feelings about my bosom. When I started HRT last March, my gynecomastia meant that my body had a running start, so it wasn’t long before I could actually fill out an A cup pretty well. Growth since that initial surge has been frustratingly slow, and they’re still a little lopsided and misshapen, but that’s okay. It’s taken me 41 years and a lot of emotional baggage-unpacking to get here, but these days, when I look down at my chest, I smile.