Let me begin by saying that this life is not a game. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation or heterosexual crossdressing. It is about finding happiness and peace within myself. I am a woman who was born into the body of a male. I know many people will say that that notion is totally off the wall, but it is true. The majority of the population can look in the mirror and know without a doubt that they are male or female.The underlying myth that prevails is that external sex organs are the only way to tell whether someone is male or female.This assumption is false. There is one more crucial element to the equation. This is known as Gender Identity or your sense of being male or female. For most people external sex and gender match. For the transgendered person, it is mismatched. The body's external indicators say one thing and their brain says another. There is research from the Netherlands to back this up. They conducted autopsies on the brains of deceased transsexuals. Their findings back up what all of us with this condition have been saying all along. The Hypothalamus regions were identical to that of a genetic female. They looked at the effects of hormones on the brains as a possible reason for the identical size. While hormones do cause changes in the brain, there was an interesting element to one of the patients studied. She had never taken female hormones and her Hypothalamus was still found to be the same size. At the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy, hormones are released that work to make a boy a boy and a girl a girl. Most of the time, this works to perfection, but just like other cases of birth defects, things can and do go wrong. Some are born with the sex organs of both sexes or a phenotype such as XXY. For those of you who don't know about sex chromosomes, a normal female has two XX's and a normal male has an X and a Y. The sex of the child is determined by the male. If Henry VIII had only known! I don't know how or why it happened, but I do know God has a reason for everything.

I first realized I was different at about 7 or 8 years old. That summer, I went to stay with my cousins at Fort Knox , Kentucky. They lived on the base in the family housing units. My cousins, Carrie and Abby, played with this girl named Sherry. Her father was an officer who served with my uncle. One day they were playing a game called Hi Ho Cherrio. Sherry told me I couldn't play because I was a boy. I wanted to be a part of the group so bad, because they played with so many pretty things. I was afraid to tell them how I felt inside because I was already being called names at school like four eyes and retarded because I wore thick glasses and had to take Learning Disabled Math. I remember another time a few years later when I felt hurt and left out.

We went to stay with my grandparents in New Hampshire. It was the summer of '85 and my mother, sister,grandmother and aunts went out for a Girls Night Out. I cried when they left because I wanted to be a part of it too. I was mad at them when they came home and my grandmother told me to quit acting like a baby. They went out shopping a few days later and left me behind. Just like the previous time, I was upset when they came home.

My first experience with crossdressing, occurred when one of our family friends gave my mother a prom dress that belonged to one of her daughters. I think it was for a costume my sister had for a play. I would go into Mom's closet and put it on and pretend like I was Cinderella getting ready for the Ball. One year at Thanksgiving, I went to my cousin Heather's house. She got a play makeup kit for Christmas the previous year and she sat me down and did my first real makeover. I was thrilled! We even tried to sneak up to her mother's room to try on some of the dresses her mother had kept from when she was a little girl. My aunt caught us as we were sneaking down the hall. She said what were were doing was not proper and made me go clean off my face. I did manage to play beauty shop again though.

I went home and I would put on mom's makeup whenever I could. I would sneak downstairs at night and put on foundation, powder, eyeshadow, blush and lipstick. One night I snuck down to the bathroom. I was standing in front of the mirror putting on lipstick and my dad chose that moment to come down the hall and asked me what in the world I was doing? I didn't say much. I just cleaned my face off and went back to bed. I asked him later what he knew about Sex change. He told me that it was against the Bible. I never asked him about it again. I shut that part of myself off to him for the next 23 years.

After he left my mother for the girl down the road, Mom moved us to a government housing complex in Georgetown Kentucky. It was there that I made my first bloody attempt to shave my legs. I did okay with my left leg, but I took a chunk out of the right one and bled like a stuck pig. I told Mom that the kids at school had made fun of my hairy legs but I later told her the real reason. I had a bedroom downstairs right next to the bathroom. There was also a bag of girl's hand-me-downs that we got from somewhere. They were too big for my sister, but fit me perfectly. My favorite outfit was a white blouse and black skirt. I would then get dressed and put on makeup. To this day, it feels as natural to me as breathing.

I continued to dress in secret without getting caught until my Freshmen year of college. I was home alone one day when I decided to try on some things in my mother and sister's closets. I found an outfit and had just finished putting on makeup when mom came home early for lunch. Was she in for surprise! I was so scared about what she would do that I closed the bedroom door and I was afraid to come out. She asked me if I was Gay and I told her no. I started to cry and begged her not to tell the rest of the family. Later that evening, I sat down and wrote a letter to her and told her that I was a woman trapped in a man's body. She made a few phone calls and found a therapist for me to talk to. He was a nice man, but he really didn't have much experience with Transsexuals. He retired and moved out of State shortly thereafter. I was next referred to a therapist in a community mental health program. He was like talking to a brick wall. He insisted that if I had sex with a woman that my feelings would magically disappear. To top it off , the staff Psychiatrist told me there was nothing wrong with me. I looked at them both like they were the crazy ones and got out of there fast!

About that time, my grandfather's health was beginning to fail and he gave up driving. I moved in with them and helped my grandmother by taking them to the grocery or the doctor. I mistakenly thought that by throwing myself into caring for them, my feelings would go away. I was very wrong! I continued to dress up in my room whenever I could. I lived there for a year, until my grandfather's Alzheimers began to progress. There is a saying "You always hurt the one you love" for some reason he became insanely jealous of me. He resented my relationship with my grandmother because I was the one who took her to the grocery, hairdresser or the doctor. We would invite him to come along but he refused. He was afraid that someone would steal everything they had.

I moved out and went back to my mother's. I got a part time job with my mother's company and I was there for 9 months. They kept promising me they would get me on fulltime, but they never did. I was offered a job with a company 15 miles from my grandparents and took it. My brother had moved in with them and he was helping to care for them. It was a year of heartache I will never forget. My grandfather's condition had gotten worse. He was like an adult version of a baby. He could no longer bathe himself or control bowel or urinary function. The saddest thing I ever witnessed was him attempting to hit my grandmother. He loved her very much and would never have done anything like that if he had been of sound mind. We knew that the person we loved was gone and it was like someone else was walking around in his shoes. he died in 1998. September of that year, I took my grandmother on a trip to New Hampshire. She had never been on and airplane in her life. She was reluctant to go at first, but I booked her ticket and didn't tell her until it was too late to back out. She loved the trip immensely! We saw and did things she would never have done if she had stayed home. She still talked about it years later.

I looked forward to the Halloween party at work every year. I dressed as a French Maid my first year and won first prize. I dressed as a woman every year I was there. It was so wonderful to be able to dress openly at least one day a year. I confided my secret to several close friends and they were very supportive. I told them how I felt and a couple of my friends suggested I look into Gender transition. I told them I was seriously considering it.

The pressure to conform to everyone's expectation for me to be the son, brother and grandson was becoming unbearable for me. I had to get some help. I went online to a website for Dr. Rebecca Allison M.D. She is a well respected Cardiologist, who made the transition to female. On her website, She has references for qualified therapists all over the country. I found a therapist named Marcia Malone Bell. I began regular sessions with her in February of 2004. Right from the beginning, I knew I had made the right decision. She really listened to me for the first time in my life. She diagnosed me with depression because of the burden of carrying my secret for so long. Once we began dealing with that, she diagnosed me as Transsexual, which I knew all along. Her conclusions were validation for me. I went home from my first session and slept better than I had in years. The pain and burden were off my shoulders. Anyone who has suffered depression knows what I'm talking about. Being twisted up in knots is not good for anyone. I spent so much time putting a smile on my face for people to see. Inside, I felt confused, alone and scared. For a long time I pushed my feelings deeper inside. One thing my family and friends need to understand is that there is nothing you did or didn't do that caused this. I have never had any desire to look "handsome". If I bought a suit or clothes, it was out of necessity. I consider male clothing totally and completely boring. I love the variety of colors and styles available to women. This, however, is not the reason I am transitioning. It goes to the core of my being. At my sister's wedding, I was sitting at the table with my friend Eunice. We were watching the Father/Daughter dance and Eunice remarked that I looked like I was going to cry. I wished at that moment that it was me sharing that special time with Dad. I hope that someday I can have a moment like that with Dad as his daughter.

I have been taking female hormones since June 1,2004. I take a half a cc of Estrogen every two weeks in alternate hips. I take 10 mg Progesterone Monday Wednesday and Friday and 100mg Spironalactone twice a day. Some may question if I am serious about this. I pose this question. Why would I spend thousands of dollars on therapy, hair removal and hormones if I wasn't? The hormones make you sterile after 8 months. I am now coming up on 6 years on hormones. I have endured tremendous pain with hair removal. Imagine someone putting 100 lit cigarettes out on your face. If I wasn't serious, I would have jumped up off the treatment bed and run out of the office and never looked back. I had tears running down my face, but I knew that it was something I had to do to complete my journey. I have a voice training DVD and CD by Andrea James and it is one of the best I have ever seen.

I have watched my brothers and sister get married and move on with their lives. I have celebrated many joyous occasions and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but I deserve to be happy too. The last thing I would ever want to do was hurt anyone that I love, but I just couldn't live that way anymore. No one has known how close I had come to ending it all before I got help. I used to think of ways I could end the pain I was in at the time. I had guns, but I sold them. I thought of driving my car into the garage and letting the exhaust kill me. Fortunately, the gravel wasn't up to the level of the garage so I didn't do something stupid. Some in my family accused me of being selfish. I suppose to a certain extent I am. I could have ended it all, but I loved my family too much to put them through the grief of my funeral. I consider my transition an act of survival. I cannot bear the pain of living to please everyone else. Some would tell me I don't have any idea what I'm getting myself into. I know very well that there are people out there that would kill me for being who I am, but I guess it really wouldn't make much difference. I would probably be dead by now anyway if I hadn't started living as my trueself. People tend to make judgments and say that what we are doing is a sin, but I think the real sin is not living a life to be happy with who you are. My brother referred to people like us as "It" I reminded him that above all, we are human beings who deserve to be happy. I changed my name to Jennifer Danielle Campbell in 2005 as a tribute to a dear friend named Jennifer who died of Spinal Cancer. All in all, I am happier than I have ever been and couldn't imagine ever going back to the way things used to be. I couldn't really do that anyway because a 38C cup is a bit difficult to hide LOL! Anyway, I thank you for hanging in with me on this. Hopefully, there is more to come with my story, but that's it up to now.