I’ve never really described my bedroom, have I? I’m sure it wouldn’t be a proper trans-adventure without me diving into some florid description once in a while. I warn you however, there are no four posters and flouncy chiffon curtains here. If that’s what you’re expecting, I may have to disappoint you.

It still feels strange to say, but when I still lived as Alex, my room was really quite neutral on the gender scale. I was never a fan of sports posters or activities that required tons of equipment, so my room was largely toys, clothes, and other human clutter. There were no photographs with friends, no mementos from trips. As Alex, I just… existed.

What toys, do you ask? My parents bought me the usual boy toys like action figures and construction toys, but as you already know, I spent a lot more time playing dolls and other games with Chrissie than I did having backyard wars with my Soldier Dans. Frankly, my stuff was pretty neat and often stored away.

The truth was, my Space Conflict figures were lovingly placed on a shelf and I spent most of my time with my Block-Go making little scenes rather than cool vehicles or spaceships. I didn’t really ask for other more typical boy toys because I didn’t really want them.

I’m sure a psychiatrist could make statements about how girls are more likely to use toys for narrative play whereas boys may be more likely to use them for conflict or competition. In reality, as a kid, you play with what you’ve got. Would I have preferred Chrissie’s dolls? Sure. Did I have them? No. Thus, I made do with what I had to hand, I’ll make no apologies for that.

When I first transitioned, it was a bit up and down as you’re well aware. For a good time, I was both Holly and Alex. That meant that without a particularly clean break, I never really ‘purged’ the Alex… the facade just faded away. This meant that I never really swapped out furniture or repainted. Then again, I never really wanted to; I liked my room.

As it stood, my walls remained a warm off-white in color and the furniture was still a rich pine. Mom and Dad did buy me a vanity with a mirror that now sat alongside my desk with my computer. My bedding did change from dull earth tones to more pleasant pastels, but I wasn’t diving head first into pink and lace either! Currently, it was a soft, pretty, blue that I absolutely adored; girls can like blue too!

Obviously with makeup all over my vanity and clothes not always making it back into my wardrobe and drawers, it was pretty obvious that a girl lived here. Whether it was a bra on the floor, shoes stacked up by my wardrobe, or the skirt that almost made the dresser, it wasn’t exactly a secret.

Did that give me a really awesome sense of validation and comfort? Yes, it did. What made me feel most comfortable here though, was that my Space Conflict figures still proudly sat atop my shelf. My posters for my favorite role-playing games still adorned my walls and my rack of video games was still fit to bursting.

I didn’t throw my interests away when Holly came home to live. I am still the same girl I always have been and always will be. The only difference is that I can be more openly myself now. Transition wasn’t changing who I am; I didn’t become obsessed with everything girly and needed every possible ‘boyish’ thing purged from my life to feel validated. I was me; the nerdy girl who liked manga and comic books, sci-fi, and video games. I also liked makeup and fashion and boys… quite a lot.

Why did I tell you all of this? It just felt like the right time to do so. It also happens to be where I’m lounging right now on a dark winter’s evening. I have no school work and I have no more Alex. After the last couple of weeks, I’m enjoying just relaxing and doing things that I love. At the moment, that is reading a novel.

I know I never spoke about it much, but reading and even a little creative writing are great loves of mine. Obviously, you might say, considering you’re reading an example of the latter. Maybe that’s a spoiler, but I don’t quite know how the timeline works yet.

There’s a knock at the door, ripping me from the pages of a fantastic adventure yarn. “Come in?”

The door opens and Mom’s head appears. “Busy?”

I sit up and shake my head, “No, just chilling out, sup?”

Mom enters and walks across to the bed before sitting down next to me. “Well, I wanted to have a chat, is that ok?”

Suspicion level raised; shenanigans afoot.

I raise an eyebrow, “About what?”

“We never really got a chance to sit down and… I guess I…” Mom sighs and shrugs. She looks over at me and grins. “I had this whole plan and now I’m feeling embarrassed.”

“Go on?” I ask, turning to face her more fully, my legs crossed on the comforter. “What’s embarrassing?”

“Well, I wanted to talk… about girl things with you, honey.”

It’s my turn to blush as I realize what Mother Dearest is getting at. Yes, big important Veronica Winters, MD, is getting sheepish about body topics; she is human after all. Then I start to listen to the brain worms, which is never a good idea. Suddenly, I start to realize that maybe I’m the problem; the not-quite daughter.

“It’s ok, I’m sure it would have been easier if I had been born Holly.”

“Never think that,” Mom replies firmly. She pauses and smiles softly, reaching out to squeeze my knee. “You were born Holly; it just took you time to show it. Never think that you are anything else. I’m hesitant because I feel like I let you down, and that I should have prepared my daughter better and far earlier. It’s not often a mother has to discuss these things with her baby when she’s already got her breasts.”

Brea…. Oh dear.

“What about my breasts?” Not going to lie, that still feels super odd to say to my mother.

Mom looks a little more certain now that the ice is broken and she sits up a little taller. “I need you to understand something Holly; mothers and daughters, we talk about things like you and your girlfriends do. We are much more open and honest with each other than fathers and sons and our bodies are nothing to be ashamed about, ok?”

“I’m not ashamed. Mom. I’m proud of my body.”

“You should be,” she smiles. “But you also need to learn to take care of it.”

“I eat enough fruit… sometimes,” I concede.

“I mean more… intimate,” she grins. “You don’t know about checking your breasts, do you?”

I blushed a little and shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

Mom smiles and gets a funny look on her face. She turns until she’s facing me on the bed and, before I’m able to work out what she’s getting at, she’s hauling her T-shirt over her head and is now sitting there in front of me in just her bra and sweatpants. She reaches behind her back and unclips her bra and takes it off. My own mother is sitting topless on the bed next to me; talk about embarrassing.

“I uh…”

“Your turn,” she raises an eyebrow.

I mean, I can’t be out weirded by Mom, can I? Plus she’s already seen me in my bra before so it’s not that big a step, but it is nudity, and what teenager is comfortable with that? It comes to me suddenly that my own mother is doing this because she wants me to know that she truly sees me as female; another girl and that this is not embarrassing or inappropriate.

I’m not wearing a bra myself, so I pull my camisole over my head and fight the urge to cover my boobs with my hands. It doesn’t escape me that both of our nipples react to the cool air in exactly the same way.

Mom notices my glance and giggles. I’ve not really heard her giggle much before, so it’s a little more human than I’ve ever really experienced before. “Mine do that too.”

“This isn’t weird?”

“A little at first,” she shrugs, which is super weird seeing her boobs bounce with the gesture. “We have nothing to be ashamed about; they’re breasts. Women have breasts, it’s a normal part of your development. In most girls, they start growing between around twelve and thirteen, but you were just a little later.”

“A touch,” I admit. “I was so excited when I first felt the little… bumps?”

Mom nods, “That’s normal sweetheart; the little swelling and the nub that just appears out of nowhere. That little bump starts to swell over time until suddenly there’s a little mound forming, the mound starts to swell and before you know it, you’ve got breasts.”

“I was so happy,” I admit. “I couldn’t really share it, or show how happy I was… I had to hide it.”

Mom reaches out and strokes my cheek and smiles sadly. “Not anymore, sweetheart.”

She reaches up to her own chest and cups her left breast in her hand. She directs my attention to it as she starts to move the fingertips of her right hand around the edges in a spiral pattern. “As they grow, it’s really important that you get used to how they feel; the bumps and the lumps under the surface, the shape and feel of your breasts. While they’re growing that will change and teenage breast cancer is so infinitesimally rare that it won’t matter much, but you need to get used to doing this regularly, at least once a month.”

“To check for lumps?”

She nods, “Yes, and ensure that you know what feels normal for you; breasts are different for every woman, sweetheart. They’re bigger on one side, usually above the heart and they change over your monthly cycle, as your hormones fluctuate.”

“I don’t have one of those,” I sigh, feeling incredibly inadequate suddenly.

“Are you sure about that?” Mom asks, raising an eyebrow. “I think I would be able to present evidence to the contrary.”

“I don’t have a vagina or a uterus,” I point out. “Not like I can have a period. Plus none of the literature or doctors believe I can.”

“As your mother and a doctor I’d like to disagree,” she points out. “I am well attuned to having a daughter, Holly, and as a woman myself, I can tell you that periods are far more complex than male doctors tell us. I’ve seen women with full hysterectomies still experience a monthly cycle. Sure, they don’t bleed, but the menstrual cycle is far more than just that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how you’re more irritable sometimes?” she smiled and shook her head. “You’re a teenager, you probably don’t notice, but I do.”

“PMS?”

She nods, “Yup, and have you noticed that at least once a month you go to the bathroom a lot more often? The same time of the cycle when we start our periods can also lead to a period of… intestinal upheaval,” she adds delicately. “You’ll feel more bloated, retain water, and your skin will change. I’ve noticed all of those things honey.”

I’m bright red by now. My semi-nudity is almost entirely forgotten, but my mother talking about poop and periods is a little… heavy.

“So I… have a period?”

“Not quite,” she shrugs. “A menstrual cycle at the very least, yes. Typically a cycle lasts around twenty-eight days, but it can vary a little. Over that time your body changes how it responds to the hormones in your blood, rather than the ovaries changing how much they release. This means that your body is trying to prepare itself for pregnancy, even if you can’t do it.”

“I wish I could,” I sigh.

“I know honey,” she smiles comfortingly. “But you can adopt one day, and you’ll even be able to stimulate lactation to feed your child if you adopt an infant.”

“I had read,” I admit sheepishly. “Not much comfort but… still.”

Mom nodded. “Right, I’m getting chilly, so let’s get back on track eh? Reach up like I’m doing and follow me, ok?”

I copy Mom and cup my breast in the same way that she was doing. Following her direction, I start to spiral my fingertips around the breast, circling in toward the nipple. We repeat the process on the other side.

If you’ve never really ‘felt’ a breast before, as an owner of said appendages; they might look smooth on the surface, but in reality, they’re quite lumpy under the surface. Beneath the fatty tissue, the mammary gland itself is covered in nodules and bumps that develop as the breast grows. These later provide the mechanism to produce milk to feed your child.

Mom is entirely correct; regular checking and truly knowing one’s body is the first step in catching cancer before it’s too late. The sooner one detects something unusual and gets it checked, the sooner you can prevent disaster. Often, lumps and bumps are benign rather than malignant, but it’s far better to be safe than sorry.

Why do I wax on about this so much? Obviously, as a doctor, I care about your health, and normalizing breasts and cancer risks helps to save lives. It also happened that Adult Holly had a brief scare that got her referred to the breast clinic for more invasive testing. Trust me, it was pretty scary.

“Thank you, Mom, I know this is still a little weird.”

Mom reached out and stroked my cheek. “You don’t need to thank me, darling and there is nothing weird about it. This is what mothers and daughters do. We share, we pass along knowledge, and help the next generation to grow.”

Standing up, she took my hand and pulled me to my feet. With a warm smile, she opened her arms and took me into her embrace. We stood there for a moment, sharing a silent moment between us. My breasts squished against my mother's in a rather unusual way.

Mom kissed my forehead. “Mother to daughter, my skin to your skin, my breasts to yours. You are my daughter, a brave and beautiful young woman. One day, you will be a mother and will share a moment like this with your own daughter. You are female, you are any man’s equal and you are fierce.”

“I love you, Mom,” I sniffed, the scent of her shampoo filling my senses.

“I love you, Holly,” she replied softly, slowly releasing the embrace. She smiled and gently poked me in the boob. “Get dressed, and get to bed, ok?”

I smiled, pulled my cami back over my head, and adjusted myself without shame; they were breasts, women have them.

Mom smiled as she casually mirrored my gesture, “I shared a moment like this with Christine when she was about thirteen years old. I told her then the very same thing that I tell you now; you can talk to me about anything. The bond between a mother and her daughters cannot be broken. It is stronger than anything on this earth. I will always be there for you, ok baby?”

Blub.

“Yes, Mom. I love you,” I replied, flinging myself into her arms again.

Mom gave me a final squeeze, “I love you too, darling. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I gave her a nod and watched Mom slip back out of my room, closing the door behind her.

I dropped back onto the bed and smiled to myself. Ever since that fateful evening in a hospital bed when my mother had first met her daughter, I had known that she loved me. That had never been in doubt for a single second along the road.

For a good time, I had felt guilty; that I had killed her little boy, that I was replacing him in her heart, but in the proceeding months I had come to understand that she too had to experience a transition all of her own. Alex had never existed, only Holly. Mom saw that and she understood. She had said goodbye to the image of the little boy in her heart and fully embraced the daughter that the broken shell had revealed.

Tonight had been proof; undeniable proof that she saw me as another female in mind, body, and spirit. I was her daughter, Holly Juliette Winters. She had taught me things about myself that only a mother could teach a daughter. She showed me tenderness in a way that strengthened my love for her and my sister beyond all possible imagination.

When I think back to that evening, it still makes me smile to this very day. The memory of that moment gave me joy when I nursed my daughter for the very first time. It told me that one day, when my own daughter was old enough, I would tell her that she too was special. That she was beautiful and powerful and I would teach her in the same way my own mother taught me.

With the women that surrounded me as I grew up, I never felt inferior to men; I never felt weaker, more fragile, or less valuable. With women like my mother and sister, there was no way that was going to happen.

I am woman, hear me roar.

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