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a question for those who are surgery-focused or have had it - would you consider the day you get surgery to be a new birthday, one you would celebrate every year?
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Honestly, no but then I've
Honestly, no but then I've never been that big on remembering transition milestones. Also, apart from liking the date of my actual birthday and fitting my astrological personality type well, I'm mindful of providing my parents with some continuity from the past given that in effect I killed their son off. That being said, if I could celebrate both and get presents for both, I'm open to the idea!
"Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life."
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Yes and no.
Yes and no.
I do consider it a new birthday and for the first couple of years did celebrate August 26th. But then I got married on the 29th a couple of years later, so we kind of wrap things up into one package with the wedding anniversary taking precedent.
Actually, it is amazing to me that as time passes that the lives before and after have integrated. That last statement may not make sense as I look at it.
What I mean is that there is less separation of the old life as Jim and new life as Janet. Now there's just me.
And as a celebration of life, surgery is one of those transformative events that should be commemorated.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Not really.
My birthday is the day I was literally born into this world, it will always be so.
My Awakening Day is the day I came to fully realize just what it is I've always wanted and what caused me so much grief in my young life.
If I do memorialize SRS, it'd be as a "Near-Fullness" day, though technically that'd be a misnomer, it'd be closer to reality than trying to have it replace my birthday. My real Fullness Day will be when I finally meet Christ and our Eternal Father, and I am able to be truly and entirely whoever it is I was meant to be.
Everything I do related to living as female in this life will only be a stopgap - a way to LIVE - until that Fullness is reached.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Doesn't matter to me
... Surgery for me was within a week of my birthday so *meh*.
It was not that big of a milestone for me being I had been already living full-time for 10 years and finally got the money to have it done. It was a bump in life and not a jarring one consequently.
Kim
I passed the one year mark
I passed the one year mark last month, on the 21st, but was 4 days past it when I remembered. So no, not really. For some reason it seems so long ago, like I have been complete forever but for that little minor birth defect, and for another, the surgery was icing on the cake, not my particular focus. The date of my name change and starting at that point living full time as the real me in public is actually of more import.
CaroL
CaroL
Same day for me
I wanted to wake up on my birthday with everything right.
The day i admitted to myself who i really am...
June 21 2002 is my rebirthday... i let Diana out of prison that day...
Me
a day to remember
While it is the completion of the process... I personally feel my life started new on the day I went full time.
A friend who is very public about her status as transsexual has a BBQ day and invites people over for free hotdogs. She also gives out miniature beavers (stuffed animal that eats trees).
I'm more private. I wouldn't consider it an important date... before you have the surgery the day seems like such a marvelous thing... but after you come to realise that its just the day you expanded your wardrobe to things that don't need to conceal. You were female and reborn many months before the actual surgery.
Dayna.
ps. I speak from others experiences and what they've told me.
Birthdays
I was talking to a number of transpeople at the conference I attended a few days ago, and a few of them told me that, yes, they considered surgery to be a birthday. Myself, I have it slightly different. There is my day of birth, in the springtime. There is my day of death and rebirth, last month, which is the day I had to be resuscitated twice: once by hand, once with the machine that goes zap.
Finally, and most importantly, a few weeks before my day of birth is the day that I finally told someone else who and what I had always been. All sorts of events came before and after, but that first moment of release...
For me...
My self-realization (or awakening) and the first time I told someone (my older brother), was the same day. I'll agree, those first moments of release were powerful. The release from all the years of repression, and the release from telling someone who was accepting and supportive. Doing it together like that was explosive, but I think it was necessary for me.
The subsequent releases from telling the rest of my immediate family were also very powerful, but those first two... Letting myself free... I don't think there can be anything more powerful.
Telling my parents came close, but that was more just relief from the fear of losing them. There may always be a distance between my mom and I, but she's not tossing me out either. My Dad and I are getting closer than ever, since I'm now opening up, and he's accepting, slowly.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
In Sweden
Here in Sweden every person does have a personal number compoosed by the date of birth and a four number addition. This is really important as vey mucgh of our public life is connected to these figures. I asked if my Personal Number could be changed at the day of the operation, bu the authorities said NO, "..unless you want to lose all the social benefits you have collected through your life ", So what happened was that the date stayed on, but the added number was changed. And that really will tell anyone that happen to get my full number that I was born in a maternity ward far away from the actual place even a couple of counties away. I did, however, keep a close look in my physical mailbox if I would be called to school 7 years after my op. But that did not happen so I am still born in the year of 1943.
Ginnie G
GinnieG
My surgery is scheduled for
My surgery is scheduled for three months time. The day after my parents wedding anniversary and about nine months before my birthday.
I don't think I will ever celebrate it as a birthday, but it is a strange coincidence.
T
The strangest journeys start with a single step.
The strangest journeys start with a single step.