[GoneGirl]

Thanks for your input. Miranda. I can tell you've spent time thinking about the implications of NBE quite a bit. That's good.

Many share a 'go with the flow' attitude about their gender issues, and one can argue that it makes a lot of sense to take on that philosophy. It's the one I elected personally. It's a journey of self discovery first and foremost. One cannot predict where the journey will end, so why try? Do what feels right.

There have been many contributors to this forum who have gone on to other things, having reached a dead end in their journey, or having lost interest in dwelling on their gender issues once their transition reached a satisfactory conclusion. Seldom do we hear from their final accounts.

My purpose in starting this thread was mainly to discuss one of the possible consequences of shifting your hormone balance via NBE. Can doing so lead to places we never expected to go?

Many of us are discovering our female potential very late in life. Some of us are in retirement or are approaching retirement. This can be a very vulnerable stage in our lives.

We boomers have been inculcated with the idea that finding personal happiness trumps all other considerations in life, or at least makes it a worthy goal. We bought into the mandra to the point that we risk everything we've built throughout our lives in response to the siren's song of fulfilling our long suppressed gender identity. Do we appreciate the incredible risks involved as we savor the promised rewards?

The truth is, the real key to happiness late in life is financial security without which there can be no happiness, only deprivation and struggle. This is the ultimate slap in face for us 'tweenies' who have delayed gratification of our gender expression for our families, our jobs, our own welfare, only to risk undoing it all by finally coming clean about who we are under the incredible strain of GD, and maybe finding ourselves abandoned. Believe me, it happens.

For many there is no alternative. Some will literally die without a way to escape the torment of their unfulfilled transgenderism. Some will take the jump and find a peace that they never knew. Others will go on struggling to hold their world together for the sake of _______ (fill in the blank). The latter manage to live out their unsatisfactory lives because somehow, they resist the temptation to let the genie out of the bottle. Others, like me, let the genie out of the PM bottle and revel in the new horizons that are opened to us. But the question always lurks in the background: What price freedom?

I'm not advocating a life of depression, anguish, and personal struggle to deal with gender dysphoria. I think that finding your rightful place as your rightful gender in the world is important to achieve any real quality of life. What I am saying is the there is no guarantee of a better life after transition. One can simply exchange one form of anxiety for another. Whether NBE changes or simply reveals one's gender identity is not really as important as what the outcome of that process brings forth. It can be a long delayed period of personal fulfillment and happiness, or the beginning of a nightmare even more onerous than what existed before.

Choose wisely my dears,

Clara