Trans Life

COMPLIMENTS

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing something I never anticipated but was absolutely delighted to discover after transition. It’s another way a whole new part of life opened up for me. So let’s talk about COMPLIMENTS.

There’s two sides to this, and both are actually an unexpected BENEFIT to being out as trans, that I’d never realized would be a thing. So for my entire life, I’ve dug ladies. I don’t mean that I’m attracted to them (though I am), but just… as a concept.

You can see the way this complicated discovering my own transness in the Trans Tuesday on DISENTANGLING SEXUALITY FROM TRANSNESS.

So! Ladies, am I right? The hair, the clothes, I love all of it. And yes, okay, sure, like I said there were maybe some… SIGNS that I was trans that I was missing my whole life. In fact, you can see the Trans Tuesday on THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE.

I also feel there is actual, real, important value in men being able to appreciate those things too. Well, without thinking that makes them gay or somehow weak, and all that horrid toxic masculinity bullshit, anyway.

But even before I had a name for toxic masculinity, all those years I spent presenting as (and thinking I was) a man, I thought there was nothing wrong with my appreciation of that stuff. And I was correct, there IS nothing wrong with men appreciating that stuff. AT ALL.

HOWEVER, I always felt… I don’t know, stymied? restrained? in expressing that appreciation. As a kid, it’s because your peers (and possibly parents) immediately labeled you gay and an outcast. And of course there’s nothing wrong with being gay, even if it were true.

I mean I AM gay, but I’m a gay woman. Not a gay man. But all kinds of gay are good! Increase the gayness in your life, Try Gay Today!

But for a very nerdy, awkward kid uncomfortable in her own body for her entire life, the last thing I wanted was to be MORE outcast than I already was. So I just kept my trap shut about girly stuff I liked. Repression and ostracization forces people into the closet, y’know.

As an adult, it didn’t take me long to learn that all too often (and the ladies out there can already see this coming), compliments on anything like clothing or hair or makeup or… ANYTHING coming from a (seemingly) cis man is something else entirely.

Because of course it usually means they’re sexually attracted to you or want something from you, or might soon harass you, or worse. I mean it’s basically the same thing as men whistling and yelling at women on the street. It’s awful and needs to stop.

And there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to be someone who contributed to that. Even if my intentions were just to say I really liked their dress or thought their hair looked amazing, I’d just keep it to myself (or talk about it with Susan).

Because there was no way for any woman I was talking to to be aware of my intentions. And if I tried to explain that it’d just come off weird and I’d seem like even more of a creeper.

And I don’t know if I realized that because I’m trans and always have been, or if I was just actually keenly aware of how a lot of cis men treat women (which, again, I suppose I could have been more aware of as I’m a woman, even when I didn’t consciously know it yet).

I’d like to think it’s because I try to be aware of people and their feelings, and the last thing I ever want to do is make someone uncomfortable or upset (am I kind or just… midwestern? I sincerely hope it’s the former but… you can’t take the midwest out of me, either. Ope!).

But I knew the comfort of the woman I wanted to compliment was more important than her knowing some random (apparent) guy thought her eye shadow looked amazing. So to the cis guys reading, if you haven’t figured that out yet, please heed these words:

A woman feeling safe is more important than your need to tell her how pretty you think she is, or how sexy her voice is, or how much you like her clothes or hair or anything else. Really. Don’t force your thoughts on random women. I promise you we don’t care.

This carried over for me even with my lady friends. I might venture to say I liked their shirt or something, but usually only if it had something geeky on it I was a fan of that we could then talk about. Outside of that, I just couldn’t. I was terrified of upsetting them.

ONCE while waiting to pick Susan up from work, I waved to a friend that walked by, and noticed her boots were just amazing. Just like fucking amazing, I’m telling you. And I dug them so much I texted to let her know that I thought they were great.

And then instantly chastised myself for it and was terrified it’d make her feel awkward or unsafe or any number of other things, despite us actually being very good friends. She replied and thanked me and all was well.

But that was enough to confirm for me I should never, ever do it again. It just wasn’t worth the risk. But now… now my friends know I’m not a dude, and don’t see me as one, and so… maybe it’s okay?

I still don’t think I’d compliment a total stranger on something, especially given I don’t exactly pass for a cis woman (passing is a whole other post for… another time), and you never know how someone’s going to react to trans folks.

But that’s entirely flipped the script, because now I’m worried for MY safety if I try to compliment them on something, especially given the (entirely bogus, made up, and completely unsubstantiated) view that the right wing peddles that trans women are all sex criminals.

Anyway eventually I felt comfortable enough to tell a lady I’ve been friends with for many years that she looked cute in a photo she posted. Another lady friend posted a pic from her wedding, and frankly she looked fucking amazing, and I told her so.

Neither of them felt uncomfortable with me doing so. It just seemed like it was maybe… fine? And an okay thing to do?

And honestly that’s something I never could have expected or even hoped for. And I’m thrilled. I love making other people happy, or being able to bring someone a smile, or letting people know I think they’re absolutely killing it at what they do.

And I’m not shy about that with their work, like art they create or stories they write or anything like that. But now I also feel I can maybe tell them if I think their hair looks amazing today or they look great in that photo they’re not sure about.

Annnnnd that’s a side-effect I never considered, but I’m so glad to find it’s happened. It feels like I can connect with friends who are ladies on a level I couldn’t before.

When you’ve spent most of your life feeling like you were drowning and cut off from everyone around you in the world, any level of connection feels extra special.

The other side of the compliment coin is that pre-transition, whenever *I* got complimented on anything having to do with my appearance or what have you… I couldn’t run away fast enough.

And it’s not just compliments in general, because if you compliment Susan’s and my writing, well, you are right to do so and I will thank you very much! (listen, we’ve worked very hard at it and have some level of confidence, don’t ruin it)

But any kind of comment at all on anything having to do with how I looked, even if it was just “hey, cool shirt!” made me want to run and hide. No no, don’t compliment that, it means you’re LOOKING at me and this weird man costume I don’t know how to wear!

I talked a bit about that, and how I always shrunk to make myself as unnoticeable as possible, and how allllll that changed after transition, in the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE. At the time, though, you’ll see it was still mostly speculation on my part.

But I was right (because I’m very smart) and you can see that play out in the Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.

Anyway I never got a lot of compliments on my appearance or anything physical, I was an average looking dude at best. And I mean I put no effort into it because being a dude was everything I hated, soooo…

Now, not only is that feeling gone, it’s quite the opposite (which I’m pretty sure is how compliments are supposed to work?). And it’s not just that I’m happy a friend likes something I’m wearing or the curls in my hair or whatever…

But it’s because there’s the added layer of being seen. And not just physically, but SEEN as a woman. I know that they see me as I truly am, and that’s… beyond amazing. See the Trans Tuesday on WHAT REAL CIS ACCEPTANCE LOOKS LIKE for what that can do to a person.

I’m not fishing for your compliments, truly! But I am agog at the realization that I will now be happy to receive them? Instead of running away screaming in terror? It’s a brand new experience.

So, ladies! Your hair’s beautiful, you look stunning in that outfit, and that photo is super flattering! You’re amazing and I adore you!

And I’ve got a lifetime to make up for, so I’m gonna tell you every chance I get.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something unique, problematic, and wonderful for most trans people (and cis people too, if we’re being honest): HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE, AND WHY MUST IT ALL BE SO WEIRD.

Every person, trans or otherwise, has a unique relationship with clothing. I’ve had a really weird relationship with clothes, for reasons that probably already make sense to you just from knowing I’m a trans woman.

I always found them a bit odd outside of practical uses. Shoes protect your feet, and socks protect your feet from getting blisters inside the shoes, sure. Great! Layers and coats keep you warm in the cold, yes. All of that makes sense.

And they can protect you from getting too much sun or a sunburn, they can keep… stuff… in the spot you want it kept in. Plus: POCKETS. And all of that has a definite logic to it.

Beyond that, however, I just never got it. Why do we even wear them? Because we decided it was uncivilized for us to all walk around naked, I suppose, but that’s… I dunno, not a great reason? It always baffled me.

I always had favorite shirts or pants or whatever, like anyone. But that was almost exclusively based around comfort. I never understood using clothes as a means of self expression, or appreciated them for their artistic value.

So fashion always mystified me. Why would anyone care about it? It just didn’t make sense. And it’s weird because I always appreciated every other form of artistic expression I came across.

And I think the reason for that relates to some of what I talked about in the Trans Tuesday on THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (makeup and hair dye and costumes and Halloween), because it all comes back to appearance.

I suppose because I felt like I was wearing a “cisgender straight boy” costume every second of my life, I didn’t put any real thought into, or even care about, what went on top of that costume. Except for… one thing.

I have always, always hated dressing up. HATED. IT. The thought of it actively repulsed me. My parents told me this just meant I preferred to dress more casual, but SURPRISE, that’s not it. And of course casual dress is not appropriate in all situations.

It’s suits I hate. Collared shirts. Ties. Because our society codes those as intrinsically MALE, and I’ve never felt like (or actually been) a man. And of course ladies and non-binary folks can wear suits, and look amazing in them!

I’ve never actually worn a suit, because you just could NOT get me into one. I’ve worn a tux exactly four times in my life… my senior prom, once to surprise Susan because she’d always wanted to see me in one, then again at our wedding, and in the one wedding I was best man for.

“Best man.” Ha. Hm. oof.

Anyway, thinking about those situations where I was going to be required to dress up… what if it would have been socially acceptable for me to wear a dress, and I didn’t feel scared out of my mind to do so?

My heart would have taken flight, left my body, and flitted up to the clouds, where it’d find a nice home for sale and would immediately move right in. I have no problem with occasions requiring “nicer” clothing, now that I know that doesn’t mean I have to wear a suit.

Part of my distaste for “guy clothes” stems from how horridly bland most of them are. For years and years I was so frustrated at how difficult it was to find anything that wasn’t black, gray, or blue (or sometimes brown, if you were a very lucky boy).

Beau Brummell was the bane of my existence. He’s the reason so much of men’s fashion sucks. Dark, drab colors! Suits! Ties! AUGH. Screw that guy. He was by all accounts also an unrepentant dick, so don’t feel too bad for him. This Esquire article on him is very good.

What the hell even IS a tie? A random useless bit of fabric you wrap around your neck? WHY? Nothing confused me like goddamned ties. Okay sure, you want some color in your suit… WHY NOT WEAR A DIFFERENT COLOR SUIT THEN MY DUDES?

There are so many colors in this world, and I love them. I love when they’re bright and vibrant and society tells us, no, those colors are not for cisgender men who want to be taken seriously. And that’s bullshit.

You can see the Trans Tuesday on UNEXPECTED BONUSES OF TRANSITION for more on how important color actually is to me, and how transitioning freed me up to like what I always liked but was told I wasn’t allowed to.

So the reason I hated suits and ties and dark colors is because they’re not ME, and that does come down to my self-expression. If they’re you, that’s GREAT. We should all express ourselves through our clothes however we want.

My rejection of those things, however, isn’t because I’m transgender or a woman… because again, I think ladies in suits can look AMAZING. But it’s because society codes those as “male” and that’s the absolute last thing I want to be.

But it’s also about how I feel. I don’t FEEL right in a tux. I own a lot of skirts and dresses, and HOOO let me tell you how polar opposite the feeling is when I wear it. This is undeniably GENDER EUPHORIA, which can be a key part of discovering how trans or cis you really are.

I’m still trying to figure out what my style is. It’s definitely girly, but it’s also kind of sporty at times, which probably tracks based on what I said in the discussion on THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

There will be an upcoming Trans Tuesday all about figuring out my style, now that I’m (maybe) honing in on it some. The first women’s clothes I owned were for running, which I mentioned in the Trans Tuesday on BODY HACKING.

The actual first (non-running) women’s clothes I bought were underwear, because obviously nobody would see them when I was out running errands or whatever. And I’m not going to get too TMI here, don’t worry.

The last thing I want to do is put an image of me in underwear into your head (too late, isn’t it?). But, like… the first ladies underwear I bought had donuts on them. And pizza. And robots. And hearts. And cherries. And a DeLorean. And BABY YODA.

Because you don’t just jump into weird sexy lingerie or whatever. Being transgender is not remotely the same as cross-dressing, or drag, or anything else. And all those things are FINE, I am not casting aspersions.

But they’re not the same as being transgender. Though trans folks, including me, can also certainly wear underwear of the sexy variety if we want to (I just put that image in your head now too, I guess, so SORRY but maybe also YOU’RE WELCOME).

Outside of all that, though, I still can’t usually stand anything remotely baggy. Which is a shame because, again, looser clothing looks amazing on all kinds of people.

But for so, so long, I wore baggy everything because it hid my body. I didn’t want the world to see it, and didn’t want to see it myself, because it made me feel awful for reasons I didn’t understand.

Er… except for my jeans, which well into my early 20s were far too tight because I didn’t know how to find the right size. Susan thankfully helped me fix that because 😬

Anyway, the baggiest thing I have now is one sweater, and I love it because it was the first (non-running) piece of (outer) women’s clothing I ever bought.

Because although it has a big neckline, it’s otherwise kind of gender-neutral and I could wear it without (in my mind) giving away my true self. So I love it for that reason, but was still a struggle for a long time.

Because anything even remotely loose or baggy is associated in my head with hiding myself and the awful dysphoric feelings that came with it. Which is not to say all my clothes now are skin-tight, but they’re definitely form fitting.

I hoped that would lessen over time… and to my surprise, it has! See the Trans Tuesday on PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE and you can see it happen in real time.

For basically my entire life pre-transition, I was SUPER uncomfortable with tank tops and never wore them. Having my arms exposed somehow felt more feminine, which terrified me. I got more comfortable with them the more I came to accept I was transgender, though.

Which is weird and bonkers, anyone should and can wear them if they want to. But everything gets so mixed up in your head (or it did in mine, anyway) when trying to decode all of this that it took me forever to figure that out.

And now, trying to determine what my style is and what I prefer is difficult for a number of reasons, because (spoiler alert) women’s clothes vary in sizing so much that the sizes are almost useless. You guy-clothes wearing folks seriously don’t know how good you have it.

I can’t just say I’m a “medium” and be done with it. Everything has chest and bust and waist and hip sizes, and even then everything varies by manufacturer and store.

On top of that, hi and hello I am 6’ 1/2” and did you know not many cisgender ladies are this tall? So women’s clothes that actually fit me are a trick to find. (I’ve found some now, this isn’t a call for a flood of links, but I thank you for your thoughtfulness)

But EVEN STILL, when I find things I like and that fit me, they don’t always fit right. My jeans are all baggy in the butt, because I HAVE NO BUTT. It’s flat as a sheet of drywall back there.

I may yet get MORE BUTT from hormone replacement therapy, but if so it’s not remotely begun to start yet. ANY TIME IT WOULD LIKE TO, however, would be good with me, and throw in some damned hips while you’re at it (more fun images for your head, I am here to serve).

And let me tell you about pockets, friends. Pockets pockets pockets.

In dude jeans I carried my wallet and keys in my left front pocket. My right held my iphone and there was STILL ROOM. I could fit my entire hand in either of them, up to the wrist.

But the pockets on my women’s jeans can hold… half my wallet, or half my phone. I mean, I knew before having women’s jeans of my own that the pocket situation for ladies was horrid, but I didn’t realize HOW horrid.

Why don’t women’s clothes have real pockets? It’s for all kinds of sexist reasons… that are ACTUALLY sexist. The “slimmer silhouette” is one reason, which is all part of upholding the sexist, patriarchal ideal of how a woman “should” look.

Another is because it literally puts women at a disadvantage. Sure, many women carry purses. And this is why. But think about that for a second.

My wallet, keys, and phone are going from a pocket held next to my body that there’s no way anyone could get to without my noticing… to an external bag that anyone could just grab and run away with. It instantly puts women at a disadvantage.

It also means it takes us longer to get anything we need, including perhaps items for self-defense (like phones to call for help, or pepper spray, or whatever else).

This Vox article about it is pretty good, and explains how the entire thing was rooted in misogyny and controlling women.

Here’s a choice quote. “Women’s pockets were private spaces they carried into the public with increasing freedom, and during a revolutionary time, this freedom was very, very frightening. The less women could carry, the less freedom they had.

“Take away pockets happily hidden under garments, and you limit women’s ability to navigate public spaces, to carry seditious (or merely amorous) writing, or to travel unaccompanied.”

So fellas, the next time you make fun of ladies for not having pockets or for asking you to hold their damn purse, maybe… DON’T do that and instead understand the horrid power play the lack of pockets is and how that affects everything women do, everywhere we go.

Hell, even BUTTONS are likely sexist and classist. Didja ever notice buttons on women’s clothes are on the opposite side as buttons on men’s clothes? Learning how to button the opposite way it worked my whole life has been really hard!

A tweet I made on Feb 4, 2023 that reads: so much of your life changes when you transition, but nobody ever tells you that the buttons switching sides on your clothes will be your undoing

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article on why buttons are the way they are, which ranges from men drawing swords to prove their manliness to rich white women having chamber maids who were dressing them.

All of which is to say… fashion and clothes are a form of self-expression, and that’s great. But don’t buy into whatever you’re “supposed” to wear because of your gender or body type or anything else.

Just be you, whoever that might be. And wear whatever the heck you want.

…except for neckties, which will forever be inherently bad and wrong, and should all be destroyed immediately. 😌

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

It’s me! In a black v-neck dress with white stars all over it! Yay!

BODY HAIR

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re gonna talk about BODY HAIR. What fun! …for some people, I guess? But not for me!

Before we get in to this, standard disclaimer that I can only talk about my own experiences and more general topics most transgender people have dealt with. I don’t speak for all trans people or all trans women, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Your frame of reference for this is that body hair is one of the things that spikes my GENDER DYSPHORIA.

I had a fair amount of body hair as a dude. I wasn’t like a bear or anything (not talking about the animals, and if you’re not familiar with that term… happy googling!) but neither was I some spritely nymph with skin as smooth as butter.

And so seeing the body hair I had always made me unhappy, and seeing it grow in now gives me a wonderful dysphoria spike. So I’ve got to remove it. And I think a lot of cisgender folks, even cis women, don’t know what that entails.

The first time I shaved my legs was… an experience. It gave me a feeling I’d later identify as gender euphoria, which is exactly what it sounds like, the polar opposite of gender dysphoria.

Shaving legs is something LADIES do (generally, if they want, up to them, also some guys do, but anyway) and then… maybe… I’M A LADY!?!? 😀

It was also TERRIFYING. I’m not sure how to accurately convey what it’s like to be doing something you think might make you feel better, but you’re not sure. And it can’t just be immediately undone.

So what if I hate it? What if it makes me feel no different at all? The latter was the biggest issue for me, because if it didn’t help then was I really trans? I mean yes, sure, you absolutely can be a trans woman and not want to shave your legs. But would *I* be?

It’s all so confusing at every step, and there was an even bigger question that plagued me about this, but I’m saving that for the end.

In any case, this advanced to shaving my armpits and then my arms and then my torso. Which is… a time-intensive process. Just your legs have SO MUCH SURFACE AREA that you never realize until you have to cover all of it.

The problem with shaving my legs is that for some reason the top of my thighs were ALWAYS a problem. Nicks and cuts and horrid razor burn ALL THE TIME. It was very vexing. I’d also routinely get nicks and cuts on my arms, all of this with a brand new blade.

And I’d have to do it, ALL of it… twice a week. Because even though I’m on HRT (hormone replacement therapy), which can possibly slow/thin body hair in trans women, that has not REMOTELY happened for me yet. And who knows if it ever will.

So I gathered up my courage and got myself one of those nasty ladies in the photo above.

If you’re too sweet and innocent to know what that instrument of pain and torture is, it’s an epilator. It has a drum that spins really fast, covered in tweezers, and it RIPS YOUR HAIR OUT BY THE ROOT.

If you’ve never used one… I envy you. Here’s a good way to picture the feeling in your mind. Have you ever plucked an eyebrow hair? Guys, seriously, grab a pair of tweezers and pull one out. Right now. I promise you no one will ever notice.

Okay, hurts like fuck, right? Now imagine about twenty of those at once, per second, sustained over a half an hour all over your body. Yeah that’s right, USING AN EPILATOR CERTIFIES YOU AS A BADASS.

Now these are generally designed/intended/marketed for cisgender ladies, which I bring up only because the instructions that come with it tell you that you should need to do it every three to four weeks.

Oh. OH. IT IS TO FUCKING LAUGH.

Because you lucky cis ladies don’t have hair that’s super thick, or that grows that fast… in general. I know that some of you do, and believe me, I feel your literal pain.

I have to epilate EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.

And did you know that you can’t JUST epilate? Oh no. Because if the hairs are too long, they’ll simply break, and then you end up still being hairy and with a lot of ingrown hairs knocking at the door and dropping off their bags for a long visit.

My epilator comes with an electric razor head I can swap in, and I have to use that first (also once a week!) to trim all the hair down so the epilator can function properly.

The first time I used the epilator, my body looked like I’d fallen into a vat of starving mosquitoes and decided to just camp out in there and chill out for a few hours. It was kind of horrific.

But your skin gets used to it, and now that only happens when I epilate over an area I’ve somehow missed every single time before (which still happens somehow, much to my dismay).

Also! Mine is waterproof and it suggested I epilate in the shower under running water. Which I do, and CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH. I do not know why this is, but it definitely lessens the pain.

I’ve kind of become weirdly fond of the feeling, probably because it hurts less after doing it so much and also because I can feel it wiping out dysphoria as I go. Your mileage may vary.

So what exactly does all this entail? Keep in mind I have to do ALL of this with the electric razor head first, and then the next day I cover the same areas with the epilator.

My toes. The tops of my feet. My ankles. All around my shins and calves. The top/front/sides/back of my knees. The latter is SUPER sensitive because how often does anything touch you there? I still often cut myself there just with the electric razor head.

Every side of my thighs/quads, all the way around. My hips. My lower abdomen. My stomach (WHY IS MY STOMACH SO FUCKING HAIRY UGGGGH), which is not easy because it’s soft and there’s a belly button there because I am a human person.

My torso, my boobs/cleavage (such as they are). The backs of my fingers. The back of my hand. My wrists. All sides of my forearms, inside/outside of my elbows, my upper arms, and the top of my shoulders.

Also I don’t know about anyone else because it would be a weird thing to ask, but my body hair seems to grow in all different directions! So I often have to epilate an area in four different directions to actually get as much of the hair out as possible.

The epilator has attachments it says make it less intense for “sensitive areas”, like armpits and even your face (AND OTHER ADULT PLACES… like bars and night clubs?). I am sad to tell you I will never be THAT brave. So I shave those areas manually with a hand-held razor.

One interesting thing is that the feeling of epilation is SO INTENSE that shaving afterward with a razor and some soap literally feels like I’m just rubbing a piece of silk on my body by comparison. It’s such a weird sensation!

It takes 40-45 minutes to cover all of that. So that’s a good hour and a half of my week, EVERY WEEK, taken up with this. I’m glad to do it, it makes me feel much better, but it always pisses me off that it eats so much of my time.

And if you missed my post on this being part of my own PRIVILEGE (time and money), and that I even have the luxury to do this, you can read more about that at the link.

Quick aside. I’ve found that Tend Skin, an alcohol-based aftershave, works WONDERS if I put it on right after epilating and then a couple times a day for the next day or two. Keeps any razor burn or ingrown hairs to a minimum. Highly recommended.

…but if you DO have any tiny nicks or cuts or ingrown hairs, it’s gonna STINNNNNG. But that’s fine, you just epilated! You’re a goddamned warrior.

I shave one day, epilate the next. Then I’ve got about two and a half days (sometimes a titch longer) of mostly hairless bliss.

By the next day I’ve got stubble. EVERYWHERE. Which just gets longer as the week goes on, until I shave it again. I do ALL OF THIS for not even three full days of peace per week.

Also when you have long hair, the loose ones that just normally fall out in the shower (or any other time) get stuck in your body hair stubble, which is SUPER fun to pick off of yourself all the time.

And I’m still privileged in other ways too, because imagine someone who also gets dysphoria from their body hair but can’t afford an epilator. Or who maybe has a hairy back and lives alone and has no way to remove it!

I’m very thankful my back is basically hairless. I’m sure Susan is too, because otherwise I’d have enlisted her into a ONE-WOMAN BACK SHAVING ARMY… and I suspect that’s not high on her list of things to experience.

I tried seeing if I could just shave with the electric razor head and not epilate… nope. The hair grows so fast I’d have to still do it twice a week, but since it only cuts the hair so close I was eternally covered in stubble.

And that made epilation take longer, because there was more stubble than usual, and it was a disaster all around. Also, to note, even after epilating, I can feel the stubble. It’s never all the way smooth and hairless. NEVER.

Maybe if HRT finally thins/slows my body hair someday it will be, but for now, this is where I’m at. And so here’s the other question that’s plagued me about this since before I was even sure I was transgender.

WHY does body hair bother me?

I have seen women with hairy legs and arms. It’s fine. Hairy anyone, who cares? People can (and should) be as hairy or hairless as they like. So why does it bother me? Why do *I* not want to be hairy?

Is it because I associate it with being a man, because I had body hair when I presented as/thought I was a man?

Or is it because our patriarchal, misogynistic society says “hairy = manly!” and “hairless = being a ‘good’ woman?” I think we’ve all seen the shit a cis woman has to deal with if she just decides to not shave her legs for a while.

If you’re not familiar with that, cis fellas, ask some of the ladies in your life.

Anyway, if it’s because of society teaching us bad things, aren’t I just confirming and feeding into that by shaving my legs and such? Is that bad? Should I just let it be and tell misogyny to go fuck itself?

And I’d never ask that question of any other person, cisgender or transgender or agender or anywhere else between. If they want to shave their legs or anything else, cool! They should! But when it comes to me, I feel like that doesn’t apply for some reason.

I don’t want to accidentally perpetuate stereotypes or feed into things that can be used to hurt/harm other people. That’s been done to me enough in my life.

All I’m left with is knowing I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t know why body hair spikes my dysphoria. It could be one reason or the other, or more likely some combination of both.

But what I HAVE figured out is that regardless of the reason, my body hair being gone makes me happy and lessens my dysphoria, and that’s a good enough reason for now. It’s got to be.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something that pops up often in life after you transition, and for lack of a better term I’m gonna call it: DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY.

This sort of thing has cropped up so many times, and in every instance it has been unintentional (at least as far as I can tell). So just to be clear I don’t think I, or trans people in general, have been the target of policies that were designed to hurt us ~in these instances.~

There are ABSOLUTELY laws and programs and policies around the country that ARE designed to actively hurt us, and they’ve ramped up this year in an astonishing way. If you’re not aware, there are presently TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY discriminatory laws on the way!
https://www.themarysue.com/why-are-there-so-many-bills-targeting-trans-kids

These are horrible and disgusting and the goal is to make it impossible for us to exist in society, and WE NEED YOU to stop them. Please see last week’s trans tuesday on PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP, and all the linked threads within on how to be the REAL ALLY we need.

But today I want to show you how even when there AREN’T 280 bills from jackass bigots trying to hurt us and legislate us out of existence, the way our society has been set up by and for cisgender people can cause problems you likely never thought about.

For the entirety of my medical transition, we’ve been with Kaiser (who, if you’re not familiar, are both a health insurance company AND a medical care provider). On the whole, my experience with them during transition has been relatively good.

But it hasn’t been perfect. I really wish they’d do informed consent for trans people, rather than the incredibly long phone call I had to have with a therapist where I had to “prove” I was a woman. See the trans tuesday on TRANS KIDS AND THE INTAKE EXAM.

And you can see how some of their staff just have no idea how to handle trans people, and/or some of them can be actively horrible (but some are also actively wonderful, aka they are humans). See NO ESCAPE 2: SOME ESCAPE (due to cis allyship).

Now you may be reading those and thinking HOLY SHIT, THAT’S “RELATIVELY GOOD”?? To which I say yeah, it has been. Because the alternative is so much worse. Plus there have been some genuinely wonderful moments, as you can read about in the original trans tuesday on NO ESCAPE (from my deadname and reminders that I’m trans).

But my endocrinologist has been really wonderful in every way, I adore him and he is genuinely concerned with being sure that my hormone replacement therapy is going the way *I* want it to. He’s not holding me to some fake arbitrary standard of “you must do X to be trans.”

If you’re unaware, endocrinologists handle HRT, which you can learn more about in its trans tuesday.

Although the flip side of that is my GP, while a very nice lady, seems to not have tons of experience with trans folks. And while Kaiser covers laser/electrolysis hair removal (facial hair is the absolute worst source of my gender dysphoria)…

…they wouldn’t cover it until my testosterone levels dropped below an arbitrary level. I’ve mentioned this before, but I could have signed up for gender confirmation surgery on the DAY the therapist confirmed I’m trans if I wanted to.

Because cis people decided THAT was what was most important to trans people, I guess? Never mind for me it’s never ever having to shave my face again, and I didn’t get authorization to do something about it until 18 months into my medical transition.

I still haven’t been able to start it, btw, because you have to have a mask off for that and I live with someone who’s immune-compromised. You can read more on the joys of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.

And they also keep reminding me to get a gynecological exam so… y’know, it’s give and take. See COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof).

Okay, so now that you’ve got the set up, let’s get into what I’m actually talking about in this particular instance. Some of the bureaucracy that just wasn’t designed to even take the existence of trans people into account.

Kaiser has digital medical records (one would hope, in 2022!) that all medical professionals there can access at any time, and which patients can also access at any time. It’s really nice, actually!

The problem is they have a… photo associated with your medical record. I suppose so no one else can say they’re you and surreptitiously get treated for a medical issue without paying? The horror.

I had honestly forgotten about this for a long time, because I hadn’t been going to appointments in person (due to the pandora’s box) and so I never saw it up on the computers in the exam room. All I’ve been doing in person are the required periodic lab visits for blood draws.

But during one of my voice therapy sessions, the speech therapist (who I ADORE, she’s just the absolute best) remarked that there was an “old” photo of me in there. And you know exactly what she meant by that.

And that obviously bugged me. I went into the Kaiser app, and there’s a spot where you can see your virtual insurance card, which you can use in place of the physical one when you need to show it for appointments and such. And there was that old photo.

Despite specifically going to see if it was there, I was somehow entirely unprepared for seeing that dude again, and it was… painful. Dysphoria exploded all over, and it just made me miserable. I needed it gone.

Because what if I needed to show it to someone? That is not REMOTELY what I look like now! They’d never believe it’s the same person (which is GREAT, yay HRT, I’ve come so far).

Plus every time *I* see it, it makes my dysphoria so, so, SO much worse. I cannot have that popping up in front of me all the time.

So I logged into the website, and I noticed there was a spot where I could upload a profile photo. I naively assumed uploading one there would change the one on my medical record/virtual insurance card, but nope.

I sent them an email and explained the problem. They said only the doctor who was my general practitioner could change the photo, contact her and ask her to do it. That seems a weird administrative thing to make a doctor do, but fine.

My doctor says… no, we don’t do that, you need to contact administration. So I do. I ask if they can just make my web profile photo my medical record/insurance card photo. Nope! Impossible.

And they NOW tell me there is no way whatsoever to do what I’m asking without me going in person and having someone at a Kaiser facility take my new photo.

Right in the middle of the delta wave of a horrid pancetta that’s killed a MILLION Americans, while living with an immunocompromised person, I had to go into a medical facility and remove my mask just so they could take a photo of me? And put my wife’s life at risk?

So sorry, they said, that’s company policy.

Well that company policy is BULLSHIT and it is DISCRIMINATORY TO TRANS PEOPLE, and I told them so. They’ve agreed my dysphoria is real and serious and needs medical treatment, but I have to be forced to have it WORSENED every time I open their app?

Or go to get labs? And then if one of their employees sees the old photo and thinks that’s not me, they could refuse to treat me? And then I have to explain to another stranger how I’m transgender?

All because you won’t change one fucking photo to not only be accurate to who I am, but to ALLEVIATE THE PROBLEM YOU ARE TREATING ME FOR?

Silence for a few days. Suddenly I find the profile photo I uploaded to the website has magically replaced the old photo (somehow! Goodness, I thought they couldn’t do that?), and they finally wrote me back and say I brought up valid concerns and they apologized.

They said they were internally addressing the policy, and I hope that’s true. I asked them to address it system-wide, so that no other trans people with Kaiser have to go through this. Maybe some extra good could come of it.

Sadly the EXACT same thing happened when I tried to update my name with them.

We had Kaiser via Covered California at the time, which is the state healthcare exchange set up as part of Obamacare. Kaiser told us to contact Covered California, Covered California told us only Kaiser could change it.

I got stuck in that loop FOR MONTHS, until our insurance CHANGED and we then got Kaiser through Susan’s employer. Then I was able to actually get it changed. Meanwhile, for 18 MONTHS of transition, I had to see my deadname on EVERY medication. Every day. Multiple times a day.

It’s like a dysphoria bomb in the medicine cabinet. And sure I could black it out with a marker or whatever, or turn the bottle so I don’t see it, but I would still know why both those things had been done. I’d still know it was there. Still reminded of it = still a problem.

So when it FINALLY changed with them and I got the first prescription with my real name on it, I cannot tell you the relief it brought. I STILL have many bottles with my deadname on them, and will until those medications run out and are refilled. But it’s progress, at least.

I say all of this just to show you how every little facet of life can change when you transition, and how so much of the world we live in just isn’t at all made to consider our existence. And it all adds up, and makes it much tougher for us to just live in this world.

Also, hey, look at that poor, miserable egg. That photo was taken before I even consciously knew, even though the subconscious signs were always there. But look who was inside all along. I wish the world made it easier for us to get from A to B.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re talking about something a LOT of people have asked me about: MY TATTOO. And what may surprise you is that it’s 100% tied in with my transition, because what this is really about is: BODILY AUTONOMY.

Back in April of 2022, I went in two three-hour sessions to get my first tattoo. And it’s pretty big, it covers the entire outside of my right arm. And that only seems fitting because I have this trait of throwing my whole ass right into everything my first time.

No small one on my ankle, nothing hidden where you won’t see it. This is huge and highly visible. And that’s just kind of the way I am. When I first had the idea to make audio dramas, before “podcasts” were even a thing, did I start with just one? Okay, yes. BUT-

To do so I decided to just found an entire company, Pendant Productions, because from the very beginning I knew it wouldn’t be JUST one. One day it wasn’t a thing I did, and the next day it was a thing I did a LOT, all the time. This happened with writing. This happened when I met Susan!

It even happened when I picked my new, true name. Sure I thought about it for a while, considered different options, but then I hit on Tilly and I knew it. That was IT. And I never looked back. No need to try any others. I just threw my entire self at it.

You can read more about that in the trans tuesday on NAMES AND PRONOUNS.

And you can even see it in the pre-coffee thoughts I post across all my social media every morning while I’m waiting for the caffeine to hit me. One day I did it on a lark because I thought it was funny, and I’ve just… done it every single morning since. And I love it! But anyway.

All my life I thought tattoos were cool (because they are, and LADIES with tats are certified HAWT). But I never ever thought about getting one, never wanted one for myself, didn’t understand how anyone could want something on their body for the rest of their lives.

I didn’t know WHY I felt like that. And I didn’t know WHY that changed suddenly a few years before my coming out when I knew I really wanted one, even though I didn’t yet know exactly what it would be.

In fact, it wasn’t even until I’d set things in motion to obtain it… found an artist, discussed the design, had a consulting session, and booked the first appointment that I even really realized it was tied in with my transition.

But it is, in absolutely every way. To be clear, I don’t think I needed this tattoo to fully transition to the woman I’ve always wanted to be (and have always been on the inside), but I DID need it to fully transition to the real ME I’ve always been.

And this is why I say it’s complicated, because the ME I am IS a woman. Waaaay back when I first started trans tuesdays I mentioned figuring out I was trans was like untying a giant knot, because so many (likely EVERY) aspect of my life was intertwined with it.

So it’s all connected in ways I’ve tried to explain, ways I can’t explain, and ways I don’t even still fully understand myself. This is why I repeatedly tell you that trans people likely know themselves better than anyone else on earth knows themselves. Because we HAVE TO.

There’s no other way to shed the expectations and baggage of the cis binary matrix of society to become who we’ve always really been. But I digress (but only kind of, because again, it’s all connected).

If you want a little more on the things society saddles us with, which are so very often entirely untrue and restrict us in all kinds of ways you might not have realized, see the trans tuesday on THE FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Once I realized the tattoo was somehow, in some murky way I couldn’t identify, tied in with my transition, the ol’ Introspection Drive kicked into high warp and off I went, examining every facet of my life and choices as related to wanting some ink on my skin forever.

I’ve always thought they were cool, but why did I never want one? Why did that suddenly change? Once I hit upon the idea and design for it, why did I throw my whole ass at it and not even consider other ideas/designs? Why was THIS the one?

It’s… heavy stuff, even when it’s not life or death. But I want to figure these things out, I want to KNOW myself, know who I am, and WHY I am who I am. Because the truth of that was kept from me for my whole life by people with a vested interest in maintaining the cis status quo.

For seemingly innocuous ways that impacted my life, see the trans tuesday on SEARCHING FOR MEANING (when you’re trans and don’t know it).

And for incredibly heavy, life-altering ways it impacted my life, see the two part trans tuesday on TRANS GRIEF.

So what I realized is that the reason I never thought tattoos were for ME, never thought there was ANYTHING I’d want on my body for the rest of my life… is because:

my body

never

felt

like

mine.

I don’t know how to explain this to cis folks, who’ve always felt like your body was yours. And I’m not saying you’ve always been happy with your body or anything. Hell, our society doesn’t ever want that for anyone, does it?

But you’ve never felt like your entire body was the wrong gender and thus not yours (if you have, uhhhhh that’s what we call gender dysphoria and I have some big news for you).

Now I’m sure for some trans folks out there, they got tattoos before they transitioned (or even knew they weren’t cis) as a way of exercising bodily autonomy in what little ways they could. That’s completely valid, and honestly I wish I’d felt that way too.

But for me, my body never felt like mine, so I felt like… I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to? Like I didn’t have the right to? And like it would only make me miserable somehow (because it would be a change I wanted, but not ALL the changes I wanted to my seemingly cis man body).

I honestly think having the tattoo before I knew I was trans, or once I knew but still had to wait years to start my transition, it would be a reminder of all that I DIDN’T have. That would add crushing sadness on top of the sadness and despair gender dysphoria already brought.

Again, see the trans tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that horrible monster.

What I do know is that once I was sure I was trans, but knew I had to wait to transition and I began slowly exploring my transness… it was then that I knew the tattoo was coming.

Because I had a photo of… well let’s call it a loose inspiration for my tattoo… as the lock screen on my phone for FOUR YEARS STRAIGHT. I went back and checked the date on it, because I knew that the day I downloaded it to my phone I made it my lock screen.

I wanted to see it there, every day, to remind me. To be sure it was something I still loved a year (then also, two, three, and four!) down the line, but also it was kind of inspirational, I guess. Because I knew something like that was going on MY body… someday.

I knew it wouldn’t be until after I’d transitioned, though. My transition may never really be over, it’s a process and not a goal with a fixed end, I think. Though some trans folks do get to a point where transition is “done” and they’re all set. I can only hope I find that day too.

But it was realizing that I knew, even back then, that I wouldn’t get the tattoo until AFTER I transitioned when it clicked into place for me. If it was going to be on MY body for the rest of my life, well:

it

needed

to

be

MY

body.

And note it wasn’t like I got this tattoo right after coming out to friends and family, or even after coming out to the world. In fact it was over two years after the day I knew I’d transition for sure, and nearly two years after I came out publicly.

But it took me until then to finally put things into motion. Because only then was I starting to REALLY feel like I was… me. I mean it’s still growing more and more every day, which is great. But around two and a half years in, I passed a point where it felt like I turned a corner.

And amazingly you can see this in three trans tuesdays that were released basically back to back. First, in CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD when gatherings of strangers turned from terrifying to electrifying.

And then in FREEING UP MY BRAIN aka LUNCH WITH TILLY, where lessened or absent dysphoria opened me up to an entire world of experiences that I’d missed out on for my entire life.

And then in PHOTOS 2 aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE, when photos of myself just… STOPPED giving me dysphoria, which I never ever ever thought could happen. All three of these things occurred in succession as I approached two years of social/medical transition.

So looking back now, it’s no surprise at all that this is also when I put things into motion to get my tattoo. I was finally ready for the “final” (ha) piece of completing the ME I want to be, and so off I went to do just that.

Another interesting thing happened in searching for the right artist, in that one I was talking to early on kind of insulted the mock-up of my design I had, and basically refused to do it. She wanted me to just TELL her what I wanted and let her create it from scratch.

Now look, I know tattoo artists are ARTISTS, but that seemed… extreme? That may work fine for some folks, but not for me. Not for THIS. Because it’s going on MY body, so it has to be what *I* want.

And a good friend helped crystallize it for me: I’d spent MY ENTIRE LIFE being told what I could and could not do with my body. “You are a man, and you must be tall and wide and show no emotions but anger and lust. You are NOT a woman, and cannot be one!” Well.

Fuck that noise.

We can be, and actually ARE, who we know we are on the inside. And this is why it’s really a BODILY AUTONOMY issue, because here was this tattoo artist again telling me I couldn’t do WHAT I WANTED WITH MY OWN BODY.

So I found another artist who was willing to work with me, who naturally had his own ideas and tweaks, but made sure every step of the way we were staying true to the vision of what I wanted. Anything that didn’t work for me went right out, without protest.

And through about seven hours of pain (it hurt way more than everyone told me it would, sorry to say, ESPECIALLY on the inside/outside of the elbow where it was all I could do to not run away screaming), and weeks of healing, it was done. It’s there. It’s part of me. It’s ME.

To folks who kept me distracted from the pain by peppering me with questions during both tattooing sessions, thank you. If you missed those, you may find them entertaining. Check the replies and quote tweets to the replies here.

And here’s more from session two.

Every time I see my arm I smile. It makes me SO HAPPY. It has NINE different, distinct meanings for me, and no I will not explain any of them to you.

Look, I bleed all over the page for you in these essays, I pour out my heart and my soul, I try to be as open about everything as I can possibly be. But this? This is just for me, which is why I will not explain it. But go ahead and guess if you want, that could prove highly entertaining. 😌

And if you’re not yet aware that all the legislative attacks on trans people AND the legislative attacks on abortion/birth control/the right to choose are THE SAME ISSUE, now you know. It ALL comes back to BODILY AUTONOMY and the cishet white men who want it only for themselves.

If you want more on how trans people are often ignored in the fight for bodily autonomy, please see the trans tuesday on TRANS RAGE aka STOP FORGETTING ABOUT US.

You get one life in this world. One body. Make it your own, make it your home, make it YOU in whatever way that means. If I can do it, so can you. It’s true!

I believe in you.

Nine meanings. Seven hours. One body. One life.

Make it yours.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillystranstuesdays.com

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Full arm view.

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Bicep view.

My right arm showing a tattoo: an old banner with the words LADY VICTORY on it, surrounded by a skull with a pink bow, five pink stars, and many sharp, curving lines. Forearm view.

FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka lunch with Tilly)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! WARNING: this thread is gonna make you hungry. It’s a necessary evil. Maybe it’ll inspire you? The weirdest thing is you might not expect that given the actual topic: FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka LUNCH WITH TILLY).

This is very much related to CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD, and in fact I had planned to do this one first, but then I decided to do last week’s thread while it was still fresh in my mind, so I swapped them. If you missed it, please check it out.

You also cannot understand this thread, not really, if you don’t have a basic understanding of GENDER DYSPHORIA.

Please pay special attention in both of those essays to my attempts to describe the feeling of gender dysphoria, of trying to exist and move through the world while dealing with everything dysphoria causes and brings with it.

This thread is one I couldn’t have done early on in my transition, when I first started Trans Tuesdays. And there’s two reasons for that. One, I honestly had no idea this was even a thing, so it wasn’t even on my radar. No hint of it anywhere on my giant list of topics to cover.

But the second reason is it wasn’t something that happened to me until I was well into my transition, and I only realized what was behind it and that it was even related to my transition at all a short while ago.

See the trans tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo) for another instance of not knowing at first that something in my life was connected to my transition at all, and how I slowly figured out that it was almost ENTIRELY connected to my transition.

So what in the sparkly pink heck am I talking about when I say FREEING UP MY BRAIN? Okay, so here’s the thing that you might not have realized, and that I only discovered rather recently.

Dysphoria is so awful, and so intense (and again, remember I don’t have it nearly as bad as some other people do) that it OCCUPIED SO MUCH OF MY BRAIN POWER there wasn’t a whole lot left over for other things.

I’m not saying it made me less intelligent, or made me less capable of doing the things that I wanted to… except that actually it DID, but in ways I didn’t realize. I shall endeavor to explain, but this is another one of those topics that’s really hard to put into words.

Okay so if you’ve been reading these for a while you know I’m a writer, and I write as part of a team with my lovely, smart, funny, beautiful, charming, extremely talented wife Susan, and have for a long time (if you’re new, first off: Hi! Glad you’re here! And also: now you know.).

And while we’ve gotten better and better as time goes on, as any writer would hope to be the case, I don’t really feel like just because I’ve transitioned it’s made me a better writer personally. I was able to save enough brain power and creativity for that.

But we only have so much mental and emotional energy to go around, right? So between that and everything dysphoria saddled me with, and being a parent, what I’ve discovered is I didn’t have any reserves for much of anything else.

Again going back to the previous threads on dysphoria and going into an entirely new situation with entirely new people as myself for the first time, you can see how difficult social interactions and situations were for me.

You can see where I thought this was starting to change somewhat in the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE, which originally came roughly eight months into my transition, even though it was largely speculation due to still being trapped in a pandemic.

I actually started my physical transition long ago, in 2015, years before even officially choosing to transition, when I was just slowly exploring things and decided to start making my body more like the one I wanted, since I knew I had to wait until 2020 to fully being transition anyway. See my the trans tuesday on BODY HACKING.

As part of what I needed to motivate myself to actually DO all the exercising I wanted to do, and not weasel out of it, I began rewarding myself with cheat days. I try to eat fairly well, but if you read my thread on my tattoo you know I tend to go overboard with things.

Years back my doctor told me I needed more fiber, and the next day I changed to a super high fiber diet and the result was uhhhhh recently I discovered I overdid it and had been getting way too much and had to cut back. Why am I like this? Goodness.

ANYWAY, I’ve always been incredibly food motivated. I have a SUPER metabolism, and I’ve been dismayed at its slowing as I’ve aged, even though it’s still probably much faster than most people’s. I got it from my dad! I talked about that in the trans tuesday on PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU.

Because I miss being able to eat like I did when I was a kid on the track and cross country teams, and because it’s one of the only connections to my dad that I have, all my exercise is also a way of maintaining that metabolism as best I can.

It’s weird to feel that how quickly I can process foods I eat, a biological process I have minimal control over, is an emotional connection to someone long lost, but life is weird and funky, my friends.

So my reward system became: if I did ALL my exercising for the week (not counting things I missed that were not my fault, like not being able to run if it’s pouring rain), Friday became my cheat day, and I’d allow myself to eat anything I wanted. Like I did in high school.

It worked. It SUPER worked. So much so it’s STILL working for me something like six or seven years later. Whatever it is that you find sparks that motivation in you, folks, grab onto it and don’t let go. It can be so effective.

But for the longest time, my Friday lunches would be a mix of just a handful of things… places I’d been going for years, things I always liked, things I knew. Things that were FAMILIAR.

As a kid you’re subject to your parents’ whims when it comes to food. I wasn’t raised with much of a varied food selection. If it didn’t come from a box or a can, it wasn’t something my parents really ever made. Though we had spices, I don’t think they ever got used.

As an example, our sloppy joes were: ground beef, sugar, and ketchup. That’s, uh… well. It’s something.

Most of it was generally bland, processed “American” food. And on the rare occasions we ate out, it was places that also kind of fit that bill. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendys, Taco Bell. Rarely it might be Arbys! So exotic. (listen I still love the Bell, but authentic it is not)

And then during this pandemonium (last fall, I think?) I realized that my Friday lunches brought me so much joy, I wanted to share that with others. Maybe it would bring a bright spot into your week, too. And we all need that.

So I started posting photos of my Friday lunches, and encouraging you to treat yourself to a nice lunch too, and trying to provide a little positivity because I’m so happy you made it through another week with me. It’s hard out here, and I really genuinely care about all of you.

And that started with mozzarella sticks, and mac and cheese (albeit a fancier, not boxed kind), and an AUTHENTIC Mexican burrito from a local place we love that was familiar to me… that I only ever tried because a friend said they were going there and would get me something.

Then we went to authentic Mediterranean kebabs and falafel that was familiar to me… that I only ever tried because Susan really wanted to go there. Then it was Chinese food… from Panda Express (which I love, no lie). And fab onion rings.

And homemade Christmas cookies my grandma used to make, and pizza, and pasta with Susan’s mind-blowing homemade Italian sausage sauce, and donuts.

Now HOLD UP. What is this? This is… pad thai? From an authentic Thai food restaurant near us? I had NEVER had Thai food before. EVER. In my entire life. I never thought about it. I never considered going there. But this day I did. Why?

I didn’t want to keep repeating the same stuff, because I wanted more variety for YOU. But… I also wanted more variety for ME? I always, ALWAYS had. BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IT. Because here’s the kicker:

Dealing with dysphoria, and trying to pretend to be a man I didn’t know how to be, and the way it kept me separate from the world, and then being overwhelmed being myself for the first time in my life and not knowing how to be the REAL me in the world for a long time…

TOOK UP SO MUCH OF MY BRAIN POWER I ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT HANDLE NEW EXPERIENCES. I had nothing left over for them. This is why I HATED going to new places and meeting new people and trying new things.

For all the reasons mentioned in the previous threads (how awful it made me feel, how miserable it made me, how scared I was), but ALSO because I just did not have anything (not ANYTHING!) left over to process new things that I did not know how to react to.

This is another way dysphoria was keeping me from truly living and experiencing this world, experiencing LIFE, that I didn’t even realize was a thing until a few months ago.

Because I started wondering WHY I was suddenly trying Thai food and didn’t feel overwhelmed by it at all. It was EXCITING. And I LOVED IT.

And the reason was that I hit a point in my transition where my dysphoria lessened enough that I suddenly had the energy to deal with new things!

I don’t know what the turning point was, or why. I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe it’s as simple as finally, FINALLY feeling (mostly) at home in my body for the first time in my entire life. Maybe enough changes happened that it all added up to something substantial.

Whatever the cause, I discovered I had SO MUCH MORE ENERGY to handle things! And I wanted to know all the things I’d been missing out on. SO VERY BADLY. I love pad thai?? I didn’t know that about myself! What else do I love??

Hawaiian barbecue! Authentic Mexican tacos! Ribs from that place that cooks them outside that I was always afraid to go to because I didn’t know where/how you bought them and having to ask someone terrified me! Authentic tikka masala!

Authentic ramen! Authentic pho!

And okay yes I still love stuff I’ve always loved, like more pizza and big sandwiches (but the sandwich was from a place I’d never been, and old me would have considered it “weird” and been afraid to try it) and hash browns and patty melts!

But I’m also still trying stuff I’ve never ever had before but want to. Like bibimbap!

And this is why it ties in so strongly with last week’s thread on going out into the world, to new places with new people, and HAVING NEW EXPERIENCES (which is what all these new foods are).

When you remove (well I don’t know if it’s “removed,” but it’s DRAMATICALLY lessened) gender dysphoria from the equation, there is

SO

MUCH

MORE.

So much more to life, so much more that we’re capable of, so much more happiness and joy to be found JUST FROM EXISTING. Entirely unrelated to my gender at all!

YES being the woman I am makes me ecstatic, GENDER EUPHORIA is very very real. And you cis folks can, and DO, experience it too.

But the not-so-simple fact of gender dysphoria occupying SO MUCH LESS of my every waking moment means I’m living, TRULY LIVING, for the first time in SO MANY NEW WAYS.

I want that for you. For ALL of you, trans or not. I would LOVE to have lunch with you. ANY TIME. Please! Let’s! And if we can’t do that in person, let’s do that here.

Let’s try new things, and celebrate life, and celebrate LIVING.

Together.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

HAIR 2 (my first haircut)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is a follow-up to a previous one, and is one (to my surprise!) several people have been asking me about and wanting to see recently so… here we go. HAIR PART 2: aka FIRST HAIRCUT. Of my life!

For much added context, please see my first thread on my HAIR.

And for more added context, please see my thread on the extra difficulty of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.

All caught up? Great, here we go! (deep breaths, deep breaths) So as I mentioned in the pandemic transition thread, I had an appointment set up with a trans-friendly stylist recommended to me by my lovely, wonderful friend Barbra. And that appointment was two days ago.

SO WHAT HAPPENED? Reader, let me tell you. A week before I started getting really excited, but that so very quickly turned into utter terror. Not because I was worried about the stylist being anti-trans or anything, I trusted the recommendation.

But because I started to realize how much of myself, and my new, growing, developing sense of identity was tied up in my hair. I love how long it is. I love how nutso curly it is. It makes me feel like ME. And I was incredibly afraid of how I was going to feel afterward.

Because what if I hated it? What if the one and only thing about my physical body that I find pure and wonderful all the way through, that brings me basically no dysphoria… changed? What if it gave me MORE dysphoria?

I’ve linked to the essay on GENDER DYSPHORIA what feels like an infinite number of times, but almost everything comes back to that for me, so it’s there if you need a refresher (or if you’re new, hey, hi!).

I’m overcome with fear and sadness just thinking about it, and the appointment’s already in the past! But that’s what dysphoria does to you… you’d do almost anything to lessen it (or I would, anyway), and the thought of it somehow getting worse is utterly devastating.

Yet I had a feeling that if bangs were possible, IF if if, such a big if. But IF they were, it might make my dysphoria better, because such a large part of it for me revolves around my face. And I thought bangs might reshape it just enough to make it better.

Just sitting here typing these thoughts out I can feel my chest tightening and my pulse quickening. It hurts. And it’s already over and I know how it went! It’s such an unbelievably powerful thing, and I don’t have it half as bad as some people do.

In any case, as the day of the appointment got closer and closer, it became really hard to concentrate on or even think about anything else. It occupied almost all of my thoughts. I was so scared of coming out the other side of it closer to who I was before transitioning.

Which is a little nuts on the surface, it’s not like I was going to ask for my old buzz cut back. But I just… I don’t know. I guess my hair has become this symbol to me of the REAL me. It’s the first thing I did to transition, the first (and still only) thing to give me nearly zero dysphoria.

It’s the most ME part of me, if that makes any sense. And so anything that might make it feel less like ME meant moving me back toward the costumed shadow of a human I used to be. And when I tell you that feels like the water’s back to drown me in misery again…

Not only do I not want to go back to the shell that wasn’t me, I can’t. I CANNOT. It feels like it would crush the life out of me. It would crush the ME out of me, and that happened for too long.

I can’t let the me who never got to BE go through that. I won’t. So I was just an emotional wreck. The nerves were really hard to deal with. And yet they were super familiar, because I’ve been there before. A lot.

The first time I put on a dress. The first time I put on makeup. The first time I came out to Susan, to our kid, to my friends, to the world. The first time I stepped outside dressed as ME and not in a very poor “this is what cis guys look and act like, right?” costume.

And knowing the fear seemed insurmountable at those times, and yet I did it anyway, got me through. If I did it then, I could do it now. No, I don’t know what’s going to happen… it could be bad, but it could be GREAT. Let’s find out.

When I told you in the essay about COURAGE how it was a recurring theme in a lot of trans lives, this is part of what I was talking about.

Sometimes the only way to know if things might get better is to risk them possibly getting worse, right? That’s kind of the nature of our existence in a lot of ways, I suppose. For all of us, regardless of if you’re trans or cis.

Every new relationship forms because we open ourselves up to the possibility of it going horribly wrong, because we dare for the potential of it going right and the wonders that lay on the other side of that.

So I went to the appointment. The stylist was lovely and amazing and thought I could, indeed, do bangs. She thought they’d work, and could help reshape my face a bit (which I mentioned I wanted, she didn’t just offer that unbidden, that’d be weird).

We talked over some options, she showed me possibilities, asked tons of questions. She trimmed about three inches off the length, enough to get rid of the dead ends but keep it long enough that it still made me happy.

And I sat there feeling like I was at the top of a mile high drop on a roller coaster as I watched the scissors cut a TON of hair off, right in front of my eyes, to form bangs. I was so scared and probably failed to hide it.

And here we are. I have bangs… and they curl. A lot. Sometimes in weird ways and I have to fight with them to make them look intentional and not like I live in a wind tunnel, and I don’t care. I love them. I can SEE them with my eyes, boinging around up here.

When you spent 90% of your life with a 1/8“ buzz cut, you never see your own hair. But now I ALWAYS see it, and it’s a constant reminder. I’m seeing ME. The real me. She’s here now, and she’s not going anywhere.

Open yourself up to those possibilities, they may just go right. This one did, and it made the lady in the mirror so much closer to the real me I’ve longed to see.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

HAIR

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re going to talk about something that I suspect is pretty personal and big for most trans people: HAIR.

I’ve mentioned before how I was pretty sure I was transgender for a long time, years in fact. But I had a hard date where I knew, even if I WAS trans, I wouldn’t start transitioning before then. So I took my time.

And one of the first things I did was decide that I’d grow out my hair. You have to understand what a huge thing this was for me, because… if you weren’t familiar with me pre-transition, I had about a 1/8“ buzz cut for all of my adult life.

It happened not long after I moved out on my own, and I’ll tell you what prompted it. As a kid, I never had much in the way of a hairstyle. When I was little I had bangs and my hair was pretty straight, though I had a few cowlicks that gave me fits.

But when I hit middle school my hair just started growing… up? And out? It was weirdly poofy for reasons I did not know. But hanging flat was not a thing it did anymore. I got made fun of for it a lot (among other things, like my nerdiness and my… “big lips”???)

So now, on top of being miserable in my own body all the time, I had this extra external source of discomfort that people were calling out, which made me even more uncomfortable. When I moved out, I decided to just get it buzzed because it was “easier” and “low maintenance.”

Those things are certainly true, and on top of that for a very long time we were very poor, so buying one pair of clippers and then just buzzing my head again every couple months saved money, so it felt like a win-win-win.

AND SHE NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT AGAIN. For a very long time, anyway. Because I actually quite liked never having to think about it or worry about it, and reader if you’ve been paying attention I bet you know why that is.

I shall direct you to the Trans Tuesday on THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (Halloween and makeup and hair dye).

I was afraid of what would happen if I grew it out. And, like, what would that be? Literally nothing except how it would make me FEEL, and there you have it. The thought would have made me shrivel.

So it was easier to not examine that, to bury it super deep and pretend it didn’t exist. I just “didn’t have the time” to worry about a hairstyle, “didn’t care” about that shit and why would anyone?

That also ties right in on my pre-transition feelings on clothes and fashion, because again I will remind you all of these things are interconnected and you can’t really separate one aspect from the others. But I can’t talk about them all at once and so, see the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.

In order to actually grow my hair out, EVEN WHEN ALREADY SUSPECTING I WAS TRANS, I had to have a “reason.” I had to give myself permission somehow, because doing it just because I might be trans and to see how it made me feel was unacceptable for some reason.

Maybe because this level of self-examination is really difficult? I don’t know. I try to be as kind to myself through all of this as I would be to anyone else, but it just took me SO LONG it really frustrates me.

Anyway, my “excuse” was that my grandfather was bald as a cue ball, and so what if that would happen to me too? And I’d never experienced what having long hair was like, so I’d best grow it out just in case, before I didn’t have the option.

Like, lady, listen. You were trying, but talk about some lame bullshit. But to all the people who knew me when it was growing out and I was presenting as male, and you asked about it getting longer… when I told you that about my grandfather, I wasn’t lying!

I really (partially) believed it at the time. I had to, or I’d have never been able to make that leap. And even still, the fear was so strong… this was as far as I got:

That was it. I… LIKED it, but liking it made me SO UNCOMFORTABLE that I made up another excuse about how it wasn’t worth the extra time it took to shampoo/comb/etc. and then I buzzed it all back off again.

And it broke my heart. And that alone was so difficult to deal with. I’d done it to myself, sure, but the bigger issue was being so upset about it was a big indicator to me. And you might not think so, because of course men and non-binary people can have long hair too.

And my hair wasn’t even that long! I mean look at that photo, it was still pretty damned short. But it was enough of an indicator to me of where things were going, and the truth I’d buried, that it was hard to deal with.

It absolutely rocked my world, and the fallout from that took me a long time to get over. I don’t know how long it was before I decided to try growing it out again. It was a while. Might have even been a year or more.

But when I finally worked up the courage to give it another go, that’s basically when I knew. It was the first thing I did to begin transitioning, even though I still wasn’t 100% sure.

I mean in hindsight I WAS sure, I think, but I needed that safety net of saying I didn’t NEED to be sure yet, because I couldn’t do anything permanent until that certain far-off date anyway.

And I remember this one day I was at Costco standing in line for hot dogs (I am predictable, yes, but Costco hot dogs are also impossibly good). And this woman behind me asked about my hair.

At this point it wasn’t even long, per se, maybe just an inch more than in that photo above. But much to my surprise it was coming in… WAVY? What? Why? It’s a mystery. But the hair on the back of my head had this deep wave in it, and she loved it.

She wanted to know if I’d used some product to get that effect, or if it was natural. And uh… nope, it just came in like that? Even though it never used to? I have no explanation.

But the feeling her words gave me was something I’d never really experienced before. And that held true for all of growing it out… the first time it was long enough that I could feel it swaying on the back of my neck was just extraordinary.

The first tiny ponytail I could manage sent. me. to. the. MOON. Every new milestone in length was this burst of joy in my heart. Even now, I’m terrified to even trim it because it means so much to me. Which is weird, it’ll grow back, but feelings aren’t always logical.

I love having it down, but for sleep and exercise I am she of the big floofy high-pony, and I love watching it bounce and flop and sway when I turn my head. Why? I dunno. It’s a super visible sign, to me, that I’m a girl? Maybe?

And it’s so long that when I’m doing push ups, even pulled back in that high ponytail, it flips down over the top of my head and smacks me in the eyes. Which is super annoying and yet somehow also great at the same time.

It’s a little longer than this now, but this is basically what it looks like if I don’t put any product in it (I know the photo’s blurry, I’m sorry, but it’s the one that best shows how tight the curls are and it does not hurt my bicep is bitchin’).

It’s a frizzy mess, and tangles really easily, but I dig how tight the curls are. I didn’t think I would. I never imagined myself with hair like this because as a kid it was straight. I had no frame of reference, but I’ve come to kind of love it. Because it’s mine.

A buncha ladies gave me curly hair tips, but I haven’t really had a chance to try any of those things yet (cue me glaring at the entire world on fire). I hope to have the time soon, though. If you’d like to give me any tips of your own, I’d love to hear them.

Because I have no fuckin’ idea what to do. I have shampoo and conditioner meant for curly hair, which I think are working okay but I have nothing to compare it to so… dunno?

I also think I’d like to try having bangs, but I don’t know if that’d work with the kind of hair I have, or even look weird since it’s so curly. Though the curls seem to form well lower than where bangs would be, so maybe?

I found a trans-friendly hair stylist with her own salon nearby, but (again looks at the entire world on fire). I don’t know when or if she’ll be open again, so once enough people are vaccinated against covid we’ll have to see.

And quick aside, if that’s something you’ve never had to deal with, that’s every aspect of trans life. I can’t just find a hairstylist or salon that seems good, because they might be hostile to trans people and I do not need that in my life. No one does.

I pine for the day I can ask an experienced person if bangs would work on me, and if not, what the hell else I could possibly do with this hair. Because I have no idea.

In the meantime, I’m using Controlled Chaos curl creme, which relaxes the curls a bit but keeps them untangled and manages the frizz, and it smells nice. But it’s $30 for a kind of small tube, so I don’t use it more than a couple times a week.

I think it looks pretty nice with that stuff in it? Anyway I know it’s hard, but try not to be too afraid of digging deep within yourself. Because you maybe might love what you find, and that’s a good thing.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

TRANS MOTIVATION

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re discussing how wanting, NEEDING to transition to our true selves can provide us with a seemingly infinite wellspring of incentive to accomplish things we never thought we could. We’re talking TRANS MOTIVATION.

Somewhat related to this is the trans tuesday on TRANS COURAGE, which isn’t something any of us should HAVE to have just to be our true selves, but the bottom line is our society doesn’t work that way.

And very very much related is the trans tuesday on BODY HACKING, though perhaps not in the way you think.

When I talked in the essay on body hacking about how exercise helped me get away from the “dad bod” that gave me dysphoria, and how it was an early and “socially acceptable” way for me to begin transition before I could medically or socially transition…

What I want you to understand is that prior to that, I’d tried for years and years and years to exercise regularly. And I’d always fail at keeping it up. And I know this happens to a whole lot of us, trans and cis alike. It can be tough to maintain.

And I’d get busy and feel I just didn’t have the time, or I’d be tired from *gestures vaguely at the entire world* and just not feel like I was up to it. And then what little shape I’d gotten back into I would fall out of.

So whenever I decided I needed to try to get back into it, I had to start all over again as I’d lost whatever small gains I’d achieved the last time I did it. It was a constant cycle of start, progress, stop, regress. Rinse and repeat.

But once I hit upon the idea of doing it to transition, as a key PART of my transition, I stuck with it in ways I never thought I could. I’m not saying I was perfect, none of us are and honestly perfection isn’t something we should even strive for.

Because if you’re trying to be perfect, inevitably you won’t be, and then you feel crushed and guess what, that can lead to stopping and regression. It’s much better to just strive for being good, and to be kind with yourself.

So some days, sure, I would sleep terribly and legit be too tired to exercise, or I’d have a really bad headache that a higher heart rate made worse, and so I’d skip those days. But each time I did, I reminded myself… that’s okay. You haven’t given up, progress won’t be lost.

You’ll get back at it tomorrow. And that’s exactly what I’d do. And on the days when I just really, really didn’t want to exercise for whatever reason, and it was hard to make myself do it… I reminded myself it wasn’t a chore, even if it felt like one.

Because I was doing it FOR ME. This is what I want, to change my body in ways I need, and over time it will get me closer to who I want to be, who I feel is really me. And I’d sigh and get up and exercise. And maybe I’d run slower that day, but I was out there running.

And now that I think about it, this motivation to transition to the real me spurred me in other ways. Again in that body hacking trans tuesday, when I talked about my women’s leggings and hoodie (that became my cape) and how terrified I was to buy them.

All my life I had this pull to walk through women’s clothing sections in stores, because even if I didn’t have the words for it I’ve always known I was trans, even if I couldn’t recognize the signs when they were staring me in the face.

For more on that, see the trans tuesday on THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans).

I could never ever bring myself to walk through women’s clothing sections, much less actually look through what was in there, for my entire life. Until I got to the point where I realized I NEEDED to, to get closer to finally being the real me.

And I was still terrified, sure, but I did it anyway (there’s that trans courage again). Because I got to the point where the pain of NOT doing it was worse than the fear that had kept me from doing it for so long.

I noticed a while back the same thing happened for me with voice therapy. see the entire three-part series of trans tuesdays on TRANS VOICES, the first is here.

As I mentioned in those, gender-affirming voice therapy was the most difficult thing I’ve had to do in my entire life. It is SUCH a S L O W process, and it takes so much work, and for a lot of it, it also spiked my dysphoria to hear my own voice played back.

Here’s the trans tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA if you need more info.

And every time I just didn’t feel like I had the energy for it because I was tired, or the time for it because my day was so busy, or the ability to deal with the dysphoria it caused, I reminded myself: I AM DOING THIS FOR ME.

I am doing this because *I* want to, because *I* want the changes this can bring if I put in the work and don’t give up. Because *I* want it to help me find my real, true voice, as part of the transition to the real me I’ve always been inside.

And that kept me going through it all, through two years of sessions with my speech-language pathologist and the year of solo practice after… it’s kept me exercising regularly, four times a week on average, for going on nine years.

And I finally figured out just how MUCH this desire to transition, to be the most ME I can be, motivated me, when my HRT faltered. I talked a bit about the reason for this in the trans tuesday on TRANSITION SETBACKS.

The gist of it is that the estrogen I took was in the form of pills, but the pills suddenly stopped working for me (this just happens sometimes), causing all sorts of hormonal imbalance, backsliding my medical transition, and made me feel like I was losing myself mentally.

The correction for this was switching to injections, to get more estrogen back into my system and hopefully have my body react to it the way it should, to get back to the positive changes I wanted (and hopefully get even more of them).

And it’s definitely worked, I’ve NEVER felt better about myself, my transition, or my body than I do now. They’re working WONDERS for me (and have even kickstarted breast growth again, which is Very Exciting, Thank You).

You can see the trans tuesday on ANECDOTAL TRANS HEALTHCARE for how it took me a THOUSAND days of medical transition to get to needing a B-cup bra, so the fact that they’re growing again is an absolute delight.

But that meant I had to learn how to give myself shots, so I could do it at home and administer it to myself. It’s not cost or time-feasible to go into a medical office to have them give me a shot every week, and that’s just not a thing they really do long-term.

My entire life, I was always in awe of everyone who had to administer medications to themselves via injection. I was sure that was never ever ever anything I’d be able to do, because needles and me don’t get along very well.

But as part of switching to injections, I went into the doctor’s office so they could instruct me on the proper way to do it. And the nurse sat me down and he explained the entire process, gave me tips, showed me exactly what to do.

And then he handed me the syringe and without even a second’s hesitation I jabbed it into my thigh, depressed the plunger, and then it was done and over. He was entirely shocked, and honestly so was I. He said he’d never seen anyone just immediately DO it like that.

I smiled (under my mask, natch) and without even thinking, told him, “I have a singular motivation.” And I do! Because I NEEDED estrogen back in my system, as much or stronger than it was before.

Because the nightmare I’d gone through without it was UNACCEPTABLE. It was slowly medically destransitioning me, and I absolutely COULD NOT, WOULD NOT EVER GO BACK to feeling that way again. It was so hard to deal with.

So when the alternative was losing my sense of self, my identity, MY body, MY bodily autonomy… there was no way I was going to let that happen. I couldn’t. It felt like someone saying, “inject yourself with this now, or else you’ll die.” So… I just did it.

And that’s the moment I realized just how MUCH I’ve done that I never, EVER thought I’d be able to do… all because I NEEDED to. See the trans tuesday on BODILY AUTONOMY (and my tattoo) for more on that, and how my body never felt like it was actually MINE until I began transition.

Okay, so I give myself estrogen injections now, but that doesn’t mean I always do it perfect. Sometimes I still hesitate out of fear and don’t get the needle in as far as I should, and some of the estrogen leaks out after.

And I HATE that, and definitely feel it when I don’t get the full dose. Sometimes I get stuck in my own head about it and it takes me fifteen minutes to finally do it. BUT I DO IT. And honestly i never thought I could even be at this point.

I did all of these things because I HAD to. No other choice. I had a singular motivation… to be ME and never go back.

Never underestimate what you’re capable of, friends.

Find YOUR right motivation and you can achieve wonders.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com