Just beginning!

No beverage ever tasted as good as this coffee! It tastes like liberation!

When I was exposed to the MACR sample in the lab, I thought my life was over. As the inevitable cascade of feminization washed over me, I saw it as an inevitable march toward oblivion. I just could not wrap my head around the idea of life after manhood. After my labia opened, I locked myself away, unwilling to face the world, emasculated as I now was.

Thankfully, rather than a pink-slip, the company sent me a therapist.

Our sessions were long and hard fights at first as she helped me deconstruct what my lost masculinity meant for me and accept the possibilities that femininity held for me. For a long time I pushed back, toxic echos of my lost manhood rebelling at life as a woman. But she persisted. She got me to eat and take care of myself again. She got me to wear underwear that fit and supported my new body. Her sessions taught me all the things women learn when they grow up as girls.

At last, I was ready to face the final challenge. To face the world as a woman. Full makeup, skirt and heels, I walked up to that counter, gave them the new name I chose and when it was ready, I answered to the name “Nancy” for the first time ever. Nate’s life is over, but as Nancy, this is just the beginning!

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I was sitting in my therapist office in full fem, talking about the fact that it was only the 2nd time I had ever done my makeup. Things had been moving fast since I had come out to myself and went to see her in mid gender-crisis. However, at this point, my therapist and her office staff were the only people to ever see me in fem. I would arrive in boy-mode half an hour early, change there, conduct my therapy session in fem, and then change again before going home. My wife didn't even know yet.

My therapist suggested that, when I felt confident and comfortable enough, before or after a session, I could run across the street to Starbucks as Katie, and get a coffee.

I laughed at the idea at the time. But time passed. I came out to my wife, I continued to deconstruct my gender identity, and better understand it, and then, one day, I finished work early, parked in a secluded parking deck, did my makeup, pulled on my wig, and became Katie. The first place I went was a local Starbucks, and as though guided by fate, the barista was another trans-girl.
I ordered, I gave the name Katie, I waited, and when she called me my heart was filled with trans-joy.
I was a woman named Katie, recognized as such in public.
I thanked the Barista with moisture in my eyes, took a selfie and sent it to my therapist with a note that said "thank you"

This caption is in memory of that experience. When Katie's name was first used in public, This is my last post before Trans day of visibility, so THAT was the day Katie became visible.