[Leigh]

I've been wanting to write my story about embracing my femmeness for a few days now but partly I've been busy and partly I kind of chickened out ~ however seeing and reading so many remarkable stories got me to really thinking about how I too have embraced the femmeness that I have, and since this is the topic of the thread I will share my own story with everyone as well.

I was raised the first 14 years of my life by my mom and her parents; my grandfather and grandmother were huge influences on my life and they are still missed to this day. I truly believe that I had a fairly good upbringing; my dad didn't come back into my life until I was 14 and in many ways I'm glad he wasn't there earlier. Some of who I am today is because of my dad, and that's not necessarily a bad thing however I am glad that I haven't developed some of his traits like being condescending, calling people down, making everyone around him feel like he is the king and they are beneath him etc. As a child
I wore what I wanted to (including my uncle's football jersey and my grandfather's boots; he was a trucker most of his life). I played with anything from dolls, Barbie's and my little pony to Hot Wheels cars, collecting rocks and playing outside.

I never really saw myself as "femme" really, just a person. Being overweight in high school was a hard thing to deal with; having books knocked out of my hands, being called every hurtful name in the book you can imagine, being shoved into lockers or having them rattled everytime I walked by. I did wear feminine clothes, make-up etc but often I just tried to be invisible in general hoping that no one would tease me. I never truly had an identity in high school; I dated one guy in high school for a month or so and it just never felt right but I had begun to notice a crush on women (particularily my French teacher) on grade 7 so I tried coming out once in high school which never worked, once at age 18 and then again finally at age 20. I began to chat on another gay website (not dash) and discovered the whole butch-femme dynamic. I figured out that I identified more as a femme, but I think really as my early 20's went by I was truly trying to find my identity as a person.

By my mid 20's I had met an FTM in my own city that I fell for and was with for 5 years. I went with him to his doctor's appointments, helped him with his T shots and was just overall very supportive of his transition. At this time I identified alot with him and for awhile was butch; I truly felt that's who I was at the time and I don't regret that part of my journey ~ it taught me alot about truly coming into my own and being my own person. I used to go to local FTM meetings at the GLBT centre here in Winnipeg with him and as they talked about not being able to identify with their bodies I saw so much of myself in them. Looking back now on that time in my life, I think that I was just not associating myself with being overweight and had really just disassociated my soul with my body because of years of being teased about my weight as well as dealing with my father constantly putting me down about anything he could find at fault with me.

I made a decision to transition and began in October of 2010 to take testosterone, truly believing that I was meant to be a guy. It took me until January of this year, a year and three months to truly see that I actually wasn't meant to be a guy so I stopped taking the hormones and knew that I was meant to remain a female. I've had lots of time to reflect on that time in my life and I honestly believe that I learned more about myself in that year and three months than I had ever learned about myself before ~ I began to really love myself, and accepted myself for who I am. I don't regret a moment of it and I can definitely say that it gave me such a new found respect for all of my FTM brothers and what they go through on a daily basis. I still have a couple of the effects of the hormones around, some hair growth (especially on my face) and abit of a gruffer voice than before but I've gotten used to it and don't feel that it makes me any less of a femme.

The last 3-4 months of taking the hormones, I began to miss things like wearing girly clothes and wearing make-up. I made the decision to start growing my hair back and bought make-up ~ I gave some of my guy clothes that I had bought over that year to Value Village here in my city (which is like Goodwill) and bought clothes from them to start rebuilding my wardrobe. I'm very happy with the femme that I have become; I'm more outspoken, not quite as shy as I was before (though I still have a ways to go); I've begun to work on losing weight and just getting back to me. I've missed living alot of years because I did not feel I deserved to be loved and to be happy, but as I've grown into being a femme and a woman I've re-discovered those lost parts of myself and am proud to be the femme I am now. I would not change a single thing about my life's journey, its made me who I am today and looking back on everything I've dealt with personally I'm pretty proud of myself

I admire each and every femme on this site; thank you all for sharing your stories and for allowing me to share mine also!