It is a steady truth. She did not change into someone new. She finally became herself and built a life big enough to hold joy in doing so. She grew up in a small Indiana town, wrapped in church routines and rules that left little room for questions. Her parents loved her, but specific topics were off-limits. She heard blanket condemnations at school and in the pews that made her shrink into herself. Saturdays became her escape. She would ride her bike into the fields, cry, scream, and try to gather enough courage to face Sunday. Inside, a truth waited for air.
She is trans. She kept that truth hidden for years by learning how to blend in. She never excelled too much or stood out. When a teacher warned that her handwriting was “too pretty,” she even changed how she wrote. As a teen, she made a private plan: graduate, move to California, transition. Money got in the way, so she pushed the plan to after college. Then life surprised her. She fell in love. She was honest with her partner from the beginning. They talked about what might come. When a pregnancy turned them into a family, she shelved her timeline. One delay turned into twenty-two years.
The love was real and the marriage good, but the pull to live as herself returned stronger. One evening at dinner, presenting as Jen, her wife took her hands and asked, “Are you happier as Jen?” The quiet yes that followed changed everything. They began looking for the next steps. Jen lived openly most of the time, except at work and around her parents. Eventually, her wife said she could not go on. The love remained, but attraction had faded. They chose divorce with care and respect. Jen started coming out to friends. Social media helped her speak to many at once.
The replies flooded in with kindness. Then came the most challenging conversation. Her parents were preparing to leave for Florida, and she did not want to overshadow their anniversary, so she sat them down before the trip. She read a letter about a lifetime of hiding, coloring her nails with crayons, and scraping them clean before anyone got home. Her mother was crushed with guilt. Her father steadied the moment with a line Jen still treasures. This is just the way God made her. From the start, he used the proper pronouns and hugged his daughter without letting go.
The extended family had opinions, including a warning not to tell Great Aunt Grace because “it would kill her.” Two years later, trusting her own relationship with this thoughtful, curious woman, Jen wrote to her anyway. The reply arrived in perfect cursive. Grace welcomed Jen, spoke of the trans women her late husband had supported as a Unitarian pastor, and urged Jen to write more. They traded letters until Grace died peacefully at ninety-eight. Jen is grateful she chose connection over fear. Everything sped up. In one extraordinary two weeks in 2013, Jen began hormones, marked her twenty-second wedding anniversary, filed for divorce, and finalized it. By May, she had a job offer in California. On July 4, she left the only home she had known to start fresh at forty-seven.
At fifty-five, her life looks nothing like what she was handed as a kid. She has a chosen family of trans and cis friends. She performs standup, acts, and writes as Aunt Grace predicted. When she finally found a therapist, he told her she had done much of the deep work independently. The path has not been easy. There were years when no trans community existed nearby. Now there is a thriving one, and her hometown even held its first Pride. She does not pretend that this journey was simple. It was frightening to leave a life that looked settled from the outside.
It was painful to end a marriage with a person she loved. It was risky to speak her truth to people who might turn away. But she also knows what she gained: breath, color, creativity, and the relief of being seen—the father who once taught her to keep quiet learned to say her name. The aunt who loved big encouraged her to keep telling stories. The small life she tried to survive gave way to a larger one she could inhabit.
