Polly Conroy
From a very early age Polly Conroy knew that she wasn’t comfortable in the boy's body she had been born with.
This week the general medical council will take a break from considering the case of psychiatrist Russell Reid, an expert on transexualism. He’s accused of breaching standards of care by prescribing patients with sex-changing hormones and referring them for surgery without adequately assessing them. It is alleged some people later regretted changing sex.
It would be quite some regret wouldn’t it? Luckily for Polly she has no such regrets and after undergoing surgery 4 years ago.
Polly’s story is very similar to my own except I never had the courage to get medical help due to my fear of all things medical. Because of my inner secret feelings I never married. Now just into my 70th year I have been living full time as female for the last five years.
Living my life as transgendered person has been an absolute delight and I believe it makes me feel younger, I am at peace with my self in a way I have never known in the past. People in the community I live in and have known me, my former self. for many, many years have accepted me as the woman I present as now, often stopping for a conversation. I enjoy shopping now where before as my former self I detested it’. When shopping women who I worked with in the past have been wonderful in accepting the new me in the most supportive way, one or two apologies if they call me by my former Christian name, having known me so well in the past.
Complain about this postI listened to Polly's story whilst I was working. Luckily I was away from my work place as It brought tears to my eye's, I have just started on my own transition and I'm full of doubt and worry, I too have a fear of surgery but for me there is no other way it's go through the pain and possible danger or well put pimply, nothing!
Complain about this postI was so amazed at how similar my life has been to Polly’s from my very early years through my teens and even going out with three girls at the same time! (That bit made me smile! lol) I too am married I have been for 32 years now but sadly I think my story will depart from Polly's at this point as I'm sure that my wife will feel so betrayed and let down that she will never speak to me again but, I console myself with the thought that I will leave her with four great children and so far three wonderful grandchildren who sadly I will not see grow up. But that is my decision and I will have to ,live with it, at least I will be able to have MY life back and be who I real am.
I feel so much more in control now after hearing Polly’s story and I have so much more confidence in what I’m about to undertake, this story has filled in so many gaps and reassured me in so many ways. Thank you Polly, Sue and radio 4 for showing me that I’m not alone and that I’m going to be all right and I will survive after all.
Thank you again for a great program and keep bringing more like it.
Carole
I had surgery just over 16 yars ago, though I must have transgendred at a very early age though I don't go along with those who say they 'knew' when they were 5 years old. It was a slow process that suddenly emerged after 25 years of marriage, though I still don't know why for sure.
Never-the-less I intergrated well with very little obvious recognition, taking up female based activities, like joining a women's badminton team, training as a hairdresser, a fashion model, dressmaking classes becoming a qualified ballroom and latin dance tacher and participating in other feminine activities which previously I would never have dreamt of undertaking as well as running my own design business, attending higher degree university courses, music classes and being accepted into my local church and community.
The biggest regret that I have had is being abandoned by my own family from whom I expected support and bing left on my own, having very few friends and even being prevented from writing to my own disabled sister, but I have experienced a different side of life with different values and a different undrstanding.
Complain about this postI enjoyed Polly's account of her transition from a tortured male to a happy contented woman.
I remember Polly from the very early days of my own transition in 2002 and she was an inspiration at a time when I was coping with being outed in a national newspaper, losing my wife and small children, and facing divorce and possibly the end of a very successful business career.
That was in 2002 and after applying every Change Management method I had used in my successful business management career and re-engineered all of the Self Motivation training I used to be involved in, I moved forward despite not having the support of my parents or my ex wife who despite making her a millionaire prior to my transition, remains obdurate and uncommunicative.
Now, I am back working in senior management and also running mentoring sessions for people like myself who think they might need to do precisely what I had to do four years ago.
I went to see Russell Reid myself on 19 August 2002 and had my surgery with the World's Best SRS Surgeon in Thailand on 19 August 2003, precidely a year after beginning my life again as the woman I ought to have been at birth. I do not regret anything and postively looked forward to my surgery.
Since then, I have inspired many people to move forward with confidence and helped some to remain and to survive in the male side of their lives.
I am happier, more positive and have returned to being highly competitive at work and have the love of my two great kids, now 8 and 10 who accept me totally as a woman and cannot understand how their biological mother remains awkward and uncommunicative.
In terms of how I now look, after extensive Facial Femination Surgery (FFS), there is no correlation between the person I tried to be 6 years ago and who I am now. This has been necessary to ensure my children are never "outed" or bullied as a child of a transsexual woman and I can be now seen as "their dad's girlfriend". We never get hassle and I can date men without them being at all aware of my past.
52? Well, in age terms I am, but I look about 38 and feel incredibly ennervated and motivated, fully able to teach my kids that in life, problems DO occur and it is the people who tackle them are successful whilst those who shirk and avoid problems ultimately fail.
They also appreciate that in life, being considerate, loving and supportive is far better than being a modern day Miss Haversham as their mother, a lawyer, now remarried, remains deperately unhappy, yet rich well beyond her humble beginning of an office junior when she met me in 1980.
Through my darkest days, I remembered that the last thing to come out of Pandora's Box was Hope and that above all things is something we must all treasure and cultivate.
Hugs
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