{"id":459,"date":"2018-07-08T23:08:07","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T15:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stepstostephanie.com\/?p=459"},"modified":"2020-01-28T01:39:25","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T01:39:25","slug":"the-joy-of-being-stephanie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/?p=459","title":{"rendered":"The Joy of being Stephanie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have spent a good deal time over the last week or so talking to people about kitchens and associated appliances for our house in Nannup both in Perth and Busselton. Not once have I felt uncomfortable or not at ease with myself, \u00a0how I present and come over to people. It\u2019s hard for me to believe that less than two years ago it was all a dream, a dream that I was resigned to taking to my grave. The pure joy that I get from being the person I know I should always have been must be difficult for anyone to understand but I look at myself in the mirror every morning and am blown away by the transformation that has taken place over the last fifteen months from when I first transitioned to Stephanie full time.<\/p>\n<p>Before the discovery of my beginnings on December 21st 2015 and during the very difficult time between then and making the decision to transition in September 2016 Denise had asked me numerous times why I hadn\u2019t looked into the process of transitioning when in her mind it was always an option which I should have considered. I always had the same reply \u201cI don\u2019t have the courage to do it\u201d but when you are faced with the choice of doing something about it or an option which doesn\u2019t bear thinking about now, it was an easy choice. I had always thought there was no way I could ever \u201cpass\u201d as a female, every thing about me externally was male apart from the fact that I had very female breasts which of course I had been forced to hide for the majority of my life. Now, it\u2019s the most natural thing for me, it has become so easy for me to present as the female which was always there in my head and I\u2019m not really concerned wether people pick that I am trans or not, in the scheme of things it just doesn\u2019t matter. The very first time I went out in public was in Esperance on December 30th 2016, yes I was nervous but they very soon settled and I\u2019ve not looked back. That raises the question as to wether I should have done it earlier in my life but the fact remains that transitioning when I did has worked for me. I am with the right person, Denise has been unbelievably supportive in every aspect of my journey and without her I don\u2019t think I would ever have had the courage to do it. The technology and techniques are changing all the time and although I have had some very dark times since my surgery and the end result is not fully what I had hoped for, I am in very little discomfort and have had no serious problems considering how major the surgery is and the risks involved so from that point of view the timing was perfect. Also, I think the whole world is so much more transgender friendly than it was even ten years ago which is no small thing, indeed even Australia has same sex marriage now! So, yes I would love to have spent an extra ten years of my life being Stephanie rather than Robin but believe me it has been so worth the wait!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have spent a good deal time over the last week or so talking to people about kitchens and associated appliances for our house in Nannup both in Perth and Busselton. Not once have I felt uncomfortable or not at ease with myself, \u00a0how I present and come over to people. It\u2019s hard for me &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/?p=459\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Joy of being Stephanie&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}