When your transition stalls harder than your Ford C-Max

We’ve recently had the misfortune to have our car break down, and it got me thinking: Just like a car, a transgender person's transition can stall, and that leaves a feeling of frustration, helplessess, and that there might be no way to get to where you want to go. Fortunately, there are solutions to getting things moving again.

A stalled transition can happen for several reasons, including when a person has been on HRT for a while and not seen much progress in their physical development. Switching medications can help with this, including moving from pills to patches, or patches to injections, and even back again. I’m not writing about that here, but will in the future. Stalling also happens when your HRT is withdrawn or banned. I’m also not going to write about that right now, but we at red+freckles are a big proponent of DIY when the only alternative is the horror of a forced detransition.

There is a third type of stall, though, and it’s frustratingly common. It’s a point in an individual's transition where their progress has halted due to cash flow problems…that is, not having any.

Lets face it, transitioning isn’t cheap. We all know about the trans tax, the hidden financial burden associated with being transgender. It’s something cisgender people remain blisffully unaffected by yet is one of the many micro discriminations we face every day. It’s a constant emotional and financial drain, and few things will drain the coffers faster than paying for gender affirming surgery.

I’ve faced this myself recently, with the last couple of years spent spinning my wheels, knowing what I wanted but not having the funds. I looked on enviously, smiling through gritted teeth while offering encouraging feedback as people on similar transition timelines to me had surgeries and treatments that took them closer to that magical point where you no longer need to think about what's next in your transition, and can just get on with living your best life as the authentic you.

Now I should point out that every person's journey is different, and you don’t need to have surgery or hormones to be trans, but once you realise you are trans, a realignment of your physical appearance with your internal identity often becomes the most important element in combatting dysphoria.

Most trans people have fairly clear transition goals, an essential wish list of the things they need to do to alleviate their dysphoria. This list may also come with a plan to make those goals a reality. My transition looked like this. I was lucky enough to get on hormones quite quickly after coming out as trans, although the private provider I went with followed the UK’s NHS guidelines for the most gradual ramp up in HRT you can imagine, and so it took years for my levels to get to where they needed to be. Nevertheless, we got there eventually. During those early years I was also consistent with having laser hair removal on my face, and in that respect I was again lucky enough that the wrong puberty had left me about as hairy as a dolphin. The laser made short work of what little hair I had.

Next up was a breast agumentation.

I was unhappy that the little boobs on my large frame meant that clothes didn’t fit as well as I wanted. Plus, I wanted the affirming feeling of bouncing that my B cups just weren’t bestowing. Despite my best efforts and A-grade hormone levels, the girls just didn’t seem to have it in them. I now firmly believe the lack of growth was down to smoking.

(PSA: Want a smokin 'body? Give up smoking! If your blood is loaded up carting around the many toxins that come from smoking, the HRT you fought for can’t do its job effectively. Do yourself a favour and trigger the changes you crave in your body rather than giving in to your other craving.)

This step in my transition journey was the result of a combination of something my ex-wife said to me along with an offer from my next wife.

I was laying in the garden one sunny lockdown day, my hands cupping my little boobs in their padded bra, a smile of contentment on my face, when my ex suddenly said, “You're going to get a boob job.” At the time, surgery was the last thing on my mind and I laughed off her playful teasing, not realising it had taken seed in my subconscious. Still, I forgot all about it until a few years later when I met my now wife, the beautiful Phoebe. She made an offer to pay for a boob upgrade, and it poured water on the seed my ex’s prophecy had planted. This time I didn’t ignore it. I let it take root and grow into a want, and that want eventually grew into a blossoming bosom. I had a BA, and I couldn’t have been happier with the results.

But after this progress my transition slowed, slowed, then slowed some more. My path to becoming me had stalled. I was stuck in the doldrums, where almost all hope for essential surgery withers and fades.

This was also around the time that Phoebe got stuck abroad, so many things understandably stopped progressing. Everything was put on hold while our future remained in limbo. But whereas my progress was stationary, it seemed to me the rest of the trans community went into overdrive. I couldn’t go online without someone asking for their disney princess vocals to be rated, wrinkling their tiny little ski jump noses at some minor stress with their FFS, or being winked at by someone's shiny new neo vagina.

Things actually got worse after Phoebe returned, for we had suffered financially while she'd been exiled, and it took some time to even start to recover from that. We also resumed recording The Joy Tuck Club, which meant talking to trans people about their transitions and any surgeries they’d had, and we also interviewed lots of experts in the field of gender affirming care. Let me tell you, that’s really hard to do without desperately yearning for it immediately for yourself. I suppose it’s like knowing the plot of a really great tv show, but having never seen an episode, you talk to other people who have seen it. Then you get to talk to the director and the actors about how great the show is, yet you’re still not allowed to watch it.

So I vowed that 2025, the Chinese Year of the Snake, would be the year I shed my skin and restart my stalled transition. I had some money set aside and worked out the budget to take care of the things that bothered me the most such as my voice and hairline, followed closely behind by GRS.

There are two things most older trans girls hate: talking on the phone, and going out on a windy day, or even worse, taking a phone call when outside on a windy day. So I started vocal training. I'm good at impersonations and giving voice to my daughter’s toys, so I figured I’d pick it up quickly and therefore not have to pay for loads of lessons.

I also looked into a hair transplant. Many people have gotten great hairlines for not a great deal of money by going to Turkey, and that would also leave just enough in the budget to get GRS.

But after being so optimistic about the coming year, things started to stall again. The vocal training was harder than expected, which meant it would cost more than planned, and after much research I decided I didn’t want to risk going abroad for the hair transplant. I know people can have good results, but all you need to do is lurk on a few hair transplant forums and you’ll hear more than a few cautionary tales about the Turkish hair mills. This worried me greatly, but the price of my peace of mind (having the procedure instead at a well known London clinic) was going to cost about three times higher than the original budget, and that meant not enough left for GRS.

In the natural world, the highest tides are followed by the lowest, and that was how I was left feeling when my transition plans started to unravel once more. To fall from the dizzy heights of my original excited outlook at the start of the year to the low prospect of stalling again was tough, but it also made it all the sweeter when the universe unexpectedly jump started my transition, bringing it coughing and spluttering back to life.

I had been on the waiting list for an NHS gender identity clinic or GIC appointment for years, and then as now the waiting lists are growing much faster than people are getting first appointments. This coupled with the fact that here in the UK support for transgender people is at an all time low, meant I was resigned to probably never be seen by a GIC. So when the call came from Transplus, it really was an unexpected bolt out of the pink, white, and blue.

Transplus is an organisation that has been commissioned by the NHS to reduce the GIC wait times. When they contacted me to ask if I would be ok with them taking me on, what was I going to say? I jumped at the chance. It meant coming off the Tavistock waiting list, but that didn’t matter. Within the space of a few weeks, everything changed for the better.

I had to go to London for my initial appointment, but then, just like that, all my transition goals were alive again. It also meant I could go ahead with the hair transplant locally, even at its greater cost, because all the other stuff was on offer through the GIC, including HRT, voice training, electrolysis, and GRS. Sure the surgery will probably take over a year to come through, but I’m happy to wait knowing that it is a planned stop on my journey, and it will still be quicker than if I was trying to save up to have it done privately.

Now, I’m not saying that this will happen to every trans person with a stalled transition, even if you are in the UK. The GIC waiting lists are a disgrace. I also know that I have been incredibly lucky throughout my journey, and that some people can only dream about getting to where I am. But isn’t that the point? Dreams set goals and goals can become your reality. Don’t give up on the dream of getting what you want. Even in your darkest hour, when all hope has faded away, when your analogous car has broken down in the middle of nowhere and your shoestrings and tights aren’t going to McGyver it going again, you may find the universe sends you exactly the assistance you need to get moving again. You might even realise that you weren’t stalled, just delayed, while your sat-nav was rerouting a different path to your transition goals.

Rachel