Transgender Profiles: Time for a Change

By Linda DeFruscio

“A comprehensive and enlightening must-read primer for anyone who is beginning their transition from male to female or female to male.” —Jeanette Renee, TLC’s I Am Jazz

Transgender Profiles: Time for a Change is an inspirational volume from Linda DeFruscio about the courage it takes to become the person you have always felt you were inside—to shirk off the mask that you have worn for your whole life until this moment. As an electrologist, Linda sees clients every day who are in the process of transitioning to a different gender, and she is there to help them in their journey of self-expression and the claiming of their identity.

Filled with twenty unique stories of bravery from all different walks of life, this book is a tribute to all the courageous people who take their identity in their own hands and go forth to find the body that fits the soul and mind within. For those considering transitioning, for those looking for perspective and guidance in supporting loved ones, or for those who are curious and want to understand the struggles and triumphs of transgender individuals, Transgender Profiles is an invaluable resource.

“Not only does this work open one’s eyes and mind to the transgender community, it goes beyond that to remind us of the importance of loving and caring for one another. Thanks to people like Linda DeFruscio, our world is becoming a more accepting and safer place.” —Andrew J. Safioleas, PharmD, MBA, PRS, RPh, inpatient pharmacist and music instructor

“This clear, helpful collection tells many of our stories in the irreplaceable and accessible form of brief oral histories.” —Stephanie Burt, Professor of English, Harvard University

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781612543086

Book preview

Grace

I Know You’re in There.

Grace made the decision to transition in 2010, at the age of sixty-three. She had been married between 1976 and 2001 and couldn’t even bring herself to say words like transsexual or transgender before her decision.

Grace had been an engineer all her life. In her most recent position, she had been a highly visible, senior-level program manager working in a large company on a campus shared by over one thousand people. When she was ready to transition, she went directly to the president of the company and explained that after the four-week leave of absence suggested for her facial surgery and recovery, she would be returning to work as a woman. The president asked why she was coming to him with that information; the company had an antidiscrimination policy. Grace told him that support starts from the top down. If anybody came to him with a complaint about her, he had to be aware and ready to defend her rights. Then she went to her peers, and to her surprise she found that they were all supportive. While she was away for her surgery, her therapist, Diane Ellaborn, came in and did two training sessions with two hundred or so people at the company to further instruct them on what to expect and how they could best show their support when Grace returned.

Over the course of Grace’s engineering career, there was an average of one occasion per decade where she would find herself laid off. For this reason she had decided back in 2004 to go back to school and get a backup degree, an MA in counseling psychology. By the time of her transition, she had received her degree and was working at a substance abuse clinic a couple of nights a week facilitating drunk driver groups. As she did not feel it would be helpful for clients who knew her as a man to suddenly see her as a woman, she terminated her individual clients, left the clinic for three months, and started fresh with new clients posttransition.

From 2008 to 2013, Grace worked days in the tech world and a few nights each week as a clinician. Thereafter she left her tech job and worked solely as a counselor. She hadn’t known she would make the transition back when she started working toward her second degree; at that time she had only been thinking that it would be a good idea to have a plan in place to cope with the shifts and bumps that went on in the engineering world. But looking back, she now believes that she was led to study therapy, perhaps by the universe, because the timing was too perfect. This and other instances of serendipity have helped her to trust herself and her instincts.

Grace is a gentle therapist, but she is the first to admit that she was not that likeable back when she lived as a man. She had an A-type personality when she worked in engineering, and while she was not a large person, she would use a large voice and her acute mental skills to intimidate others when she felt it would serve her purpose. Like many transgender women, she had been hypermasculine as a boy. It was her way of protecting herself and making sure no one ever learned her secret. In fact, she was a bully for a while when she was a kid—until she learned to use her tongue instead of her fists. Except for her aggressive tendencies, she appeared balanced as a male. No one would have ever guessed she was a mess inside.

Grace was about eight or nine when her confusion first surfaced. By then she knew that her inclinations would not be tolerated, and thus she learned to be ashamed of her own thoughts. She would be a wreck when she tried on her mother’s clothes when she was home alone. Part of her mind would be marveling at how right, how relaxed she was wearing female garments. The other part would be listening for any tiny sound that might indicate that her mother was coming back early and she might get caught.

She never did get caught, but an accordion teacher who wasn’t happy with her musical skills would sometimes say to her, You’re such a girl, or, You’re such a sissy. Perhaps they were names he called all his male students, but it was also possible that he was seeing something in Grace that she didn’t want anyone to see. She couldn’t take the chance. She quit her accordion studies. She kept her acquaintances at arm’s length for the same reason. What could be worse as a kid than to be called queer or labeled effeminate? She was lonely a lot of the time. But she was always busy in her head. She didn’t know how she fit in. She was attracted to females, but she felt female. There was no information anywhere. The only relief came from the television, which allowed her to numb out and forget herself for a while.

Grace got married and had children. She’d learned how to sew when she was younger, and she often made clothes that were ostensibly for her wife. But they were more or less the same size, and when her wife and kids were out of the house she would wear them, along with other garments belonging to her wife. Things were no different than when she had been a kid. Half of her mind experienced the genuine relaxation that comes when you glimpse internal authenticity, while the other half was questioning every