❤️‍🩹

You're welcome 💖

Same ❤️‍🩹

To be clear, transition is still the best thing I've ever done, and was a necessary step toward being able to love and accept myself. It was only the first step, though 🫂💙

There's a lot of grief involved, too. A lot of things I thought about myself that are so hard to let go of. But it's better to grieve a false ideal and move on than it is to cling to a self-concept that leaves you trapped and suffering

Love yourself

(Also, important aside: self-acceptance doesn't mean resignation. You can accept something about yourself and then change it. In fact, it's way, way easier to change something you've accepted in yourself than something you're rejecting, because the change is done with compassion, not self-loathing)

As dumb as it is, the serenity prayer is actually a really, really important bit of wisdom. Accept what you can't change, change what you can, and most importantly, be honest about the difference 💙

The line is the stuff you can't ever change. You can biohack your body to be more comfortable in it, most of us can even get to the point where we pass regularly, but we can't ever be cis. That's just not on the table, and constantly reaching for it can only make you dissatisfied with youeself

Yeah. For me it's mostly that I like who I am, and if I'd grown up as a cis girl I'd be so radically different that I'd cease to recognisably be me. Maybe that other woman would have had an easier life, but I'm not her, and she isn't me

Most of me still can't communicate internally, but it sounds like you might wanna get in touch with a therapist who has experience with dissociative disorders 💙

I'm also always happy to chat with people about this stuff if you like, though I'm about to sleep. My DM's are open, though 💞

Learning to forgive yourself, and to put the blame where it really belongs isn't easy, but it's worth it 🫂

We tell ourselves whatever we need to to pretend we have control over what's happening to us, because we're too young to cope with it any other way. It's me, I'm to blame. It's because I'm bad somehow, and I just need to be better. But what helps a scared kid cope just hurts us as an adult

But abuse and neglect are never the child's fault. No exceptions. And that's much, much more painful to come to terms with when you've been on the receiving end of it. Believing it's your fault becomes a shield against the awful truth. How else could a desperate, hurting kid cope?

It would be comforting if that were true, wouldn't it? Then maybe there's something about yourself you could change, something you could fix. It would mean you had control over it, and just made a mistake. That's much easier than confronting that what happened to you couldn't be prevented or avoided

For reference, I'd count a 10 as someone who needs semi-permanent hospitalisation for their trauma ❤️‍🩹