A thousand books – Notes from a trans therapist

Thirteen years ago, before I even knew I was trans, I thought I had it all figured out. After all, I had a trans friend! I met her while hostelling in America, and she was one of the first trans women I had knowingly interacted with. For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her Shaz. Shaz was incredibly open and generously answered all of my probing questions about what it was like to be trans. "So, how do you have sex?" I remember asking her. Looking back, I realise just how patient she had been with me.

In the early days of Proud2Be — the queer support organisation my twin sibling and I founded in 2011 — I mistakenly believed that everyone would experience their transness in the same way Shaz had. I thought being trans was a colour-by-numbers process, a series of milestones, and it would be helpful to have a book that detailed those steps to make it easier for everyone to understand and follow.

A few years into my career at Proud2Be, while training to be a therapist, I had to access 20 hours of therapy as part of the course. I had resisted it for years, telling myself I didn’t need it, didn’t have time, and wouldn’t find a therapist I connected with. But with a push from my tutor and an ever-increasing awareness that I wouldn’t qualify without it, I booked my first session with Julie, a therapist working above a library a few towns away. "What do I even have to talk about?" I wondered to myself on the bus ride there.

I had to complete 20 sessions, and I remember mentally ticking the first few off in my mind, treating them like another admin task I needed to finish for my course. As time went on, I began to relax and started talking.

One session, a few weeks in, I was discussing with Julie the unhealthy relationship I had with my body. I had always struggled to feel at home in it, convinced that it was disgusting, so it felt justified to be disgusted by it. At one point, I frustratedly blurted out, "I don’t think it’s even about my weight!" Struggling to vocalise what I had meant, Julie handed me a piece of paper with a question written on it: "If my issues with my body aren’t about my weight, what would I have to acknowledge?"

I stared at the paper for ages, searching my mind for guidance. "Don’t overthink it, Maya," Julie gently advised me. I resisted the urge to return to my head for the answer and wrote the first thing that came to me: "I’d have to see what is really going on with me."

Later, Julie told me the frozen expression had struck her on my face as I looked at my scribbled response. I wasn’t ready to say the word ‘trans’ aloud about myself, but my body knew. Deep down, I was recalling something I’d known from a young age before I had locked it away, waiting for a safe time to reopen it again. My coming out experience, my secret, and its eventual sharing were deeply personal to me.

During the early years of my transition, I remember feeling very lost and confused. Again, I wished for that magic book that would tell me what to do next. One day, I shared my feelings with a friend who told me, "Don’t get too hung up on the destination. It might help to just do what feels right."

I remind myself of this whenever I take on a new client in the early stages of their transition. The journey I took to find myself was, and is, unique to me. Sure, I share many experiences with other trans women out there, but the way I process, the blocks I’ve put in the way, my pace, and the way my dysphoria manifests (it doesn’t for all trans people) are all very much my own.

Like most things we experience as humans, being trans can’t be broken down into a neat set of steps. Our lives are rich, sometimes messy, and our stories could fill thousands of books — each one just as complex, vibrant, and human as the next.