My Trans Journey: Embracing Transformation, Fluidity, & Self-Love

Ever since I was a child, I felt like I should have been born a boy and wished I was. I never understood why I had to be a girl. I felt different inside than what I was expected to be, but I still wanted to please my mom and the people around me so I became what they wanted mostly. I was jealous of what boys got to do, wear & play with. They just saw a girl who had the same interests as your stereotypical boy did based on gender stereotypes. Everyone said I was just a tomboy, but it was so much more than that. I just never had the words to describe it.

My mother was so enthused to have a daughter. She went to beauty school and loved the whole dress up and make up aspect of having a daughter. I was also given dresses and barbies which I liked mainly only because I wanted the approval and attention they got me. It often felt like I was being put into a box of what she wanted me to be. If we are being honest, what society wanted me to be. We are fed gender roles from a young age with dolls, princesses, toy make up, playing house. Society grooms to fit our gender roles from the moment we leave the womb. They give positive reinforcement for fitting the right gender roles and negative for not doing so. They do say that positive reinforcement is the best way to train dogs and kids…yes, I said train kids.

I have an older 1/2 brother on my mom’s side that I always looked up to. I wanted to be just like him. He got to play Hockey, learn instruments, have video game systems. I used to steal his Ninja Turtles, Cars, and GI Joes growing up and get scolded for it. He always saw me as the annoying younger sibling. To be fair, I got banned from watching Pro-Wrestling as a kid, because I used to body slam him from the couch. He was five year’s older and wasn’t allowed to fight back too hard. Sorry, bro.

I loved going to my dad’s growing up. He let me race around on the old Valvoline Go-Cart he had got my brother. He taught me to ride bike. He also bought me my first video game system, the Playstation 1. Yes, I know I’m getting old. Don’t remind me. He liked to ride and wrench on motorcycles and I get my love of motorcycles from him. He also supported me when I played sports. Even though he still instilled traditional gender roles, especially when I was older, he enjoyed doing those things together.

Growing up I all my friends were boys or tomboys. I just related to them more. I was actually considered one of the guys by a few of them and if we’d play boys vs girls. I’d be on the boys team. I’d be playing in the mud, riding bike, catching frogs or getting into trouble with the boys. I always felt like I belonged as well until puberty hit.

Once puberty hit, first the adults act weird when you are friends with opposite gender and other kids. Also, you have many body changes that are hard to hide or are embarrassing. There becomes more of a gender divide and it’s very socially fueled by the system we grow up in.

In High School, I started making more female friends. I also started to notice I was attracted to women. Men too, but especially women. It was dismissed. During that time, Bisexuality was very invalidated and not understood well. Either you were gay or straight and had to pick one. I had some friends in a lot of social groups, but didn’t belong to any of them. I was bisexual, but I mainly was just friends with guys even if they had crushes on me. I also preferred having close platonic male friends. I was more into exploring girls. My female friends were wanting to experiment. I even had a gf for a while in HS. It’s funny how if you date a girl you are immediately a lesbian to everyone, at least in the early 2000’s, even if you have expressed you are bisexual. Pansexual wasn’t really a well known thing yet and I didn’t even know being trans was a valid thing. It wasn’t talked about in the small town I was living in at the time. So I hadn’t explored those. I just knew I felt differently inside.

University Years

I didn’t get exposed to the larger LGBTQ & Feminist communities until college. I started learning more about Gender and Women’s Studies and other people’s experiences in the community. This opened up a whole new perspective for me and words for things I didn’t have words for before. This was a period of introspection and self-acceptance, both in terms of sexuality & gender.

I started to discover my sexuality even more in college. This is when I became more bisexual in practice. It turns out it is extremely difficult to be just friends with hormonal college guys who are embracing their sexuality during their college years. Although, if I’m being honest, I had a habit of dating some who felt more like a best friend with benefits than a relationship. I was using the relationship to have friends of the opposite sex in a socially acceptable manner. Adopting the bf’s friends as my own too. There often was very little physical attraction.

Dating women became harder. There are a lot of lesbians that either didn’t want to date someone bi or wanted the stereotypical butch gf. I constantly got the comments about being butch with long hair or “practically a guy”. I mean yeah… but being forced into a box really upset me. What if I do want to embrace my femininity sometimes? I started to kind of think about my gender, but I never officially came out as non-binary or genderfluid during college.

Also, becoming a Feminist, helped me embrace my femininity and be proud of my womanhood. Saying fuck the patriarchy & system that oppresses people became really important to me. It just didn’t fully alleviate the fact that I felt like I was different than most women. I was terrified that embracing that I was trans masc would invalidate me being a feminist or that I do have lived experience being considered a woman. I even still am seen as a woman since I haven’t had gender affirming surgeries. Also, because many don’t think genderfluidity or non-binary identities are valid.

After College Until Roughly ~3-4 Years Ago

I was miserable with who I am and how my life turned out. I had spend years seeking other’s approval through my actions instead of doing things for me. I also would weigh logic over my own happiness.

A Few Years Ago

At one point, I had a relationship with a trans man. They helped me find the inner strength and comfortability to to admit that I was genderfluid publicly. At the time, I said I leaned feminine, but I was lying to myself and everyone out of fear. This was also due to my attachment to feminism. I finally experimented with preferred names until I landed on one that felt right, at the time Morrigan.

In The Last Year

I made trans friends locally and dated a Trans woman. She helped me accept that I am trans masculine. I went a bit far due to the euphoria and excited. I went straight for Trans Man. It took time to realize I was still genderfluid. I was just feeling euphoric about the self-acceptance and coming out. At first, accepting my masculinity and saying I was trans masculine was difficult for me, because of how much value I put in being a feminist. As mentioned above, I thought it would make me less of a feminist in the eyes of all the other feminists out there. Again…caring too much about other people’s views of me than my own happiness. I also have a deep hatred of how toxic masculinity and the patriarchy harms everyone. Not just women, but men too. All the expectations put on them to be a certain way by other men and even some women too. I’ve had to navigate what masculinity means to me. I had to recognize that not all masculinity is toxic and not all men deserve to be villainized while still knowing that accountability and justice for the ones that are the problem needs to happen. I’ve had to fight diving deep into being what people expect a man to be just for the sake of “passing”. I had to learn to accept the part of me that is a man.

Around this time, I changed my preferred name to the Welsh version Morgan. Historically, it’s a masculine Welsh name, but in recent years it has become more feminine. This is especially true in the US. However, we are weird about rules for names in regards to gender sometimes and hardly even have respect for culturally diverse names. I choose to ignore the cultural or historical ignorance of typical US naming standards.

Throughout the process introspection, I started to ask myself a lot of questions…Am I just a man? Am I just a woman? I feel gender euphoria from accepting my masculinity, but am I more than that? What even is Gender? Do I fit a label? Do I need to fit a label? What is the most authentic version of me?

During this time of reflection. I realized that while I am Trans Masculine in expression and lean more masculine, but I am Genderfluid. I say fluid because the levels at which I feel I am any gender changes with time and shifts somewhere within the non-binary at any given time. Like so many things in life, we forget about the vast grey area that sits between each and every binary out there and the fact that people change and evolve and transform all the time. Labels are great for feeling having a way to communicate how you feel & relating to other people However, when you expect someone to fit into the same box their whole life and not fit into a different one at some point in their life then it becomes a problem. Even plants need to re-potted sometimes. Children grow out of their cribs. Even if you may not see as drastic of physical change as an adult, you ARE still changing and you need room to grow.

I am diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria & I am pursing gender affirming care in order to get the care I need to feel comfortable in my own skin, However, I don’t fit into the gender binary. My gender is fluid and I accept the fact that I will grow as a person and where I am between the binary may change over time. My identity and self-expression will both change and evolve as I go on this journey of self-discovery called life. There is no true end to my journey there is only an end to this leg of my journey.

I’ve been on HRT since September 2025 and I’m working with my team at the Transgender and Intersex Specialty Care Clinic in Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota on getting gender affirming care. I have applied for a legal name change & gender marker change in MN. My hearing is this month.

Coming out in the midst of an era where a political administration is actively trying to take away our rights is terrifying. I was scared to come out before so don’t ask why I figured now was the right time. I don’t know. Luckily, so far, Minnesota is fighting to maintain our rights in the midst of chaos.