My Transition Story (So Far)

Story

I came out publicly as trans-femme in September of 2024. For the uninitiated, that means I publicly started my transition from being assigned male at birth (AMAB) to becoming a female. This is a long process, one that takes years to discover, years of therapy to understand, and years more to actually embrace.

Being trans has become an incredibly hot topic in 2025. The Trump administration has done a lot of work to erase trans or gendered terms from all of its websites, even preventing the formerly effortless process of changing gender markers on federal documents like Passports or Social Security cards. Some trans people are finding they can't get a passport at all, and therefore can't leave the country.

From the people I've talked to who support Trump and his ideals, they see the world in a binary: it is Good that the government officially only recognizes two genders, male and female. They see trans people as mentally troubled people (putting it kindly) who have some sort of sex hurt or abuse that has confused them. After all, the desire to change genders is a confusion. To these people, the Bible makes it clear: In God's design there is man, and there is woman. There is no in between, and there is no going from one to the other.

If transitioning is not the result of abuse, or confusion, or acceptance, conservatives think it's most likely the result of peer pressure. Most of the people I've talked to think I've been duped by the Liberal Machine, or infected by the Woke Mind Virus. After all, what has happened to me and many others is the result of tons of brainwashing, advertisements, and the billion-dollar Trans industry. I mean, why would someone's golden child do this? They are clearly a victim falling for a dangerous scam, meant to dehumanize, chastise, and steal from God.

This is why I think it's important to share my story. For many (I guess, all?) people who know me, my transition was a shock. It happened overnight! And it was the result of moving away from my family, not going to church, and not "filling the role" as a husband. I didn't pursue the "correct" care, and I should have talked to some good Christian leaders about what to do.

While it does look like it happened overnight (thank you, I'll take my Oscar), the feelings were there since about 8 (or 11? Who knows– I don't remember a lot of my childhood). The cracks had been forming for a while.

Ultimately, it was religion that kept me from seeing myself as trans for many years. When I originally started feeling that I was a woman, I didn't know what was happening. At age 11, I had an urge to steal some of my sister's clothes and try them on.

Why would an 11 year old feel this way? I grew up as the oldest of 7 kids: we were all homeschooled, went to church pretty regularly (as in, 5 of 7 days of the week), and didn't have cable. I wasn't allowed onto the internet until I was a teen (we had dialup into the mid-2000s). Whatever I was feeling I didn't "learn" or glean from pop culture. It seems like it was something deeper.

When I first tried those clothes on, complete with some hand-fashioned shape-wear, something ignited inside me. Why did this feel... good? Right? Correct? I was overcome with guilt and shame... "oh no," I thought, "I'm sinning. This is a perversion." But I couldn't stop.

As I grew up, I came to resent that these feelings wouldn't leave. I thought I had allowed Satan to hook a little "sin" into my heart and he used it to make me do more bad things. I became jealous of my peers, who dealt with the totally "normal" sin of porn. Why couldn't I be broken like that? Why was I a special kind of "fucked" up? I couldn't tell anyone, they'd think I was crazy.

I had precedence for believing this: I grew up in an era and culture where it was still bad to be "gay." Friends had already joked about how effeminate I was, and, un-prompted, I would hear pastors and other figures of authority talk about trans people as mentally troubled, perverted, sexual predators, and just overall grotesque. Many people would go on lengthy tirades regarding these "people" (at this point they seemed sub-human).

I couldn't relate with these people, I thought. Yeah, I sometimes crossdressed. But I wasn't a predator! I didn't want to hurt or abuse anybody. And I wasn't like, mentally ill or anything. So I would listen and agree. But I would stay silent about what I experienced. Everyone seemed to like me and think I was the sweetest child, and a very good Christian kid (well, after my later teen years). As I entered into leadership positions at my church, I didn't want to ruin that.

So I stayed quiet.

Until 2023, only my ex-girlfriend knew, and then my recently proposed-to girlfriend, Moriah.

I had been battling these "sins" for years. They would surface, I would engage with them, I would cope with the weirdness, I would be overcome with guilt, and I would stuff everything down until it happened again. Very binge-purgey, if you will. I told Moriah the day I proposed that I had these weird feelings (without the benefit of knowing terminology such as "cross dresser" or "transgender") just so I could be upfront. She had some things she wanted to share with me too, so we ended up bonding over our dirty little secrets. I told her I had my thing all under control, and it wouldn't be an issue.

It became a little bit of an issue.

One thing I've heard a lot of people assume about trans people is that they went down this path after a bout of depression or rejection. They tried cross dressing or drag and found acceptance from people. They wanted to keep finding this acceptance, and so they leaned even harder into this identity. This then caused them to go on hormones, get surgeries, and change their social circles: all for the ever demanding "high" of social acceptance.

I don't speak for all trans people, but I'm confident in saying the following is a shared experience: along with the majority of people I've talked to who have transitioned, I have found little to no acceptance in transitioning. It certainly wasn't the reason I pursued transitioning.

I began my transition in Utah, a famously red (and corrupt) state that has had many trans-related murders in it. Even now, living in Portland, OR, I don't experience what some might call an "echo chamber." People are nice, but I don't know how accepting they are. I'm still very lonely and isolated, and have to be careful. I've found pockets of friends, but everything is still in its infancy.

Importantly, my transition has caused many friends of mine to abandon me, not the other way around. Heck, I had a friend who helped introduce the trans-ban law into the Utah Legislature. He was offended when I started bashing the bill, claiming he worked really hard on it, even though I had come out to him months prior and he knew it would harm me. If I'm finding a new social circle, it's because many people have outright rejected who I am and don't know how to "love" me without reminding me of "the truth" that I'm a guy and God has a plan for my life.

When I first came out to Moriah, it was heartbreaking for her. After all, she had signed up for being married to a guy, not whatever this was. What would her role be? Would she still find me attractive? Moriah put in a lot of hard work, and has a beautiful story you should ask her about.  Even still, we were both uncertain about what transitioning would look like for our future and our marriage.

So, I didn't do this for the acceptance. You might be thinking, can something so "trivial" like feeling kinda weird in your skin really be important enough to write off friends, family, spouses, etc in order to pursue? It's just some mild discomfort, after all. Right?

Simply... it was important enough to pursue. I didn't want to lose anyone, but I had to pursue these feelings I had begun to understand as gender dysphoria.

Here's a question for you:

Men, have you ever wanted to be a girl?

Women, have you ever wanted to be a boy?

As described above, I have. Daily. Multiple times a day. Since I was 8. Many days I'd pray to wake up a girl or have those feelings taken away. I'd pray I could just morph. I'd try to have lucid dreams where I could just be a girl, even if just in my unconscious state. Maybe I could stay there... At least it would be something.

What really broke me is when my therapist said, "Andreas, most people don't think like that." "Huh?" I asked. She explained: Most people don't want to be another gender. That's not a common thing. "Oh." I stared at the floor. "I thought that was normal," I replied.

These feelings are not the result of some social coup. They're not the result of marketing. No: these feelings are an inherent disconnect in the fabric of my being. Many people claim transitioning saved their lives, and I believe them. Now with the threat of Donald Trump and co. working to take away my (and other people's) ability to transition, I feel the same thing: I'd probably rather die than de-transition. "Death before detransition" is a real phrase many people repeat and believe to their core.

Seeing myself as a woman is... I don't know. It's the equivalent of popping a bone back into its socket after it's been dislocated forever. Of stumbling into a warm room after being frozen out in the cold. Something that was so broken and so disjointed throughout life now feels in place; things are still bad, but the baseline is so much better.

All this to say: I chose this for myself, by myself. I lost a lot of friends. I almost lost my wife. I've been stared at, misgendered, been called names and ugly, told I prayed wrong and I should try again, was praised for "self deporting" so as not to ruin a nice red state... all from people I'd consider close. All in the guise of Christian love, all because I made a choice others didn't like. I didn't transition to be accepted by others: I did it so I could accept myself. Finally.

There's a lot more to be said about certain childhood experiences. Times where I browsed reddit and got jealous of all the people who transitioned. Ultimately, this journey is about rejecting the fear that religion taught me.

As I worked through everything, I realized that everywhere I turned, I was afraid: Afraid of ruining my life. Of going to hell. Of what people thought! Of wasting time, losing my job, losing family, friends, my wife; of everything. I didn't want to be a bad older sibling and cause my brothers and sisters to stumble too! What if I transitioned and I was ugly? What if the transition didn't work?

Importantly, growing up I was told I had a True North in the Bible. However, when Moriah and I had that heart-shattering experience written above, I couldn't be sure anymore. I was afraid to question the Bible. I was afraid to do something wrong. But so much I was trying to do kept me from feeling, from loving. I was so concerned about what was "right" that I missed out on helping others, including my wife. I worked through a lot of that fear. Moriah and I both did. It ultimately lead to the deconstruction of our faith.

Before I continue, I want to note something important: I transitioned before I deconstructed. I transitioned before I stopped going to church. I transitioned before I stopped praying. See, I went through the Bible (waking up with Moriah every day at 5am to study it) and found many promises; importantly, promises about God never leaving nor forsaking. Promises that sin could never completely separate me from God. As I leaned into trusting this, as I leaned into my feelings, and as I understood them to be trans, I felt comfort. I didn't feel closer to God, but I didn't feel further... I felt like I better understood the warmth of his heart, and his love for the Queer community.

Probably the most important experience was believing God made me this way, and no matter what I'd do, he would love me. I may not have been persecuted like the Christians who missioned in Japan, but this clip captures the sense of relief I felt after I experienced God's love for arguably the first time as I accepted I was, indeed, trans:

There's many a day filled with mourning what could have been: what if I were born a girl? What if I could carry a child to term? God, I'd love that. What if I knew I was trans sooner, would the effects of a male puberty be lessened? Would it be less work to reverse those effects? Why do I have these feelings at all, I didn't ask for this!

But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Before my coming out, Moriah noticed how detached I was from... everything. Rolling into 2023, I was depressed. I was isolating myself, and I was hiding so much from myself and Moriah. I was doing my best to fill the role assigned to me at birth, to be a good husband and do all the right husband-y things. But as I learned more and more about trans people and about gender dysphoria (which I became officially diagnosed with) the more my heart ached.

Hours browsing on r/transtimelines, disassociating at work, going through bouts of cross dressing and repenting. It was all too much and all too depressing, but it kept happening. Clearly that was wrong. Clearly that wasn't the answer. I needed to keep praying. I needed to keep asking God to deliver me from this. I tried trusting him; I tried giving all the feelings to him. It was clear to me, I didn't want these feelings. I still feel this way sometimes.

But working through all of that has helped secure me in who I am. It's helped Moriah, too, I think? We've talked a lot about what gender is, the roles we've been assigned, and what being a sapphic couple would entail. What would her family think? Mine? I don't know. But I think we both know ourselves better. At least, we're trying.

Starting HRT in May 2024 was life changing. It was the first time I felt like I could actually do something about this dysphoria I had battled for so long. In a lot of ways, it was dangerous! If I could actually change things about myself, what else could I change? Therapy has been good for tempering my expectations.

As I started noticing changes in my body while on HRT, I had a harder and harder time "boymoding". My body was finally changing in the ways it should have changed during puberty. As I stopped being afraid of the changes and embraced them, I internalized that, yes, I am a woman. Once that "clicked," I couldn't pretend to be a boy anymore. It was time to come out, and I needed to do it now. So, in September of 2024, after nearly 2 years of exploring these feelings, I came out to my friends, family, colleagues, and everybody in between.

Ultimately, not too much was different. My name was (and is) the same, and I'm still me. I just changed up my "look" a little bit, and was more honest about my identity. I was finally free. Still stuck in Utah, but finally free.

2025 and beyond is going to be, and already has been, a difficult time for all people. Like, truly everyone. But especially women, immigrants, and trans people. Already, the Trump Administration has filed many an executive order banning terms such as "transgender," and is expelling trans people from the military not on science, but on vibes. A lot of this is eerily similar to the beginning of Nazi Germany.

Is this fear mongering? No, it is not. Trump is doing everything he said he would do. So, if you know a trans person, please remember:

Those coming to you speaking fears and anxiety are not "projecting" future anxieties (something someone actually said to me). They are afraid now because of things that are happening now.

Importantly: if you're someone who believes in God and thinks you need to speak truth to someone, unsolicited feedback or calls to share a Bible verse or personal testimony will only hurt and dehumanize any (if existent) relationship you might have. I have received many calls and texts from "concerned people" who wanted to remind me of Truth or "tell me a story," all of which were people who didn't take the time to get to know my story before imposing their own onto me. So please, do as Jesus would: sure, yeah, share truth. But first work to gain an audience. Don't take your relationship for granted.

Also, you're totally not going to convert anyone. Every trans person has wrestled with their decision for ages. But that's the beauty of it: you can develop a wonderful, vibrant relationship with a trans person based on love and care, instead of concern for their soul. Sure, go ahead and be concerned about their soul for the after life. But also, their current, lived, life is incredibly hard. Speak to and meet those needs first.

Trans people exist. They haven't been duped. They didn't make this decision easily. They've been mocked and abandoned. Their current government is actively out to make their lives worse. What do trans people, what do I, need more than anything right now? Good people who show real love, love that casts out fear and builds encouragement. Be trustworthy. Be a shoulder to lean on. Be a good person.

Thanks for reading, you are invited to join me on this journey. 🩵

Q&A (Last updated: 2025-02-02 )

I’ve gotten a lot of interesting questions about my transition. Some of these could probably be Googled, but I figured I’d add my own personal twist to them. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me here.

Resources

As a bonus, here's some resources, including something Moriah wrote: