A more formal Lauren

Although there were few possibilities for me to really dress up when I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, I did manage to obtain this lovely dress for a church social held to advance gay rights.

My Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg was a pleasing place to be a woman, because I was treated better than an average female. My church was a welcoming church of about 150 members. It was LGBTQIA+ friendly. 

I passed as a woman everywhere in the Tampa Bay Area, all the time, because there were many more women who looked like me in Florida. Since I didn't try to be sexy, people ignored me.

I wore this dress a few times, including when I went to a special party at the Don Cesar Resort Hotel in St. Petersburg Beach where I danced all night with a gay friend of mine.

Most of my friends, even when I was male for all those years were women and gay men. 

I had no real male friends at all. I had nothing in common with men and found it hard to like any.

Now, that I am a woman, my friends are the same.

I finally became a woman

One of the luckiest things to make my life as woman more satisfying was the fact that I had lost forty pounds in Burbank before I underwent my gender affirmation surgery at Tampa General Hospital in 2017. 

It took about one year to heal and get used to my new body after my surgery, with help from Cindy, a transwoman whose transition had been in 2015.

Starting in January 2018, one day after my 50th birthday, I began working for an online company in Tampa called Human Resources Inc. writing and editing material for large firms from my home office in St. Petersburg. 

It was my first job as a woman.

The only individual in the company who knew that I was a transwoman was the boss, Laurie Lykins, a real woman.

One pleasing thing about being back in Florida was that I was able to rejoin a great Unitarian Universalist church in St. Petersburg that welcomed gays, transgendered and all others. Several of my gay friends were still there from when I had been a man and they were deliriously happy to see me as a woman.

Finally. I am the WOMAN I had always WANTED to be.