Post by Ayla on Mar 25, 2016 7:55:50 GMT 8
www.tinastransgenderworld.co.uk/frogsandsnails.htm
There are many sides to me as a person and on this page I want to try and explain about these things.
My website has told my story with vivid explanation about me as a person but sometimes a person has to confide to others about areas of ones life that doesant revolve round transitional stories ,and this page is here to do this.
As a person ,im a complicated piece of work somebody that chooses to portray myself a certain way and it might seem by my web pages that I portray myself as some sort of Gender Queen or Warrior that surfs the highway of the world wide web . This could not be further from the truth.
Today we live in a world that's in my eyes selfish and uncaring and nothing like the 1950s I grew up in wear people would literally do anything for each other . Today I feel its all to self centred in society and nobody does anything for nothing ,expecting something in return all the while .
I look back at my child hood days and these did have laughter and good times despite that terrible demon that saw fit to nag me for a good part of my life ,that demon being Gender Dysphoria .
For most of my life ive known that my brain was only one thing and that was female despite my outwardly appearance saying something else. For a person to try and come to terms with this is a terrible thing and one I would not wish on my worst enemy . The single biggest sadness for me involves my childhood. I am keenly aware that I have been denied a childhood as a girl. I have not had the experiences, the traumas, the joys and the socialization that 'normal' girls take for granted. I will never know what it is like to go to school as a girl, get my first period, have childhood friends relate to me as a girl. I will never have memories of pretty dresses, or playing dolls. (well, other than the few times I snuck in such guilty joys, sometimes suffering punishment for them.)
Going through transition was one of the grandest adventures of my life. It was the most intelligent, positive, self beneficial thing I have ever done. I would certainly be dead before my current age of 60 without it. The benefits are almost innumerable. Indeed, I wish I could have done it sooner than I did. (alas, another, impossible, regret!)
The Values I Hold
The values I hold are this , its more important as a person to be able to be part of society and be seen in the real world as a sensitive careing sort of person ,with a massive heart ,than some sort of silver surfer that only lives for their image on the internet . With things like social media now on the internet many people choose to use this as a disguise to potray their real selfs ,and frankly ive only ever told the facts ,the truth on anything ive wanted to put on the internet.
.I would sooner stand in a grove of giant sequoia trees in California and be happy to be able to enjoy the real wonders of this world and fully appreciate nature at is best , than spend my life like so many actually do ,never realising their dreams . That life was made possible for me after I went out their and chased my own dream. My transition made this possible.
My website goes into all the details of my transition and so I feel its not the place to cover this same ground again here.
All my life I have been a sensitive person with a kind and generous heart ,a person that does actually care about others and how life effects them , maby to some extent this has dictated how I see things because all to often society turns its back on many people and they suffer because of this fact .
Because im a Transgender person myself despite terming myself a woman now I still care enough to want to help others chase their dreams just like I did ,and a good part of my life has been given over to trying to accomplish this at least the last 37 years anyway.
The way I Found To Do This .
Chase That Dream
To find true happiness , one must search one's Inner soul and bring forth the real person buried inside.
Being Transgendered can be a gift a blessing only bestowed on a few of the worlds population , but true happiness can only be forthcoming if a person enters into a transition with spirit and deep desire to succeed and become part of todays society.
From children we are brought up and brainwashed into believing that society as a whole is the only correct way to live our lives , and in most cases amount to nothing more than machines that lumber on from day to day , with dreams and desires that are never realised . And as we grow old ,still not realising these dreams , our candles finally flicker out and the dreams go with us to meet our makers .
Oh yes there is hope, there is that pot of gold at the end of that rainbow ,and that yellow brick road to take us there.
But each individual has the choice to chase that dream or carry on living that mundane ,rather tiresome life at Times.
Yes we need the courage to blossom and to grow and develop from a seed into a wonderful person that so often is buried deep inside ones self.
In todays society basic understanding has never been so great , and with this new found understanding towards transgendered people worldwide we have the choice as individuals that people from other generations never had and with this comes the chance to fully realise our selves .
Each person is a living entity that desires to be given the freedom of choice to be able to express there true inner selves ,and with love and understanding and a little support the options are endless.
Search your souls , chase that dream, search out the happiness for surely its just an arms length away .
Yes we can go on dreaming a dream .but we have the choice in our own hands to realise this ,and with the courage and conviction installed in us deep in our hearts ,the options are endless.
These Passages Are Dedicated To My Sisters Worldwide .
Tina Marie Phillips . 11/08/09
I also did one other thing
This is the story of how The Pink Butterfly Network came about
Several years ago when yahoo were running personal pages on its site called Yahoo 360 ,i struck up a friendship with a certain person called Chloe Prince and she was about to go to Suporn in Chonburi in Thailand to do her FFS Surgery and because she was a friend i made a point of logging onto a web cam every day to give here moral support because she was going through a rough time handling the surgery . We talked a...bout certain ideas and she mentioned that she would like to start a social networking site for transgender people and said after looking round their was a platform provider called NING. . So after taking a look at the company on the internet who at the time were offering free platforms if you self build . All looked good to me and it also did to Chloe because she started Pink Essence and i went for The Pink Butterfly Network For Transgender People . Anyways the two social networks were launched and for some reason Chloe took offence towards me because she wanted to run with this idea on her own . Anyways after a series of nasty e mails from here our friendship parted . It all seemed very good at this stage but then after a year or so Nings free flatforms were taken away and i was contacted by Ning and told if you want to keep the social network going ,their will be fees being placed on doing it .
So ok because of my support for all transgender people i decided to sink the cost myself for quiet some time ,and Dr Chettawut in Bangkok even contributed $1000.00 to me to help with my sites on the internet and wire transfered this amount to my bank account .
The problem is this as a site grows it used more band width for its content and obviously every new person that joins has their own page witch is using more space on the site . Unfortunately its not always clear how much a site like that is actually costing in fees to keep on the internet, and because NING HAD MY BANK DETAILS ,they just took the site fees and helped their self . It became obvious that it was going to cost quiet a lot to keep this social networking site on the internet and with most people prefering to use face book ,i made the decision to close it down . The obvious choice now was to use social media that was free and face book fits that bill ,and that is why i built 4 groups and ten separate pages and recreated The Pink Butterly Network on here. Its a popular choice and one that makes sence to be honest . As for chloe prince well she went on the tv in the usa ,claimed she got stung by a bee that brought on a syndrome that caused all her hormones to go wrong. We never got that friendship back unfortunately . But that is how Pink Butterfly came about on Face Book.
Pink Butterfly is made up of friends and support groups as well as its news and links pages along with a 12 room chat room site.
Pink Butterfly now has several thousand members on its groups and massive support for its pages on Face Book .
Who Are The People Who Inspired Me
.My mother was the person who inspired me the most along with my father. They taught me the values of life and to be a true decent person and to never ever take life for granted.
Their are two other people who I need to mention here who also inspired me as well.
Prof Lynn Conway
And
Jennifer Diane Reitz
Who wrote this.
Reasons To Cherish Being Transsexual
Because being transsexual is often so hurtful, so filled with sadness and longing, with shame and loss and difficulty, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the whole thing is utterly a curse, perhaps inflicted by arcane and evil ancient gods.
Oh, probably.
But there is an upside too.
Most human lives are utterly mundane, devoid of any real uniqueness, the average person somnambulates through an existence devoted to filling the roles expected of them.
But to be a transsexual is a magical, wondrous thing.
Consider. We are given many gifts in compensation for the terrible loss of our childhood as ourselves, and for the pain we endure. We are by some as yet unknown mechanism statistically far more intelligent, as a class, than perhaps any other kind of people. We are almost universally more creative, and we often possess incredible levels of courage and self determination, demonstrated by our very survival, and ultimate attainment of our goal. We are rare as miracles, and in our own way, as magical, or so has been the belief of all ancient cultures on the earth.
We are given awareness that others would never experience, understanding of gender, of the human condition, of society and the roles and hidden rules unquestioned within it. We are given a window into the lives of both sexes, and cannot help but be, to some degree, beyond either. From this we have a rare opportunity: to choose our own life, outside predetermined and unquestioned definition or role. We can do new things, original things, only because our experience is so unique.
We get to be true shapeshifters, and experience the sheer wonder of melty-wax flesh and a real rebirth into the world. Our brains and bodies gain benefit from having been bathed in and altered by the hormones of both sexes. We appear to retain our visible youthfulness where others wrinkle, and for years longer. We possess neural advantages from both sexes, such as the language advantages of the feminized brain, and the spatial abilities of the masculinized brain both. We are shocked into waking up, if we allow it, to a life we create for ourselves...we are not automatically doomed to sleepwalk through life.
After our transformations, after the full-moon lycanthropic miracle that the modern age affords us, we can live lives of success and love, and genuine specialness, if we choose. If we can get past our upbringing, past the programming, the bigotry, the messages of disgust from the culture around us, if we can stand as ourselves in freedom, then our special gifts grant us a heritage of wondrous power.
We have a proud and marvelous history. In ancient days we were magic incarnate. We were Nadle, Winkte, Two-Souls, Shamans and healers and magical beings to our communities. We possessed the ability to give the blessings of the gods and spirits, and were prized as companions, lovers, and teachers.
We were the prize gift of ancient tribes, entertainers, designers and dreamers. Sometimes we were the -somewhat reluctant- rulers of empires, and the consorts of emperors. We were champions and warriors too, who were feared for our unique gifts turned to inevitable victory.
Know that it is only in recent centuries, with the rise of the single minded, monolithic and monotheistic desert religions, filled with harsh single gods and twisted, narrow morals, that our kind have become reviled, the objects of scorn. Once, we were the kin of the gods.
To be transsexual is not easy, and it is not a birth that could be envied, but neither is it a damnation. It was once considered a rare wonder, if a mixed one; a faery gift that cuts as it blesses.
And in the modern age, of hormones and surgery, we are the first generations of our kind to finally know the joy of complete transformation, of truly gaining our rightful bodies. No other transsexuals in history have been so fortunate.
I say that we are unicorns, rare and wondrous, with still a touch of ancient magic and the kinship of the gods. Though it is agony, beyond the fire we have the opportunity to become alchemic gold.
We have much to add to the world, and to give to ourselves and those who love us.
We have always been, we are still the prize of the tribe, for only the world around us has changed, the desert harshness branding us vile. We are still the same.
Our compensations are real, and our lives are special; we have but to grasp the gifts born of our sufferings.
When I look around me at the mundane lives, there are times I think that maybe I am glad I was born transsexual, for I would never have been what I have become without that curse. I cannot help but be grateful for my uniqueness, so I am brought to a strange revelation:
Deep down, I cherish having been born a transsexual.
Be a unicorn with me, and cherish it too.
In 2012 after getting back from my last trip to Thailand ,and it was about 5 weeks after i got back and i got up one morning and my lower jaw was killing me . I let this ride for a few weeks but the pain was worse than any I had gotten by doing the surgeries I did in Thailand . Eventually it had gone on so long I went to see my doctor And asked to see a consultant ,but she refused on the grounds that I had done surgery abroad in Thailand , the surgery she had actually helped me set up . So I asked if in stead of doing it through the NHS if i might see somebody private and pay for it , she agreed to this and did me a referral letter to see Dr Mc Cully a top cosmetic surgeon in Nottingham . He checked my face out and said that Dr Chettawut had done a very good job and that he did not think the pain was associated with the lower facelift I had done in Bangkok in 2012. He then suggested I saw Mr Andrew Sidebottom ( Andrew is one of the top TMJ experts in the united kingdom) He said I had a TMJ problem and to go away and take amytryptoline witch I did for 6 months .
This did not solve the problem so I then went to my dentist and asked her to refer me to the hospital witch she did and I had to wait another 5 months for that to happen at the hospital.
The Max facial surgeon I saw their asked me to explain about what had been going on with the lower face and after talking with him about the chronic pain he agreed to an enhanced MRI scan and after waiting a few more months this was done at Nottinghams Queens Medical Centre . A week later I went back for the results and after looking at the scan on screen we still could not figure out what was wrong and what was causing the lower face pain. At this point I was very much stuck with this crippling problem and just tried to get by day to day the best i could .
As the weeks and months went bye things started to improve little bye little until I got up one day and the chronic nerve pain had gone. How lucky had I been for this to happen !! At this point I wanted to do something special to celibrate getting my life back again and decided to arrange a big trip to the USA and take mother with me in a wheel chair ,quiet a task really going through major airports with a wheelchair four suit cases and a walking frame. But in September 2013 mum and myself set off from London/ Gatwick airport that would see us both travel around the UsA.
The following link is that trip on a page I created for it to document it.
www.tinastransgenderworld.co.uk/myamericantrip2013.htm
After we got back things were ok for a while and life seemed to get back to normal with me running my plant business Pink Butterfly Plants here in Nottingham ,until mother ended up in the hospital again and this ment I was up and down to the hospital nearly every day to be with her at her side. Soon after that theface problem came back with evengence and the pain was so bad it would put me on my knees in tears literally . One Saturday morning recall that despite taking the neupathic pain blockers Pregabalin I just couldat stop the chronic pain in my lower face and ended up ringing the emergency services here in Nottingham and they collected me in a van and took me to the emergency doctor to see him. He asked a lot of questions and vtold me it was better to go and see my reglar doctor my GP, and so I did ths . Over the next six months I went through two pain clinics had hypnotherapy and also several sessions of acupuncture but none of these did any good and at this point life was pretty pergatory to say the least. Im not a person to laydown and die at problems in life I never have been so I needed to find a way of trying to sort this problem out with the lower face it had gone on too long now .
What I did was this I used the internet to try and find a solution to my problem and while surfing the world wide web I came across apain specialist Dr her name was Vanessa Hodgkinson and she practised from a private hospital "The Park Hospital" here in Nottingham.
I made an appointement to go and see her their
Vanessa was very good and after talking that day she said that the problem was associated with the Mental nerve in the chin area of the lower face that connects to the third section of the Trigeminal nerve . To test this we did some tests by doing a mental nerve block and also nerve conductivity tests wear they put electrodes on your face and wire you up to a computer.
Unfortunately this again did not prove it was the Mental nerve and damage to this so I did another MRI scan at the Park Hospital. The results from this didant show up anything amazing ony that I had done ffs surgery in 2007 in Thailand and the titanium screw that's still in my hairline from that surgery ,but not what I was hoping to see . All I could do at this point was to keeping taking the Pregabalin ( Lyrica ) and get on with life the best I could.
Most of the next 2 years I have not really been on the computer or the internet much ,only to check my emails and keep an eye on my Pink Butterfly Network sites that I so love running in support of transgender people worldwide and I did not look at my own website for 18 months "Tinas Transgender World " and so it never got no maintenance and some of the you tube vids had been taken off you tube so this left gaps on my website .
A few weeks ago now maby its been luck or some devine intervention the pain stopped with my lower face again and its just left a lot of deadness in the lower teeth and bottom of the chin . Being pain free for the first time in as long as I can remember sparked a new lease of life into me and I was able to claw my way back into life and also the internet again and do the much needed site rebuild on my website Tinas Transgender World . Also I decided to add a lot of new pages to it ,to try and put over certain areas of transition to visetors to my site .
As a person I value my life to such an extent ,i could not evan try to put this into words here on this web page . If you have just read this story ,I thank you and hope its shead some light on to whats been going on in my life this last 3-4 years .
When a person hits rock bottom if you want to exist and still live as a living entity there is only one thing you can do, and that's pick your self up and fight on
The Conclusion
My life has been a rollercoaster of emotions and turmoil at times ,leading to periods of utter desolation and self loathing ,but through all this that flame flickered away inside me and gave me the will to fight on to become one living entity as a person ,and it also paved my way to becoming part of society . As a person I have never felt the need to get involved with gender politics in anyway ,despite having my own views on things ,preferring to keep my thoughts to myself and making my statement through my sites on the internet Life has dealt me many crushing blows over the years and tried to strike me down but a persons self will and belief is a strong thing ,and I would never admit to defeat because all I ever wanted was to truly be me .
Tina Marie Phillips (21/03/2016)
There are many sides to me as a person and on this page I want to try and explain about these things.
My website has told my story with vivid explanation about me as a person but sometimes a person has to confide to others about areas of ones life that doesant revolve round transitional stories ,and this page is here to do this.
As a person ,im a complicated piece of work somebody that chooses to portray myself a certain way and it might seem by my web pages that I portray myself as some sort of Gender Queen or Warrior that surfs the highway of the world wide web . This could not be further from the truth.
Today we live in a world that's in my eyes selfish and uncaring and nothing like the 1950s I grew up in wear people would literally do anything for each other . Today I feel its all to self centred in society and nobody does anything for nothing ,expecting something in return all the while .
I look back at my child hood days and these did have laughter and good times despite that terrible demon that saw fit to nag me for a good part of my life ,that demon being Gender Dysphoria .
For most of my life ive known that my brain was only one thing and that was female despite my outwardly appearance saying something else. For a person to try and come to terms with this is a terrible thing and one I would not wish on my worst enemy . The single biggest sadness for me involves my childhood. I am keenly aware that I have been denied a childhood as a girl. I have not had the experiences, the traumas, the joys and the socialization that 'normal' girls take for granted. I will never know what it is like to go to school as a girl, get my first period, have childhood friends relate to me as a girl. I will never have memories of pretty dresses, or playing dolls. (well, other than the few times I snuck in such guilty joys, sometimes suffering punishment for them.)
Going through transition was one of the grandest adventures of my life. It was the most intelligent, positive, self beneficial thing I have ever done. I would certainly be dead before my current age of 60 without it. The benefits are almost innumerable. Indeed, I wish I could have done it sooner than I did. (alas, another, impossible, regret!)
The Values I Hold
The values I hold are this , its more important as a person to be able to be part of society and be seen in the real world as a sensitive careing sort of person ,with a massive heart ,than some sort of silver surfer that only lives for their image on the internet . With things like social media now on the internet many people choose to use this as a disguise to potray their real selfs ,and frankly ive only ever told the facts ,the truth on anything ive wanted to put on the internet.
.I would sooner stand in a grove of giant sequoia trees in California and be happy to be able to enjoy the real wonders of this world and fully appreciate nature at is best , than spend my life like so many actually do ,never realising their dreams . That life was made possible for me after I went out their and chased my own dream. My transition made this possible.
My website goes into all the details of my transition and so I feel its not the place to cover this same ground again here.
All my life I have been a sensitive person with a kind and generous heart ,a person that does actually care about others and how life effects them , maby to some extent this has dictated how I see things because all to often society turns its back on many people and they suffer because of this fact .
Because im a Transgender person myself despite terming myself a woman now I still care enough to want to help others chase their dreams just like I did ,and a good part of my life has been given over to trying to accomplish this at least the last 37 years anyway.
The way I Found To Do This .
Chase That Dream
To find true happiness , one must search one's Inner soul and bring forth the real person buried inside.
Being Transgendered can be a gift a blessing only bestowed on a few of the worlds population , but true happiness can only be forthcoming if a person enters into a transition with spirit and deep desire to succeed and become part of todays society.
From children we are brought up and brainwashed into believing that society as a whole is the only correct way to live our lives , and in most cases amount to nothing more than machines that lumber on from day to day , with dreams and desires that are never realised . And as we grow old ,still not realising these dreams , our candles finally flicker out and the dreams go with us to meet our makers .
Oh yes there is hope, there is that pot of gold at the end of that rainbow ,and that yellow brick road to take us there.
But each individual has the choice to chase that dream or carry on living that mundane ,rather tiresome life at Times.
Yes we need the courage to blossom and to grow and develop from a seed into a wonderful person that so often is buried deep inside ones self.
In todays society basic understanding has never been so great , and with this new found understanding towards transgendered people worldwide we have the choice as individuals that people from other generations never had and with this comes the chance to fully realise our selves .
Each person is a living entity that desires to be given the freedom of choice to be able to express there true inner selves ,and with love and understanding and a little support the options are endless.
Search your souls , chase that dream, search out the happiness for surely its just an arms length away .
Yes we can go on dreaming a dream .but we have the choice in our own hands to realise this ,and with the courage and conviction installed in us deep in our hearts ,the options are endless.
These Passages Are Dedicated To My Sisters Worldwide .
Tina Marie Phillips . 11/08/09
I also did one other thing
This is the story of how The Pink Butterfly Network came about
Several years ago when yahoo were running personal pages on its site called Yahoo 360 ,i struck up a friendship with a certain person called Chloe Prince and she was about to go to Suporn in Chonburi in Thailand to do her FFS Surgery and because she was a friend i made a point of logging onto a web cam every day to give here moral support because she was going through a rough time handling the surgery . We talked a...bout certain ideas and she mentioned that she would like to start a social networking site for transgender people and said after looking round their was a platform provider called NING. . So after taking a look at the company on the internet who at the time were offering free platforms if you self build . All looked good to me and it also did to Chloe because she started Pink Essence and i went for The Pink Butterfly Network For Transgender People . Anyways the two social networks were launched and for some reason Chloe took offence towards me because she wanted to run with this idea on her own . Anyways after a series of nasty e mails from here our friendship parted . It all seemed very good at this stage but then after a year or so Nings free flatforms were taken away and i was contacted by Ning and told if you want to keep the social network going ,their will be fees being placed on doing it .
So ok because of my support for all transgender people i decided to sink the cost myself for quiet some time ,and Dr Chettawut in Bangkok even contributed $1000.00 to me to help with my sites on the internet and wire transfered this amount to my bank account .
The problem is this as a site grows it used more band width for its content and obviously every new person that joins has their own page witch is using more space on the site . Unfortunately its not always clear how much a site like that is actually costing in fees to keep on the internet, and because NING HAD MY BANK DETAILS ,they just took the site fees and helped their self . It became obvious that it was going to cost quiet a lot to keep this social networking site on the internet and with most people prefering to use face book ,i made the decision to close it down . The obvious choice now was to use social media that was free and face book fits that bill ,and that is why i built 4 groups and ten separate pages and recreated The Pink Butterly Network on here. Its a popular choice and one that makes sence to be honest . As for chloe prince well she went on the tv in the usa ,claimed she got stung by a bee that brought on a syndrome that caused all her hormones to go wrong. We never got that friendship back unfortunately . But that is how Pink Butterfly came about on Face Book.
Pink Butterfly is made up of friends and support groups as well as its news and links pages along with a 12 room chat room site.
Pink Butterfly now has several thousand members on its groups and massive support for its pages on Face Book .
Who Are The People Who Inspired Me
.My mother was the person who inspired me the most along with my father. They taught me the values of life and to be a true decent person and to never ever take life for granted.
Their are two other people who I need to mention here who also inspired me as well.
Prof Lynn Conway
And
Jennifer Diane Reitz
Who wrote this.
Reasons To Cherish Being Transsexual
Because being transsexual is often so hurtful, so filled with sadness and longing, with shame and loss and difficulty, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the whole thing is utterly a curse, perhaps inflicted by arcane and evil ancient gods.
Oh, probably.
But there is an upside too.
Most human lives are utterly mundane, devoid of any real uniqueness, the average person somnambulates through an existence devoted to filling the roles expected of them.
But to be a transsexual is a magical, wondrous thing.
Consider. We are given many gifts in compensation for the terrible loss of our childhood as ourselves, and for the pain we endure. We are by some as yet unknown mechanism statistically far more intelligent, as a class, than perhaps any other kind of people. We are almost universally more creative, and we often possess incredible levels of courage and self determination, demonstrated by our very survival, and ultimate attainment of our goal. We are rare as miracles, and in our own way, as magical, or so has been the belief of all ancient cultures on the earth.
We are given awareness that others would never experience, understanding of gender, of the human condition, of society and the roles and hidden rules unquestioned within it. We are given a window into the lives of both sexes, and cannot help but be, to some degree, beyond either. From this we have a rare opportunity: to choose our own life, outside predetermined and unquestioned definition or role. We can do new things, original things, only because our experience is so unique.
We get to be true shapeshifters, and experience the sheer wonder of melty-wax flesh and a real rebirth into the world. Our brains and bodies gain benefit from having been bathed in and altered by the hormones of both sexes. We appear to retain our visible youthfulness where others wrinkle, and for years longer. We possess neural advantages from both sexes, such as the language advantages of the feminized brain, and the spatial abilities of the masculinized brain both. We are shocked into waking up, if we allow it, to a life we create for ourselves...we are not automatically doomed to sleepwalk through life.
After our transformations, after the full-moon lycanthropic miracle that the modern age affords us, we can live lives of success and love, and genuine specialness, if we choose. If we can get past our upbringing, past the programming, the bigotry, the messages of disgust from the culture around us, if we can stand as ourselves in freedom, then our special gifts grant us a heritage of wondrous power.
We have a proud and marvelous history. In ancient days we were magic incarnate. We were Nadle, Winkte, Two-Souls, Shamans and healers and magical beings to our communities. We possessed the ability to give the blessings of the gods and spirits, and were prized as companions, lovers, and teachers.
We were the prize gift of ancient tribes, entertainers, designers and dreamers. Sometimes we were the -somewhat reluctant- rulers of empires, and the consorts of emperors. We were champions and warriors too, who were feared for our unique gifts turned to inevitable victory.
Know that it is only in recent centuries, with the rise of the single minded, monolithic and monotheistic desert religions, filled with harsh single gods and twisted, narrow morals, that our kind have become reviled, the objects of scorn. Once, we were the kin of the gods.
To be transsexual is not easy, and it is not a birth that could be envied, but neither is it a damnation. It was once considered a rare wonder, if a mixed one; a faery gift that cuts as it blesses.
And in the modern age, of hormones and surgery, we are the first generations of our kind to finally know the joy of complete transformation, of truly gaining our rightful bodies. No other transsexuals in history have been so fortunate.
I say that we are unicorns, rare and wondrous, with still a touch of ancient magic and the kinship of the gods. Though it is agony, beyond the fire we have the opportunity to become alchemic gold.
We have much to add to the world, and to give to ourselves and those who love us.
We have always been, we are still the prize of the tribe, for only the world around us has changed, the desert harshness branding us vile. We are still the same.
Our compensations are real, and our lives are special; we have but to grasp the gifts born of our sufferings.
When I look around me at the mundane lives, there are times I think that maybe I am glad I was born transsexual, for I would never have been what I have become without that curse. I cannot help but be grateful for my uniqueness, so I am brought to a strange revelation:
Deep down, I cherish having been born a transsexual.
Be a unicorn with me, and cherish it too.
In 2012 after getting back from my last trip to Thailand ,and it was about 5 weeks after i got back and i got up one morning and my lower jaw was killing me . I let this ride for a few weeks but the pain was worse than any I had gotten by doing the surgeries I did in Thailand . Eventually it had gone on so long I went to see my doctor And asked to see a consultant ,but she refused on the grounds that I had done surgery abroad in Thailand , the surgery she had actually helped me set up . So I asked if in stead of doing it through the NHS if i might see somebody private and pay for it , she agreed to this and did me a referral letter to see Dr Mc Cully a top cosmetic surgeon in Nottingham . He checked my face out and said that Dr Chettawut had done a very good job and that he did not think the pain was associated with the lower facelift I had done in Bangkok in 2012. He then suggested I saw Mr Andrew Sidebottom ( Andrew is one of the top TMJ experts in the united kingdom) He said I had a TMJ problem and to go away and take amytryptoline witch I did for 6 months .
This did not solve the problem so I then went to my dentist and asked her to refer me to the hospital witch she did and I had to wait another 5 months for that to happen at the hospital.
The Max facial surgeon I saw their asked me to explain about what had been going on with the lower face and after talking with him about the chronic pain he agreed to an enhanced MRI scan and after waiting a few more months this was done at Nottinghams Queens Medical Centre . A week later I went back for the results and after looking at the scan on screen we still could not figure out what was wrong and what was causing the lower face pain. At this point I was very much stuck with this crippling problem and just tried to get by day to day the best i could .
As the weeks and months went bye things started to improve little bye little until I got up one day and the chronic nerve pain had gone. How lucky had I been for this to happen !! At this point I wanted to do something special to celibrate getting my life back again and decided to arrange a big trip to the USA and take mother with me in a wheel chair ,quiet a task really going through major airports with a wheelchair four suit cases and a walking frame. But in September 2013 mum and myself set off from London/ Gatwick airport that would see us both travel around the UsA.
The following link is that trip on a page I created for it to document it.
www.tinastransgenderworld.co.uk/myamericantrip2013.htm
After we got back things were ok for a while and life seemed to get back to normal with me running my plant business Pink Butterfly Plants here in Nottingham ,until mother ended up in the hospital again and this ment I was up and down to the hospital nearly every day to be with her at her side. Soon after that theface problem came back with evengence and the pain was so bad it would put me on my knees in tears literally . One Saturday morning recall that despite taking the neupathic pain blockers Pregabalin I just couldat stop the chronic pain in my lower face and ended up ringing the emergency services here in Nottingham and they collected me in a van and took me to the emergency doctor to see him. He asked a lot of questions and vtold me it was better to go and see my reglar doctor my GP, and so I did ths . Over the next six months I went through two pain clinics had hypnotherapy and also several sessions of acupuncture but none of these did any good and at this point life was pretty pergatory to say the least. Im not a person to laydown and die at problems in life I never have been so I needed to find a way of trying to sort this problem out with the lower face it had gone on too long now .
What I did was this I used the internet to try and find a solution to my problem and while surfing the world wide web I came across apain specialist Dr her name was Vanessa Hodgkinson and she practised from a private hospital "The Park Hospital" here in Nottingham.
I made an appointement to go and see her their
Vanessa was very good and after talking that day she said that the problem was associated with the Mental nerve in the chin area of the lower face that connects to the third section of the Trigeminal nerve . To test this we did some tests by doing a mental nerve block and also nerve conductivity tests wear they put electrodes on your face and wire you up to a computer.
Unfortunately this again did not prove it was the Mental nerve and damage to this so I did another MRI scan at the Park Hospital. The results from this didant show up anything amazing ony that I had done ffs surgery in 2007 in Thailand and the titanium screw that's still in my hairline from that surgery ,but not what I was hoping to see . All I could do at this point was to keeping taking the Pregabalin ( Lyrica ) and get on with life the best I could.
Most of the next 2 years I have not really been on the computer or the internet much ,only to check my emails and keep an eye on my Pink Butterfly Network sites that I so love running in support of transgender people worldwide and I did not look at my own website for 18 months "Tinas Transgender World " and so it never got no maintenance and some of the you tube vids had been taken off you tube so this left gaps on my website .
A few weeks ago now maby its been luck or some devine intervention the pain stopped with my lower face again and its just left a lot of deadness in the lower teeth and bottom of the chin . Being pain free for the first time in as long as I can remember sparked a new lease of life into me and I was able to claw my way back into life and also the internet again and do the much needed site rebuild on my website Tinas Transgender World . Also I decided to add a lot of new pages to it ,to try and put over certain areas of transition to visetors to my site .
As a person I value my life to such an extent ,i could not evan try to put this into words here on this web page . If you have just read this story ,I thank you and hope its shead some light on to whats been going on in my life this last 3-4 years .
When a person hits rock bottom if you want to exist and still live as a living entity there is only one thing you can do, and that's pick your self up and fight on
The Conclusion
My life has been a rollercoaster of emotions and turmoil at times ,leading to periods of utter desolation and self loathing ,but through all this that flame flickered away inside me and gave me the will to fight on to become one living entity as a person ,and it also paved my way to becoming part of society . As a person I have never felt the need to get involved with gender politics in anyway ,despite having my own views on things ,preferring to keep my thoughts to myself and making my statement through my sites on the internet Life has dealt me many crushing blows over the years and tried to strike me down but a persons self will and belief is a strong thing ,and I would never admit to defeat because all I ever wanted was to truly be me .
Tina Marie Phillips (21/03/2016)