Hair, hormones and Transliving

Hair
Lucy has been growing her natural hair for nearly a year now. It is longer than shoulder length and VERY curly! So curly in fact that it is growing out sidewards rather than down. This is mainly because she has not had it cut at all so it has no shape or style. I know the feeling when you want to grow your hair and don't want to cut it but it would look so much better after a trim. She is also constantly wearing baseball caps to try and hide it - she must have 15 of these piled round the house. I have to admit I'm really not a fan of her wearing these, they just flatten the hair on top to her head and make it even more bushy on the sides. They will also be rubbing her hair which is not good when you are trying to grow it!

I have been nagging her to have it cut. She could have used my hairdresser who has her own hair salon at home but Lucy was worried about her reaction (I'm sure she will be fine) and also she may say something to her son who goes to the same school as our daughter. 

Last week we both took a day off for Christmas shopping and spent the day together. We went to Lakeside Shopping Centre which is a huge shopping complex about 45 mins from home (it took 2.5 hours to get there on the day but that's another story). We were walking around and we saw a Supercuts salon and we hovered outside for a bit with Lucy umming and ahhing about going in and having her hair cut. I could see she was nervous, even though the salon was empty. Anyway she chickened out and we walked away. She admitted that she had been really tempted but was feeling very nervous. About an hour or so later we found ourselves back at the salon where she plucked up enough courage to go in. We had a rushed whispered conversation where I told her she needed to tell the stylist her situation as the last thing she wanted was a 'mans' cut after spending all this time growing it. The receptionist said that they would take off about an inch and we both said' noooooo' and that the smallest amount needed to be cut off.

The salon was still empty and she sat down in the chair and an older stylist came to cut her hair. I saw them having a whispered conversation and knew that she was telling the stylist her situation. This lady gave Lucy a really lovely cut and style and there was minimal hair on the floor. It now looks so much better and she is wearing the baseball caps less when I am around which is great. It has a lovely style to it and I know she is pleased with it. 

Hormones
I previously mentioned that the GIC had now taken over the hormone treatment using shared care with our GP. She was switched from patches which her skin was reacting very badly to, over to tablets. She has been on the tablets for about 6 weeks and last week started to suffer severe sleeplessness and was waking up in the night with bad chest pains and pain in both her arms. As you can imagine we were both really worried about these episodes. She made an appointment with her GP this week who checked her out. He didn't seem to think it was heart related as it was not happening when she was being active (she referees football several times a week and carries around all the dj gear although her muscle strength is not what it used to be) and he suspected it was a reaction to the tablets. He has now prescribed gel which she has been on for 4 days now and the chest and arm pains have gone, and she is sleeping a bit better. She has a full medical check up next week as well which was already booked. It was a bit of a scary time.

TransLiving 
This is a UK based international support group and lifestyle magazine for the cross dressing and transgendered community, www.transliving.co.uk. TransLiving International is an established group within the Transgender community with members all over the world. They publish TransLiving magazine in printed and digital format on a quarterly basis and have a regular feature called 'Partners' Corner'. 

A little while ago a friend of mine (thanks Amy!) noticed they were looking for a partner to contribute for their next edition and she thought it would be something that would interest me. I messaged the editor to find out exactly what they were looking for and I was given a very brief outline. Basically anything goes, they just wanted something from a partners prospective and wanted 1,200 words. 

I was more than happy to do this but wasn't sure how Lucy would feel about it. As we now have quite a few people we actually know in real life that read my blog now I am more careful with what I write. For me it is writing about our situation and our life together but for Lucy this is private details about her life and transition I write about. She does read all my blog posts and so far has been okay with everything but I just want to make sure I don't step over the line. I wrote something up and actually had problems getting the word count down, unlike the essays I used to write for school where I always had trouble reaching the word count required! In the end after cutting it down it was 1,300 words but I was assured by the editor this was fine and then he mentioned not to forget the pictures.... pictures??.... no one had said anything about pictures! Lucy read it over and was okay with what I had written. Then I dropped the bombshell that they wanted pictures....... we have hundreds of pictures on both our Facebook profiles however only friends can see them and we have the odd one or ten (!) on the Pinks official photo page but nothing else out in the public domain. This was a big deal....  I'm the identifiable person and Lucy looks nothing like the male mask she wears but would be identified by association with me .... what if someone we knew but didn't know about Lucy saw them..... but thinking realistically if someone we did know saw the pictures in a transgender publication, to confront us with them they would have to out themselves. I think the risk is minimal and in any case she is going full time in the next month or so.

So, the digital TransLiving magazine edition 58 was published yesterday and is available, for a fee, here. Page 70 is Partners' Corner. You can also subscribe to to one or more edition in digital or paper format. My printed magazine should arrive next week. Lucy has downloaded already and her reaction was 'oh gawd'!