Adrienne May

Hello dear readers,

I went to a boys' public school. It was a tough regime and it was easier to fit in than revolt. For someone with my problem, there would have been no understanding, other than a caning. I learned to bury my true feelings as much as possible. I played rugby and was hooker for the school fifteen.

When I left I worked for Bank and went to Sierra Leone to be a branch manager aged twenty-one. The climate was dreadful. I could not stomach the masculine life style and returned to England after five years to eventually become a civil servant.

In my autobiography I tell how I suffered the torment of gender dysphoria in an age when such a thing was not recognised other than a psychological problem to be rooted out. Indeed my GP in the 1960s, used those very words, as though the thoughts in my head could indeed be rooted out, and I imagined him pulling the desire to be female like a dandelion from my brain. He also talked of casting it out, for he happened to be a lay preacher and this biblical phraseology and lack of understanding shocked me, destroyed my confidence and nearly

finished me.

From thoughts of suicide I recovered and with the help of a new GP and a change in the attitude of the medical profession, I eventually changed gender.The medical profession at last realised that gender dysphoria was not a life-style choice but a problem with hormonal causes when in the womb.

I have always written, but it was not until I became fifty that I wrote in earnest. I love it, I live the parts of the characters as I write about them and I am afraid the lesser consideration of housework is often delayed until I have to blitz it.

I have now retired. I am supremely happy as a female, living with my cat Milly, a good thing too, as the change has cost me a great deal in heartbreak and feelings of hopelessness and financial security. I now love my life. Half was spent as a man, half as a female.