I forgot that it’s my mega week so no big info dump this time. Instead I bring a question: how do you practice gender self-care? Do you have any activities or rituals that make you feel more comfortable in your gender? Painting my nails and taking care of my hair are the most consistent ones. These shouldn’t even be considered gendered activities by society, but I missed out on having long hair and painted nails when I was younger because of my assigned gender, so doing them now feels validating and gives me confidence.
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It sounds like waiting 6 years has not been an effective strategy for you - maybe you should try making some small changes and see how you feel about them. A month of HRT, for example. Some makeup to make your face more masculine or feminine. New name and pronouns. Things of this nature.
Some of the most life changing advise I got was that the effects of estrogen are reversible for months, but you’ll start to feel psychological effects within weeks. I felt them within days, easily. Like just the idea that HRT was something you could experiment with rather than something that had the finality of a definite decision.
That was an important part of it for me trying it out and I had similar experience with knowing it was for me way before any physical changes happened. Still knowing I would eventually take it to experiment was long separated from actually taking it because I was still worried about work and thought I’d save up for a couple more years just in case. Fortunately, some other stuff came up and I decided I’d be starting very soon.