Elizabeths Story

Elizabeth's Story

Hi, I’m Elizabeth, Mary Elizabeth Freeman in full, but I like to be known just as “Elizabeth” by everyone, now that I live and work fully as a woman. This is the name I secretly adopted at the age of ten when I met a girl about three years older than me who impressed me as just the person I had always (from the age of four to that time) wanted to be. It had all been, and would continue to be “my secret” up until quite recently.

Why it took so long for me to “come out” I do not really know, nut it should have happened before my teens. Perhaps it was due to being born, and living in a Royal Navy family in the fifties/sixties, when boys were meant to be just that, and indeed girls acting like girls. When I asked my Mum if I could go to school in a skirt at the age of five, and then continued to try mums clothes on until I was eleven, when I seriously started to cross dress, I did not even understand myself my sexuality.

I was frightened of what I may be, scared of what would happen to me if I was found out (society then spoke of people who were not conforming to how everyone else behaved as being suitable for sending to institutions, or ‘Funny Farms’ the ‘nut house’ etc etc) What would my father say about it, let alone my mother who, by the age of twelve, I was in seriously domestic conflict with all the time.

Although years of crying alone in the dark went by, with frequent threats of suicide made, and one serious attempt at seventeen, I never felt I could come out. In addition I did not know what could be done anyway to turn my ugly, clumbersome, dispicable, and very male body into the female one I had imagined and dreamt I should have. When I did find out that other men were starting to change gender, my life was going on a route were I had a very dear friend (my wife) who could give me the children I had to have, and the warmth and security I needed desparetly at that time.

After all too many years of suppression, whilst supporting my family, and making do with secret cross dressing and my hidden true character as Elizabeth, I discovered ‘Transformation’ and the Albany Clinic, with their wonderful team of lovely, supporting, reassuring, sympathetic, and just plain friendly women. Oh what a relief and joy it was to at last be able to express my first true feelings, and be so understood.

I am now well on my way to achieving that “new me” which I have craved for for so long, and this is completely down to the Albany Clinic. It has not been easy due to my personal family, and the very great emotional strain, along with financial implications, that took me into the very depths of despair and turmoil, with two nervous breakdowns suffered. But that has passed like a violent storm in the night, and I am “a changing”

From the first time I ventured out to the Bristol Transformation shop in my best female outfit, and now when I am going to the Albany Clinic as just Elizabeth in my everyday form, I have found it to be a great social occasion. It is a chance to gossip with those ladies that I think of as my friends, who I know will do all they can to help me and make my visit as warm and comfortable as it could ever be. Yes I have had problems at times receiving products that should have been sent, and my account has not always been handled with care, but this has never really upset me because of the wonderful attitude of the ladies, I have dealt with. Indeed, the staff at the Clinic has recently changed, but the first time I visited with the new Team in situ I could not have been given a warmer welcome by Lisa, Chrissie, and Jean, It was as though they had always known me, and it was great.

May the Transformations and The Albany Clinic develop and prosper so many more ‘secret women’ can escape their prison of the wrong body, and may it happen at a far earlier age than for all too many of us. To those in their teens (or younger, or older) who are now thinking of "coming out” and changing gender due to that true knowledge of being girls/women inside, do not delay any further, and seek the good advice of the Clinic now.

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