Alison Holley - My Story

My name is Alison Holley, my pronouns are she/her, I am a 65-year-old post-op male to female transsexual. I work in a leading lingerie store, and I volunteer in the Romford branch of the Saint Francis Hospice shop. I transitioned on the 30th April 2024 and in doing so my life has changed and improved unimaginably.

I am going to try to give you all some insight as to what it is like being transgender, the hurdles and prejudices we face, and growing up unable to do anything about it.

I was born in 1960 to a world that is very different from what it is today. Homosexuality was still illegal, and the only mainstream reference to anything trans during my childhood, was Danni La Rue, the famous drag queen from TV, as some of you may remember. At school I was only any good at woodwork, so I have spent most of my life in the building industry, which is not the best place to be when you know you want to be a woman.

My earliest memory of my childhood was when I was about 5 years old. I knew then that I wanted to be a little girl instead of a little boy. I would creep into my mum's bedroom and put on her clothes at every opportunity, it felt so right, so natural and even at that young age I knew who I was. This continued throughout my childhood until I was caught by my mum when I was 13 years old. She was horrified, and I suppose that's when the feeling of shame and embarrassment set in. Though I'm not blaming my mother one bit, it was just how things were at that time. Even this shame did not stop me from dressing though. I thought I was the only one in the world who felt like this, as there was obviously no internet, or anyone to talk to back then. My mother spoke to our G.P. who just said it was a passing phase. Well, I can assure you all, it isn't. As I grew older, my wanting to be a woman never went away, it only grew stronger. I would dress at every opportunity and covertly go out for walks in the middle of the night so as not to be seen. For that short moment, I was in bliss, just being, although somewhat pretending, to be the person I knew to be the true me. But of course, being transgender is not about the clothes we wear, it's about who we are. Clothes are just part of everyday life. I was unable to transition at this time though, through embarrassment, shame, and fear. Fear of losing my family, my friends and my job, which was a very common thing to happen, at that time. It had to stay my ' dirty little secret'.

For nearly 60 years I had to keep my 'secret', to myself, as there was, and still is, in my opinion, such a negative view of trans people, especially in the press and media, as recent figures prove. I used to, in male mode, like to go to the pub after work to unwind, and to help me deal with my life, as many people did back then, and I always got on with people until my 'dirty little secret' got out. That night, everything changed. Far from being just another person who frequented the bar and occasionally chatted to people, I became a pariah, the butt of jokes and humiliation, something that still exists to some extent today, it's just that now I'm in a far better place to deal with it. I obviously stopped going out, but even in everyday life, everyone else seemed to know, and I had to put up with comments and sneers, even doing my weekly shopping. This became a common occurrence, so much so that I somewhat became a recluse, avoiding going out, especially locally, as much as possible. It started to affect me at work and even led me to have a breakdown. One day I stormed out of work and never went back. I crouched on my kitchen floor that evening, crying my eyes out, wondering how I was going to deal with it all, and how I was going to move on. That in turn has also affected me for the past 20 years or so. I have also had to put up with a lot of transphobic attitudes and comments due to the ' Chinese whispers' following me around for over 20 years, all because I was outed by a neighbour who had once seen me dressed as Alison. I have even gone over a week, just sitting at home, not seeing the outside world, and not having a conversation with anyone else at all, because the weight of my life had gotten too much. Does anyone have any idea of just what that does to your mental health? How debilitating it is, how depressing it is, and how sad and lonely it makes you feel?

Growing up knowing you are living in the wrong body is just a continuing nightmare. I have tried many, many times to stop wanting to be a woman, but it's impossible, it's who I am, and l have lived a very lonely, loveless life because of it. I used to go to bed at night thinking, 'thank god' the day is over and that it was one day closer to my death. I would go to sleep hoping I was never going to wake up, and then waking up and thinking damn, I've now got to go through the whole charade again. And that's just what my life was like, a charade. I had to get up every day, and the first thing I had to do was put on this male persona and then go through the day by pretending that I was a man, pretend that everything was ok, when inside I was dying.

I have had a few relationships during my life, but, because I always wanted to be the woman in the relationships, they were all doomed to failure. Because of this, I found it easier to be just by myself, and in doing so I have spent 3/4 of my life alone. It truly has been a very lonely life I have led.

Throughout my life, because I was never able to be the true me, my mental health has suffered enormously. Because of these feelings of shame and embarrassment, I would always walk around looking miserable, avoiding eye contact and looking down at the floor so as not to be noticed by others, and as well as suffering from not being able to be the true me, I was also suffering from loneliness, paranoia and I suppose, depression. I was drinking too much, at home that is, I couldn't go out, just to help deal with who I was, which is quite a common occurrence for trans people. I knew something had to change; I just couldn't go on like this. Also, we all need to understand just what an impact being trans has on our mental health and how debilitating it is. I managed to deal with it on my own for over 50 years, and I have no idea how.

In 2020 I plucked up the courage, and it is courage that we need,to be able to open up about ourselves for any reason, and I made an appointment to see a counsellor. I had 3 sessions with her, and this really helped, just sitting there talking to someone who you know is going to be non-judgmental, and is there primarily to listen. Those 3 sessions, just before lockdown, really helped me come to terms with who I was, and it helped me to seriously cut down on the drinking.

Now as with a lot of things in our lives, it takes a tragedy for us to look deep into ourselves and make some serious life changes. For me this came in 2021, with the sad passing of my beautiful sister, aged just 70 years old. It left me distraught, but it made me realise that we are only here once, and that life is short, and that is when I began to think seriously about coming out to everyone and finally transitioning.

Also, at this time, whilst my niece and I were sorting out my sister's home, she asked me if I knew that her 16-year-old daughter had a girlfriend. She also said that during a conversation, her daughter had told her that 'she was proud of who she was'. Now I was very happy and so proud of her, but that also made me very upset. I have to admit, I cried myself to sleep for the next three or four nights, because here was a 16 year old girl, on the cusp of adulthood, proud of who she was, and there was I, 61 years old and I'd never allowed myself to be proud. Things really did have to change and change quickly. Although it took me another year, I eventually came out to my family and what friends I had. I'd always avoided making close friends for fear of everything coming out. Their support has been amazing, and I know that I have been blessed, not everyone has that support. Knowing that I was finally, after 60 long years of hurt, shame, embarrassment and loneliness, I was now to have a life where I was proud of myself, and a life filled with joy, happiness and friendships. 

I finally started my journey at the beginning of 2022, and although I knew I was going to have to go private for treatment, especially as there was a 7 year wait for a first NHS appointment, I did inform my GP. of my intentions. He too has been amazing, so supportive and understanding. Again, not every GP. is supportive of transgender people, and there are actually a lot of quite distressing stories regarding the treatment of trans people from their GPs. out there. Mine asked me to first attend NELFT Talking Therapies before I moved forward, and this I happily did. When I had my telephone assessment in the March, I was told that I'd need at least 6 - 8 face–to-face sessions. But when I started my face-to-face meetings in the November, because of the positive changes that had happened to me in the previous 6 months, I only needed 3 sessions. This was mainly because August 2022 was the month that truly started to change my life, and so much for the better. I began living my life as Alison full-time. Whereas before I was walking round looking miserable and down at the floor, avoiding eye contact and avoiding talking to people, now I was walking around with my head held high. I was full of confidence, full of happiness, talking to anyone who wanted to make conversation with me, and always with a smile on my face. I can say that smile has not left my face since. That is just how much my mental health had improved; it also goes to show, just how much having to hide our true selves away affects our lives in every way. No one should have to go through life feeling like that. 

I had my first meeting with my psychiatrist in December 2022, and I had to have meetings with 2 professionals just to be diagnosed with suffering with ' Gender Incongruence.’ When asked how long I had felt this way, I said, ever since I was a little girl. I also told him that, when I was born nature played a little trick on me. It gave me the body of a boy but the mind of a girl. And we need to understand this. I didn't choose this life; this life chose me. Being trans is not a lifestyle choice, we simply have no say in the matter, it's just who we are. It is obvious though, that there are still people in our society who think that being trans is a lifestyle choice, that we, for some unknown reason wake up one day and say, I'm going to start living my life as the opposite gender, and in doing so we'd risk losing our families, our friends, our jobs. That we’d choose to suffer vilification, vitriol, abuse, both verbal and physical and even death, as the sad, tragic events surrounding Brianna Ghey sadly prove, just because we think it'd be a good idea. I can assure you that this is not a lifestyle choice. I mean, would I have led such a sad, lonely, loveless life by choice? No, of course I wouldn't. Unfortunately, though, I can't see much changing until everyone accepts that trans people are born this way. We are born, in my opinion, intersexed, except that instead of having the organs of both male and female, we have the body of one gender and the mind of the other. It seems to me that we are just getting penalised for it, penalised for the way we were born. 

April 25th 2024, was the day I thought would never come. I was to travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to have the surgery to make me the woman I always knew I was. At 13.00 on the 30th April, with the nurses waving to me, I was taken down to theatre, and at 01.00 on the 01st May, I awoke in recovery, literally a new woman. The operation was a success, but my recovery was anything but. It didn't exactly go according to plan at all, and I faced many problems, including, losing considerable weight and having a blackout. The antibiotics didn't work and they made me quite ill. I also had a serious infection which left me needing a second surgery. The 2nd surgery was a success though, and so was the rest of my recovery. I flew back home on the 30th May. The care I received was superb, so much so that I actually returned there earlier in April this year to undergo breast augmentation.

Now, when we eventually do go for surgery, we, our family and our friends are all aware that we may not wake up after the the surgery, but it was a chance that I, like many others, had to take, because death was a better outcome than carrying on as I was. I also need to add that I needed to have 3 more psychiatric assessments, before I was able to have surgery, making 5 assessments in all. This is something that is so heavily regulated worldwide. We simply can't go and do this because we think it'll be a good idea, as some people seem to think. I also want to add that I don't regret one bit of my recovery, as bad as it was, because it is a permanent reminder of just what I had to go through to be the person I was born to be. 

Since I have transitioned, as well as my mental health improving, my general health has improved too. This is because I am much more confident, more outgoing and more sociable than I ever was before. I would never have had the confidence to share my story 5 years ago. Now I am just being my true self, not pretending, not living a lie. I have a fabulous job with amazing colleagues, I eat a lot more healthily and I visit the sports centre on a regular basis. I'm doing something that I turned my back on for nearly 50 years, I'm socialising, going out for drinks, for meals, to concerts and shows, pubs and clubs. I am at last proud of who I am, proud of who I've become. 

I am always being asked why I didn't transition earlier, and the simple answer is, I wasn't ready. Another trans woman once said to me that, we do this when the time is right for us. Well, this is my time. Now obviously I wish I'd been able to transition sooner, of course I do, but I am not looking back, as I can't change the past and also that would be a negative thing for me to do, but I am certainly enjoying every minute of the present, and very much so looking forward to, and influencing the future. 

The change in me personally has been nothing short of monumental, and it is having a massive, positive impact on my health. Far from a life of just existing in this world, as I had done for over 50 years, I now have a life I'm living. I have never been happier, and I'm always turning negative situations into positive ones.

I also need to mention that I see myself for who I am. I'm a transwoman. I am not a cisgender woman, I never can be one, I don't see myself as one and I never proclaim that I should be seen as one. But a woman I still am, I expect to be treated as one, and, like any of us, be treated with dignity and respect, just as I show to others.

I thought that at last, I was going to be able to live the rest of my life happily, with freedom and with liberty, as the person I have always known that I am, but as you are all aware, the Supreme Court has ruled that I am not a woman after all, and despite me following all UK protocols in transitioning, I am, in the eyes of the state, still a man, and so I now have to live my life in public as one, with new anti-trans legislation going through parliament as we speak. 

The UK is now being voted the as being the worst country in western Europe on trans rights. From a position of 1st in Europe in 2013, we are now ranked so low, we are being rated just above, those beacons of democracy, Hungary, Albania and Russia, and I really do fear for my safety here now. 

So after all that I have been through, all the mental anguish, the loneliness, the isolation, the transphobic attitudes, the transphobic comments and now what to me, appears to be a transphobic parliament, I do question as to whether my remaining years lie on foreign shores, away from Dagenham, away from England, the town and country of my birth, to a land that is kinder, safer and more accepting of the trans community, and all because of the way I was born. 

I would like to end by saying that I am a very proud, happy, optimistic woman. I always look on the bright side of life, and I always try to have that smile on my face, and I truly believe there is hope out there for the trans community, there must be, I have to believe that. I hope that my story will help people to get a better understanding, of just what living a life as a trans woman, how debilitating it is, how isolating it is, and how mentally challenging it is, all through no fault of our own. I hope my story will also give people a different opinion, a different perspective, and a better understanding of trans women, and just what our lives are really like.