Sarah will be blogging about her life and My Transsexual Summer throughout the series.
Episode 1
I had arrived in the UK less than four weeks before my first time at the My Transsexual Summer retreat. I had come from the tiny island of Jersey and moved to Swansea, of all places.
The last of my male clothes were still stuffed in the boot of my car, but I was presenting to the world as Sarah every day. I knew less than five people in the whole country and had only met another trans person on one occasion in the past.
I had just started my new life as female and every day had a new challenge, and every day brought up new obstacles that I had never come across before.
The first day of the retreat was a mass of big challenges for me. The first of which was that I had to meet a group of strangers - I'd spent the last year of my life avoiding exactly those kind of situations. For the last year or so I'd felt so frustrated, trapped and depressed by being in a male body that I hid myself away from almost everyone.
It seemed that I'd lost the ability to interact with people, and now I was faced with six strangers - trans folk all way further down the road of transition than me. Daunting was not the word...
That first weekend changed my life forever. The seemingly simple things about the people I met will always stay with me; Donna's confidence, Drew's kindness, Max's self awareness, Fox with his calm determination and Karen with her elegance and story which just blew me away.
The one thing that changed me the most that weekend was the way Donna and Drew took me under their wings and helped me with my makeup and wig. I hadn't noticed just how bad they looked, they just drew attention to me instead of blending in. I was just making it all up as I went along, overwhelmed by the enormity of completely changing everything about my masculine life into some semblance of femininity.
I left the retreat with a different outlook on life, I could feel my confidence growing, slowly. I was starting to feel like I could be happy.
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