I’d like to take a few moments to get on some real talk. My body is a consciously constructed reflection of my internal reality. Five years ago, I had already been taking hormones for a year in an attempt to realize that inner truth. Five years ago, I woke up to the idea that I could fully own my body and sense of self outside of medical intervention and identification - and stopped the hormones. Five years ago, I began to open my eyes and shake myself free. My story is certainly not true for everyone, but I have spent the last five years of my life dissecting my inner workings in order to more comfortably live life “as-is.” I want to reach out to every female out there who experiences dysphoria and is searching for resources with alternate ways of living through this, and of strengthening ones sense of self through this. There is not a one-size-fits-all path, but many more options exist out there other than what has only recently become the standard narrative. It has taken me a long time, but these days I am proud to inhabit my female body in the way that I do. I am thriving. I would no longer change a thing. I learned that you actually can always come home.

I keep my Instagram open and honest in the hope that the more honest I am, the more comfortable other people will feel within themselves. It’s tough to talk about these things. It’s even harder when you’re told that your feelings mean something that you don’t identify with, and it seems no one is around to model the sort of life that you want to live. 
In the past few years I’ve often thought to myself that my life would’ve turned out pretty differently if I had had ANY Butch women that discussed dealing with dysphoria to look up to as a young person. Logically I know now that they were out there, but they weren’t visible or accessible to me. The only reflection I saw of my own dysphoria was within the framework of social or medical transition. I kept looking around and realized that there really isn’t even a fraction of the presence of Butch women that there is of queer women or transitioning females or boi-identified women. There is a large presence of women who have a similar aesthetic to Butch women, but they are largely masculine-identified. What has helped me most in living my life as a Butch woman is to realize that there is nothing masculine about my experience. Everything that I experience and feel is by definition a female/feminine feeling strictly because I am female. I think that breaking free from masculine identification can be a very important part of embracing one’s self truly as a grown female.
I realized I had to stop lamenting the lack of presence of Butch women and start to be a part of the presence of Butch women. I need to stop being sad that few people were talking about dysphoria with these young kids that were experiencing it from any framework other than transition, and instead I needed to be one of those people. 
I decided I needed to show my face, and to be a proud and bold visual example of what Female can look like, and feel like.
I am constantly trying to be the change. I know there are so many more of us out there, and that there is solidarity and strength in sharing these experiences. I am so excited to be back on Tumblr at a time where there are so many more women speaking their truth, and to see that the things that I wish were available to myself as a youngster are becoming more available right now. We must all join together.