Joan E Vans
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Morning Glory October 28th, 2008 7:27 pm MDTToday has been a terrible day for me and my family. We were in a car accident. Thank the lord we are all ok. The car isnt unfortunately. I am still shaking from it all. I don't know how to deal with this. I am just thankful to be alive. Hugs to all my beautiful sisters and handsome brothers. Josie[1 comment]
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Morning Glory September 21st, 2008 8:06 pm MDTIm feeling better today. Its amazing what comfort food will do for ya. Thank you to Pop tarts, Fruity Pebbles, Chinese food, Cheese balls and Sprite. :) Life goes on, and so will I![Comment on this post]
Dating :(
Morning Glory September 20th, 2008 11:18 am MDTIm a little depresed so Im gonna write this. Well its been a week since my last date. He hasn't called or anything. I dont know what I did wrong but I tried my best. Maybe he thinks Im ugly. Maybe he has issue with me being how I am. I may not be a model or anything but I have a good heart and I deserve alot better than that. I took 2 years off dating and then this happened. I dont know. Im just venting now. Don't mind me. :([Comment on this post]
WOW I came back here again lol
Morning Glory August 20th, 2008 7:24 pm MDTWell after like 2 years being MIA from urnotalone I find myself back here again. I hope this time will be better. Jos[Comment on this post]
A brief note
Ellie Ferch Amser August 7th, 2008 4:13 pm MDTIt has been a busy life lately, and that has kept me from making any entries or even looking about much. This too is a brief interlude. Tomorrow I get shoulder surgery, good in the long run, nothing to look forward to in the short run. The pain is no problem, for reasons I might get into eventually. Drugs? I'm a child of the 60s, I'm OK with the drugs. The idea of possibly spending 24 hours with the dry heaves does not appeal at all: not ladylike. Then there's the several weeks of being able to do almost nothing with the affected limb. That is awkward. However, when I can punch keys and shove a mouse about, I shall return.[Comment on this post]
How unsporting!
Ellie Ferch Amser July 18th, 2008 6:33 pm MDTWe can't post entries to our own guestbooks! I suppose there's a critical mass of folk whose vanity would carry them away, and entice them into offering fulsome praise to themselves. They're spoilsports: what about those of us who would take the opportunity to make their self-criticism a global affair? I'm waiting for more news on a store I just heard of. All it needs to get my business are corsets that are attractive, authoritative, and reasonably priced. Not like I want much.[Comment on this post]
A random request...and an observation
Ellie Ferch Amser July 12th, 2008 8:54 am MDTFirst the request. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone north of Boston or downtown who can recommend someplace trans-friendly (for lack of a better term) to get one's hair cut. This business of going to the usual salon and getting a "guy with long hair" cut (no matter what you ask for) is getting frustrating. At this rate, someday I'll walk out with a mullet ;) Odd how few of us wear our own hair, unless committed to transitioning. The observation. I saw a local woman this morning who frequently dresses in a male kilt, hose, man's shirt and tie. The double standard that endorses women in male clothing can be a nuisance. On the other hand, I've swapped messages with some other androgynous folk and it's true that this double standard is very enabling for us. It did strike me the other day that it can be rather "Victor-Victoria" in reverse. Instead of a woman* dressing like a man dressing like a woman, one may be a man dressing like a woman dressing like a man. Still, it would be nice to have enough latitude to go out shopping in a cool linen skirt on a day like this. *All terms in this statement refer to birth gender for convenience's sake[Comment on this post]
Double yaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ellie Ferch Amser July 10th, 2008 4:29 pm MDTOh, those two scary digits! Still, I feel OK, I like my exploration, and life in general could be (and has been) much worse. Thank you all for the birthday wishes and nice comments: they are most encouraging.[Comment on this post]
Yaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ellie Ferch Amser July 8th, 2008 7:00 pm MDTTonight seems to be the attack of the HTML monsters here. I would not mind this normally, except that I've been on a rush job the past couple of days in which these beasties figured prominently. Worse, they won! I'm a little too old to go cry in the corner at the sight of more script, but it is soo tempting. Wavering toward that top level membership so I can spew out my own script in weak moments.[Comment on this post]
Sound familiar?
Ellie Ferch Amser June 27th, 2008 6:01 pm MDTWhat makes the memory of past purges even more regrettable is knowing that, today, one could probably not get into most of the things one threw out. Except the shoes: I really miss some of the shoes.[Comment on this post]
Body Anxiety
Ellie Ferch Amser June 24th, 2008 5:06 pm MDTIf I succumbed to poor body image, I'd succumb, period. I read someone's profile the other night and she was a touch concerned about long arms. Not my problem, dears. However, I have a ridiculously large head: bet you didn't know such a thing as a size 7 7/8 hat even existed! Kinder people suggest that such a large head must have something in it. You can guess what the less kind think.It does make wigs a serious challenge. A total custom job is out of range: most of the really nice ones stop several sizes short of my reality. I make do with cosplay wigs with nearly infinitely adjustable wig caps, or my own head of hair, creatively managed,[Comment on this post]
Connecting
Ellie Ferch Amser June 22nd, 2008 6:16 pm MDTJoanna suggests that journal entries are likely to be a better way to interact than the chat room. That's good on two levels. First is that I need little encouragement to stay out of chat rooms, for reasons I've already mentioned. Second, when one does journals, blogs and the like, one feels that one is talking to oneself sometimes. It's nice to know other people are reading.I'm already too prone to talking to myself, and it's not age: I've always done it. Now I've found a new way to make that habit useful. The first way has been to play my language CDs while driving, which entails a certain amount of backchat with the speaker. The new way, now that I've been reading up on developing a more feminine voice, is to practice that in the car. Tenors have certain advantages in this task. Our natural voice range overlaps the female alto range. This means one has to concentrate mainly on using the upper registers of one's own voice. It's a first step of course, since the question of vocal timbre is much harder to tackle. Still, I'd hate to be a bass and doing this.[Comment on this post]
Great Marketing, Ladies
Ellie Ferch Amser June 21st, 2008 1:42 pm MDTAs the profile says, I'm exploring, in part to decide if I want to move up a membership notch. The tea leaves aren't all that encouraging so far. I've made a few civil comments as I've browsed, with little response and none nearby. OK, so one can pursue that a bit more. Last night, I slipped into the chat lobby for my first extended observation. Not good. In the first place, despite the presence of 40 some-odd people, at least half members, not ONE thought to say hello to a newcomer. I've seen this before, not just in chat rooms. It is like herding cats to get any group of sexually different people to take notice of newcomers, much less welcome them with friendly courtesy. In my surfing, I noticed one group where this sort of civility is a requirement. Seems worth looking into. In the second, I hadn't been in the room five minutes when someone entered the room with a breezy greeting, only to be slapped down by a self-important bitch with an overnourished sense of entitlement, The slapper had, until the greeting, been very busy trying to control the conversation. See? You learn a lot when you listen instead of talking. What I learned was that URNA chat is far too much like chat nearly anywhere else. Should there be any owners or mod-types reading, you might want to work a bit harder at making new people welcome. Many of us are hesitant and shy enough without being shown the door by some chat room queen the minute we step inside. Is that how we act at clubs, too? A lot of people like to speak of sexually different groups as "communities." The biological reality is that this community needs people to feel comfortable enough to join, and welcome once they do. Otherwise, it has no future.[1 comment]
Beginning
Ellie Ferch Amser June 18th, 2008 7:33 pm MDTFive days on. As usual, I'm a wallflower or, if you prefer, a being carefully sizing up a new territory. Good things: It's encouraging to see the number of girls who are carving out their own appearance. The glam shoot idea still intrigues me and I don't think that's a contradiction. What I want to work on is posting some pictures that are more my everyday self, with my own slowly-grown out hair. Wigs are way too hot in summer! Not-so-good things: labels!! I switched one of my first choices because it struck me that "bisexual" gave tranny chasers too much encouragement. Anyway, I'm as picky about male attractiveness as I am self-critical. Just hard to please, I guess ;)[Comment on this post]
My Prayer for 2008
Joannie December 30th, 2007 2:12 am MSTDear URNA Friends,
I've been blessed to be a posting member of this wonderful site for 10 years. I read every journal entry and every profile. My heart is blessed by the success stories and saddened by the painful struggles of too many of us. For all of you struggling with your gender, relationships, finances, health, depression, et all... May we all find that God is more than enough. Let us all trust God for all our needs and that we shall prosper and be in health. God is real and He loves us. For those who may find my words and belief confounding, I pray that you will not be offended but rather be curious how someone like you has come to a very comfy place in my life and mind by trusting God. For those that know God to be real I rejoice with you. 2008 holds great promise of blessing for us all. May we enter this year with thankful hearts eagerly embracing life and loving all we meet along the way. God bless all of your darling hearts! I truely love you all.
Joannie
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Why we do this continued...
Joannie November 24th, 2006 12:00 am MSTWhy do we do this? As do most of us, I recognized the desire to be a girl early in my life. The countless profiles of people like us posted on internet display a common experience. The occurrence of the desire to dress and behave as a girl, stealth dressing in mother’s or sister’s clothing, associated guilt, purging, over compensation thru exaggerated male activities, etc. There is a pattern most of us share to one degree or another. All of us have struggled against convention more often than not hiding our little secret in shame of critical discovery. It’s impossible to deny urges compelled from so deep within our being and psyche. Thus as youngsters we often dressed and later assuaged our guilt discovering physically defined sexual urges through adolescence. We conformed to convention best as possible dating girls, leading as normal a male life as we could, yet all the while knowing we were not normal and kept our secret hidden. Most of us married hoping that frequent sexual release with the woman we adored would satiate our deepest desires so that we could lead the normal lives we wanted. Soon we discovered that sex alone was not the total motivation for us to want a woman and the desire to dress reawakened. We dressed in our wife’s clothing in private moments. We masturbated aroused by the image viewed in the mirror. Though thrilling, our guilt and shame caused us to hide our high heels and other female attire we stealthily acquired. We made excuses to “work late” or travel for business so we could dress up, explore internet thirsting for knowledge, validation, confirmation, friendship, etc. to fulfill the desire growing within us. Soon we realized that a real part of us lives in a cage and the older we get the smaller the cage gets. Soon we met others like us online. Hugely relieved that we were indeed “not alone”, we were all the more compelled to follow our desire to express the feminine nature earlier “birthed” within us as does a drowning person gasp for air. Yet still having no satisfactory explanation as to why. Those of us aware of this desire pre-internet, suffered great shame and guilt thinking we were freaks of nature. Desperate for validation we diligently observed all and any examples of cross-dressing found in cinema, television, and pornography. Discovery of such was great relief to know that we were not alone. Internet broke down barriers and a flood of knowledge and information spilled forth to our great delight and communication among us began to thrive. But still unanswered questions persisted. Are we gay? Should this desire be suppressed? Can we live life and keep this desire secret? Will it ever go away? Should we embrace this or flee from it? Is it sin? We married, loving our beautiful wives, bore children, and enjoyed conventional life for a season though the desire to dress as a woman was always close below the surface. We thought we could contain it but found ourselves sneaking away… dressing up in private… going online late at night. Making excuses. Basically living a lie. Our conscience beat us up and we often purged discarding female clothing we purchased or otherwise acquired… our precious heels, bras, panties, stockings, skirts, blouses, and dresses… only to repurchase them months later when the desire to dress once again overpowered us. Tragic discovery painfully met many of us. Families and marriages were destroyed. Many of us were “outed” at work, church, and to friends and family members. Wives, children, and parents heartbroken. Many of us came forth to wives and family with great difficulty hoping that honesty was best policy. Some of us were accepted but most of those brave ones faced a new life desolate of support from the one’s they loved most. My story is tragically similar. There are wonderful exceptions yes. God bless the ones that came out to friends and family and found acceptance and support! Yet the questions remain and persist for us and those that love us… wives, parents, children, friends, and workmates. It is difficult to explain and even more difficult for our loved ones to understand how a man could want to dress and behave as a woman. While it is acceptable for a woman to dress in slacks it is socially taboo for a man to don a dress. For a woman to traverse gender fashion and apparel is celebrated… for a man to exhibit as female conflicts convention. There remain two great questions to be answered. Biology and Spiritually. God is maker of heaven and earth. He created us all! He made us each unique in dna and purposed us each to have life in Him. Are we some sort of genetic anomaly? We really don’t know precisely how many males are affected by the desire to crossdress. It is obvious that the numbers are great perhaps approaching 1% to 10 %. Irregardless of the number, surely there is a huge and growing community of transgendered folk seeking acceptance, love, and understanding. The phenomenon of males preferring to be female, be it part time or full time, cannot be denied nor ignored. The controversy, societal taboo, personal guilt, etc. is why I am compelled to offer my personal observations in hopes of assuaging the trepidation faced by those of us so affected. I write from my personal religious perspective as a Christian. Oddly I find many crossdressers to also be Christians. Irregardless of your personal religious conviction for sake of this presentation let us assume that there is a God, creator of mankind. Should you disagree, I would hope that my observations will at least provoke reflection and perhaps helpful dialogue. I don’t claim to have the ultimate answer as to how and why we are the way we are. But offered from a sincere motive in clear conscience and after many years of contemplation… I figured that for His good purpose, in His infinite wisdom, God chose to make certain males to have a “dual gendered nature”. Not necessarily for us to prance about in dresses depicting the women we so much desire to emulate but rater to embrace the nature and qualities women innately possess. To give love to a world starving for unconditional love. You know how tg girls are often referred to as girls "with something extra"? In my experience, it could also be that we are also GUYS with "something extra". That "something extra" being an inordinately sweet and gentle nature that "normal" guys don't have or can't express to the same degree. The majority of tg girls I've met and corresponded with have been very sweet lovely souls. My take on it is that for some purpose in Gods plan, He made X% of males this way to have a pronounced sensitivity (tenderness, creativity, talents) and capacity for loving people. I accept and love who I am in spite of the obvious downside. Natural born men invigorated and usually dominated by testosterone driven sex drive more often than not will compromise good judgment in favor of good feeling. Women, desiring affection too often yield to aggressive men only later to be abandon. This natural pattern tragically results in divorce and devastation for the family. I truly believe that there is a way to live embracing the transgender gift in such a way as to be a blessing and not a curse. If God made us this way surely He also provides a way to live in righteous manner. As males, we're swimming upstream against the tide of pretty women whose gaze is locked to avoid the onslaught of our obvious hormone riddled, often pathetic advances. The weight of the endless rejection I experienced as a male weighs heavily on me. In large part, my interest in being a woman is to experience the opposite flow. It's fun to be the one sought after for a change. Now that I've been out as a woman and found myself avoiding eye contact with the men, I can relate to women all the much better from experience. As for me, I’ve struggled for years to be one whole loving person regardless of clothing. While I once kept my transgender nature hidden deep below the surface, I’ve learned over time to accept the qualities and nature of my female nature to surface and become integrated into my entire persona. What I once feared has now become to my great delight the passageway to life giving full spectrum expression to the love for others my heart holds. Love is neither male nor female. I pray that others similarly affected will find this sweet spot in life so that the suffering of guilt and shame will end. Addendum 11/22/06 In the beginning Adam was androgynous. There was no Eve. After an undisclosed period of time, God caused Adam to fall into a “deep sleep” and He “formed” Eve from Adam. Adam referred to Eve as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. God went on to say “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God formed Adam from dirt and breathed life into him. The creation of Eve was entirely different. She was “made” (different word than used for the forming of man). Original Hebrew word means “beautifully crafted” from Adam making her uniquely different from the “rough” original creation of man. I believe that having inherited the original genetic pattern of God’s original man, we also contain the genetic strain of Eve just as did Adam. Basically we could all be construed as being androgynous at the basis of our genetic makeup. Having been “separated” as male and female left a yearning to become whole again… the desire to be united and become one flesh again… thus the sexual attraction between male and female. Male and female desire not simply to be united with the other but rather to be “re-united” into one flesh as in the original Adam. Now, male and female “miss” the inherent opposite gender elements once present together in the original Adam before God separated Eve from Adam. So the male desires the female… to be in the female… he desires to complete, fulfill, and compliment what is physically absent from his life and body as does the female desire the male to be in her. Man desires his woman to be as beautiful as possible so as to exhibit the traits and qualities that he as male is generally not able to manifest. Some people are imbued with a unique hyper awareness of genetic gender duality more so than others. Seems it’s mostly males that are more aware of this. Perhaps it’s because of the inherent originality of Adam. The male was created first. The progenitor. The Creator. The provider. The woman is the receptor of the male seed. Woman is object of man’s desire. Man pursues and woman yields. Women are attractive and men are attracted. Man falls in love with women he finds attractive… women are attracted to men with whom they fall in love. Men and women are uniquely different in motive and operation. Generally, man is aggressive in seeking his desire and women are passive being the objects of men’s desires. As previously stated, for His good purpose, God chose some males to be inordinately sensitive and aware of what I believe is the inherent genetic androgynous nature of the original human, Adam. That awareness is what drives the male sexual urge to be in a woman. Being physically male, yet aware of vestiges of the female nature, “transgender” males desire to express and manifest inherent female qualities. Apparently there are degrees to which transgender males desire to express as females. Or are there? Some transgender males pursue this desire to the extent of surgically altering their physical bodies so as to exhibit as fully female as possible. Others are content simply to occasionally adorn themselves in women’s clothing and behave as female. If you are transgender, my best advice is to enjoy the blessing and not be frustrated. You are uniquely gifted! Though surely you desire to manifest yourself as female often as possible, I pray that you find peace knowing that you are one whole person regardless of clothing.[1 comment]
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Martha Johnson July 23rd, 2006 5:13 am MDTwell i finally feel like there are so many others like me who have walked this road since childhood as i have since 8 yrs old. if only there was information or the internet available in the mid 60's i feel things would have been different and i would be living as i feel i was meant to be .now i must live on the outer fringe of being the girl i wished to be .[1 comment]
Heartfelt Thanks
Joannie June 2nd, 2006 4:24 pm MDTHeartfelt thanks to all who have posted such sweet compliments and encouraging comments. Please forgive me if I've been unable to personally respond to you individually. Urnotalone is our refuge. I always feel at home here enjoying viewing and reading about you all. God bless all of your sweet hearts! I pray that we all will learn to gracefully accept the gift of being transgender and be one whole person 24/7 regardless of apparel. Love Always,Joannie[Comment on this post]