Joy Again - on a Farm
In a little more than a yr, the Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender Health has provided gender affirming surgeries that changed the lives of most 150 people. Here are the stories of best friends Dylan Ballerstadt and Kez Hall, and, below, Dariel Peay.
Dylan Ballertstadt and Kez Hall, Best Friends Transitioning Together
Dylan Ballerstadt and Kez Hall, female on their birth certificates, grew up with bodies that didn't match their gender identities. It was maddening, they say, to wake up every twenty-four hour period and not feel or see the bodies they knew they should have.
Ballerstadt'south first memory is of standing up to urinate considering that'southward how boys practise information technology. "I was 3 or 4," he says. "I told my grandmother and she scolded me, but I knew it felt right to me." Every bit he got older and began dating girls, he referred to himself as gay, even though he knew the term wasn't right.
"To me a lesbian is a woman who likes women, and that wasn't me," says Ballerstadt, 26, who was raised by his grandparents in Baltimore City and in Harford and Baltimore counties. "I liked women but I wasn't a adult female. But I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know what to say. I didn't know anybody who shared the aforementioned feelings."
Hall, at present 25, hated the dresses and matching hair ribbons his mother made him article of clothing. He didn't want to sit down with the girls when his teacher divided his fifth-grade class by gender to talk nearly puberty.
"I always felt different," says Hall, who was born in Toronto and moved with his parents to Harford County when he was 6. "I didn't have the words. I just knew I didn't want boobs. I wanted a beard, I wanted a mustache, I wanted brusk hair and I wanted a penis."
The ii young men, now all-time friends, met at Towson Academy. Hall enrolled in 2012, and Ballerstadt arrived the post-obit year. Separately, they discovered the Rainbow Lounge, the school's designated resources and socializing space for LGBTQ+ students. That's where they met, and where they got to know other LGBTQ+ folks.
"For the first time in my life, the things I was feeling made sense, and it made me feel normal," says Ballerstadt. They began taking testosterone, which gives them facial hair, deeper voices and more muscular physiques.
This yr, they both received double incision breast masculinization surgery from Devin O'Brien Coon of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Transgender Wellness.
"It was groovy," says Hall. "They asked me what kind of sports I liked, and I said football game and wrestling. I went to slumber, and when I woke up, they were gone. I was a 42DD before."
The procedure carried an boosted layer of complication for Ballerstadt because he has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes a mucus buildup in his lungs. During his recovery, he had to interruption his normal regimen of using a mechanical vest to shake the fungus free until his sutures sufficiently healed.
Next for Ballerstadt and Hall are hysterectomies, and they are considering phalloplasty, a complex procedure that constructs a penis using vaginal tissue and flesh from the thigh or forearm.
The 2, who live together in Towson forth with Ballerstadt's partner, express joy and high-5 every bit they tell their stories in a Fell'due south Indicate coffee shop.
"I used to weep a lot because I just didn't similar the way I looked," says Ballerstadt. "I would look at myself and say, 'Why is my body like this?' Now, I can't even imagine looking how I once did."
Dariel Peay: 'Never Surrender Your Ability'
Dariel Peay's prom marked the starting time time she went to a high schoolhouse event dressed as a woman. She wore a white pantsuit and matching high-heel pumps, and she felt terrific. "That was my manner of being me," she says. "You could hear the gasps."
In October 2017, Peay, assigned equally male at birth, further aligned her outward appearance with her gender identity when she underwent breast augmentation surgery performed by O'Brien Coon of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender Health. Peay is also planning facial feminization procedures with Coon.
"I only wanted Dr. Coon," says Peay, 34. "He listens to your needs, listens to your story and wants to assist you be who you are. He asks, 'How can I brand you whole?' That question means a lot to me."
Peay, a senior patient admission supervisor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Dermatology, sits behind her desk, chic in a navy dress. She e'er felt respected at Johns Hopkins, she says. When she applied for the access services job in 2007, she interviewed as a adult female.
"Information technology felt correct," she says of using female pronouns for the first fourth dimension. "I didn't change my proper name until five or vi years later, and so anybody hither chosen me Miss Peay."
The feeling of belonging intensified with the opening of the transgender health center. "The heart means a lot to me," she says. "There are resources now that I didn't have. A lot of younger folks take a dissimilar story than I do. Their struggle was not as difficult. Information technology'southward withal not like they take an piece of cake road, but information technology's less of a hardship for them now, especially in this climate."
When she was growing upwards, she says, there was "not a lot of representation of people similar me. I was left with 'gay' or 'lesbian' as the words I could use to define myself. Nigh of the gay folks that I knew were kind of feminine so I just kind of assumed that was the respond, even though I knew how I envisioned myself on the inside, which was as a female person."
Raised by relatives in Baltimore and Southward Carolina, Peay never tried to hibernate her gender identity. "That was just who I was," she says. "In my head, I was normal. I didn't lucifer, but I merely knew people had to get over information technology."
Peay is now a co-leader of on-campus transgender awareness workshops. She is likewise a facilitator for preparation through Safety Zone, a free pedagogy program for the Johns Hopkins LGBTQ community and allies.
"What surprises me is that people desire to learn about how to become an ally for my customs. I always assumed that people have their stereotypes and their beliefs and they stick to them. It turns out they want to know and they want to educate other people. One lady we met had a daughter who was transitioning to male person. She wanted to be function of her child's journey. I was similar, 'You are mom of the yr.'
"I tell people, the moment you let others define who you are, you've given up your ability. Never give upwardly your ability. I divers myself as a trans person even when I didn't know what trans was.
"The 2nd bulletin is, never exist afraid. At that place'southward ever fear, simply if you refuse to give in to it, y'all'll exist surprised what you can do."
See a video or hear the full-length podcast of Devin O'Brien Coon'south conversation with patient Johnny Boucher.
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Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/the-joy-of-being-yourself
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