A personal journey with a trip to Paradise and back (Part One)

• Posted by Hannah Ceridwen Eluned Cavendish-Grosvenor December 6, 2017 Filed in Society Girl's Personal Blogs #"Transition"  #"Treatment"  #"GRS"  #"GRC"  1,337 views
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  I set out on this my 'Great Journey' with a full rucksack of suitable female clothing for all eventualities, weathers and occasions, suitable foot-wear (not 5" Jimmy Choos), toiletries and a somewhat naive but strong sense of purpose and direction. It started with a week's solo walk across the  North Country, the "Cleveland Way": no big deal for a Swiss Registered High Mountain Guide, I thought. How utterly wrong I was! I frankly have no real idea what triggered my need to pursue the lifelong question of who exactly I was. I can only think that life is controlled in the same way as the 'biscuit' one pushed into old-fashioned washing machines: once inserted it undertoook its progress without any hope of changing the programme.

  I joined the Gender Society and the Beaumont Society, but never had the nerve to chat on this site (still haven't), nor attend any meet-ups at first. What did I discover? There were other people just like me, and rather a lot of them! The information available here is 'second to none', and it greatly enabled the start of my long journey.

  The other Society 'held and still holds' a bi-annual meet-up and theme-dressed dinner in Harrogate. This was to be my first ever appearance in public as me. I have lived alone for twenty-six years: always Hannah behind the closed doors of my homes and my male self outdoors and in the work-place. I arrived on the Thursday lunch-time: sat in the car for an hour and a half listening to the only opera written in Italian by Romeau. At its finale I had made my decision to write off the fees for the four days, return home and resume my previous life. I did not notice the four ladies sat having afternoon tea near reception: Kay, the President, Irene her wife and co-ordinator of the weekend, Becky and one of the co-ordinators of the Gender Society. My sole reason for entering the hotel in drab was to pursue an increasingly urgent comfort visit to the gents, and then home. As I returned and stepped down from reception, Irene got up, blocked my exit and escape route and said "you're not thinking of going home are you?". I replied yes .  "No you're not, you have friends here". The rest is history. I had no idea what this 'Passage of Rights' would entail and enable: how finding myself would give me real happiness and disperse the depression of my Dysphoria for ever.  It is, however, a double-edged sword. 

  Meeting an influential member of this group on the occasion of my first appearance as Hannah, enabled a great deal: she persuaded me to dress en-femme on the Saturday and to accompany her and Becky (Regional Representative) on a walk round Harrogate, with coffee and cakes in Marks and Spencers. Six months later she organised a meet-up in Torquay, where I met the 'love of my life'; but that is another and strictly private story.

  One of my few ambitions is to repeat the Cleveland Way weeks walk in a skirt and not Rohan outdoor trousers: then to enter new territory in a skirt and do the 'Pennine Way'.

  Part Two: includes my personal pathway of the last five years, treatment options, beurocratic hurdles and advice as to the best safest and most direct way to achieve GRS and a GRC. Don't, forbid, do what I did and simply forget to pack a head lamp, spare batteries, map and compass, girls..!!