No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth

It’s hard to imagine what life must be like for someone whose mind and body are in disagreement over so integral a thing as gender. Grace Anne Stevens spent more than sixty years of her life in denial of an essential truth: she was a woman born in a man’s body. Constantly in conflict with herself, Stevens somehow managed to present a relatively normal face to the world, but eventually, it all just became too much. Cross-dressing in private turned into cross-dressing at private events. Eventually, she began investigating a physical transition, which she finally began undertaking shortly before her sixty-fourth birthday. No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth is Stevens’s memoir. In it, she describes the many ways that her inner turmoil affected her life. She struggled with her identity for her entire life, even as a fairly young child, and while her confusion didn’t dramatically impact her marriage or her relationships with her children, it was always lying just under the surface. Stevens describes her many “parts,” and how they worked together (and against each other) to keep things under control for so long, and how transitioning finally helped those parts all evolve to being in a place of peace with one another. She describes how different people entered her life at the right times, and how those people helped her to truly become herself. Stevens also discusses some of the physical basics of transitioning, although she doesn’t go into any gritty details.

As our society evolves, we are becoming more and more aware of gender issues, and a memoir like this is a big step toward helping some readers to better understand the struggles of a transgender person. Written with precision and passion, Living My Truth is both informative and inspirational, and it’s beautiful to see how the author has used her own unique experience to educate others. An important read for everyone.