A Transgender Journey Through Adversity and Healing

When the world shows little acceptance, where do you find your strength? 

Our latest clip episode is an inspiring tapestry of courage, as Tawni Sofia Acosta 
shares her formidable journey through the tribulations of self-harm, heartbreak, and the daunting process of coming out. 

This heartfelt dialogue opens a window into the profound connections that can uplift us during our lowest moments—how the support of gender therapy and the deep bonds of friendship within the trans community serve as pillars of hope and resilience. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

What was the sense of hope that you had that got you from the point of not going through with unaliving yourself, walking through the trauma of, you know, breaking up with a really good partner, walking through the trauma of coming out into a world that was not ready for you at that time. Still, what was the sense of hope that got you through?

Speaker 2: 0:27

I mean, the sense of hope is seeing many of my sisters so far down, or many trans kind, meeting so many trans kind, and just number one, seeing that it was possible, because at that point it's just like I don't know if I can do it.

Speaker 2: 0:42

You know, I don't know if I can do it, but I have to do it. So that gave me hope. Second, the other thing that gave me hope is, yes, I was every week quite religiously facing a gender therapist and it kind of helped keep me on my path. And third, during this process, I started to develop some I would call them like trusted friendships, that those were the friends that I had that I could be vulnerable with, and so it's kind of a mixture of all those things. We need support, we need to advance our cause, we need to heal, you know, and then we need that camaraderie camaraderie together and sometimes you know what we do have to realize about the camaraderie all of us have our really difficult stuff, we all have our trauma, our different, and so sometimes for me, the hardest thing was understanding that, as I went through the community and I met a very raw point in my transition, that understanding. Oh, by the way, though my bigger sisters are further along than I. They have their issues as well.

Speaker 2: 2:04

I'm just more seeing it as like this you know gold standard like oh my God, they're really really tired, and they've had their surgeries and that's what I want to do, and I don't have it, and how am I going to do it, but I think through all this time I developed some very close friends and those friendships ended up being really key. That's what really gave me the hope, because because giving that hope is just knowing I had a home with the right people we call them our, you know, our adopted or extended, whatever you want to call it. Yes, absolutely, but it plays a very important part, and I think it was. There's no way I could do it without it. So I think, in a way, we're all kind of standing on each other's shoulders or propping each other up or falling backwards, and going forward.

Speaker 1: 2:59

You know Exactly Well said, Well said.

Speaker 3: 3:03

Yeah, I want to mention one thing, because me and Tonic became so close. What she mentioned, what she just mentioned, is support, and everyone has their own traumas or depressions. So when I was in my depression, she was the only one came to my room at a time and knocked on my door. Yes, so I was very good At that time. I feel so embarrassed of myself, ashamed, and I actually pushed her out. I said I don't want to see anybody right now, but because of that we built up a very strong friendship. And when she said she can share a vulnerable, that's why we're still doing, after all these years, yes, yeah, so so I'm very, you know, appreciate you doing that. So, you know, give me hope at the same time, too, that's part of your hope. Yeah, I hope, because I couldn't see how at that time. I couldn't see how I'm going to take myself out of that, that depression.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:12

Exactly. You say you've been through all that struggling, and then become a full-time girl and then you went through your operation as well. So can you share that experience with the audience? It's a pleasure, yeah, because I myself I've been asking about doctors and seeking what I want to do myself, so I think to ask some girls or sister that have been through that experience is definitely perfect, exactly.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Okay, how would you? I mean, there's so many aspects of this, but I'll go. I'll just share how I did my surgeries and I'll talk about, you know, the first one. Is that okay, okay, so I, as of date, I've had three of the major surgeries, which is bottom surgery, or we could call it gender firming surgery, srs it has a whole bunch of names, but you know.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Second, I've had the breast augmentation and I've had facial facial surgery, facial feminization surgery and lots of stuff done to my face and then, as well I'm point of personal honesty I'm wearing a hairpiece, but I also had I had a hair transplant surgery and that's coming along amazingly and I'm hoping maybe in a year or two I will no longer be wearing my hairpiece. So I want to go back to my first surgery, and I think that's that's. Maybe the heart of the matter is that we all experience our gender and we all experienced our body dysphoria in a very unique way. For me, I intensely experienced it, that I needed bottom surgery. I intense it. I didn't experience to the point where maybe I wanted to self harm or self human right, but there's people who experience it like even that exactly, but I didn't experience it that way, but I experienced it that I was fantasized about having can I say it? I always fantasized about having vagina. I always fantasized about it, and so when I started the transitional process, it's like I can't explain it, but it's like this primordial drive was in me to do it.

Speaker 2: 6:45

And so in 2017, though I've been only living a short time, full time, maybe six months and my health insurance coverage was was on a clock. It was called the Cobra because I'd been laid off and so I was on a six month clock. I went and did a consult, actually in Arizona, with one of the big doctors at the time, dr Meltzer, and or God, it's even stranger His co-practitioner of his name is Dr Lay, and she's an incredible doctor but unusual name, I may put it that way. I won't go anywhere with that. But anyway, when I did that first consult, all I can tell you is something I would say maybe my confidence in the need was maybe like 90% confidence, 10% doubt. I did the consultation and I came away.

Speaker 2: 7:42

The consultation to me again was like this rite of passage, religious experience I have to have the surgery. I know we aren't any doubt in my mind and that's the point, but I wasn't ready to have it. Okay, I knew in my heart. So on the one hand, it gave me mentally, spiritually or whatever you want to transition to speaking I didn't have doubt that I needed that surgery and I needed it as soon as I could do it.

Speaker 2: 8:14

What ensued was really I had to go through all you know. I had to go through the next steps of my journey, which was really extricating myself from the house that my ex and I were in, selling it, moving out and moving to West Hollywood where I had a small apartment. But all in that time period, what happened with me was, very coincidentally and through Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles at the end of 2017, just started your transgender care program. So I did a consult with the doctor there and they had no waiting lists. They had a six month waiting list which, in you know, for, like some of the talk doctors, that waiting list can be a year to five years. That's a lot of waiting when you really really, really know.

Speaker 1: 9:11

So and so it ends there.

Speaker 2: 9:14

I did a consult in March of 2018, and then I got a surgical date of October of the same year. Then it's like, oh my God, I have to do electrolysis. How am I going to do this? Yeah, how am I going to do this? In six months, and through a reference, I discovered this lady in Beverly Hills who has a form of electrolysis called the multi-point galvanic needle. It's Beverly Hills, her free. I'll give the reference, but anyways, the point was she got me there ready in five months, which is normally a year-long process.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Now it just hurts. Oh yes, it hurts, oh my.

Speaker 2: 10:02

God, it hurts. It hurts, but I feel what happened is 2018, at one point, october 2018, I moved out of our home. Our home was sold. I moved to West Hollywood. I have a studio apartment I was just getting. After all these years of marriage, I'm just getting used to living on my own, which is wild, it's bizarre, it's happy, it's lonely, it's everything. I'm living in West Hollywood which is like, oh my God, I'm in community, but just wait a minute. Oh my God, this is crazy, but my original surgery day was right after my move in.

Speaker 1: 10:56

That's pretty aggressive. Yeah, was it a full year of I think they called it back then real-life test?

Speaker 2: 11:04

No.

Speaker 2: 11:04

I didn't do that. Oh, okay, that's pretty cool. No, actually, no, no, no, that's not true. I had been more than a year on HRT. I'd been more than a year, but it was never. What happened is the standards changed in 2015. Thankfully, yes, so that never. For my case, it didn't apply. All that applied is I needed to be on hormones a year and I needed to be living on myself you know as myself for a year, which I was more than all of that.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Yes, awesome, my surgery. Because, though this lady was being with a electrolysis, it wasn't quite ready for that surgical date, so it got kicked back by only two months, but then I would lose the surgery date. It was such an emotional thing. I broke down I mean, I was, but it was only, you know, a few months later. It was November 29th 2018.

Speaker 2: 12:02

I got bought a surgery at Cedars and it, you know, I was in a hospital. I was visited by so many of my friends, so many friends within my religious community, which I'm Buddhist. I was visited by so many friends in that community. I was visited by so many friends in the trans community and, it turned out, one of my friends in the trans-Latina community had surgery the next day. So we started trading visitations, people, and it was just a surreal moment. It was awesome, it was whoa. I get emotional as I think about it because, even as in Cedars because the hospital was very full that day my room turned out to be the VIP room that they give for. So I'm getting this luxury room to recover from bottom surgery, so I'm confined to bed and I all I do is just enjoy the view.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Exactly, exactly. Wow, can't wait.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Can't wait. But what I would say is it was one part of my voyage to get to the place of having surgery, which takes a lot of determination, a lot of dedication, a lot of oh my god, it takes everything to get to that point. Yeah, a lot of courage too, yeah, definitely. And then there's the point of having the surgery, which is one really intense marker point of our life. And then there's the recovery period, and those are three totally different experiences. So the last part was the perfect part, because you just what I would say is I was a little naive because I just had to have the surgery.

Speaker 2: 13:47

My mind couldn't incorporate anything else other than having that surgery, and I didn't. I kind of thought, well, I'm a tough bitch, I'll just recuperate on my own. That was so much so. I had friends who drove me back from the hospital. I had friends who helped me shop. I had somebody else who helped me clean my apartments. But really, for the first couple of weeks you can't even drive. For the first few months you're very restricted physical activity, but more.

Speaker 2: 14:22

I had never had major surgery before and that is one major surgery, and I just had no insight to the depth of the physical change that would go on with me, the mental change, the spiritual transitional change the change is incredible. But that post-surgical recovery period which, in all honesty, it takes about a year for everything to settle down and everything to come back into a new sweet space. But that was a very tall choice of year. That was a very tall six months into my, or five months into it, I seriously I dipped into a deep, deep post-surgical depression. This is not me. It's not my personality. I think Shelby knows my personality. I'm a people-forward person, but I went into such a deep depression I turned off my phone and I stopped talking to people and I just turned on the Netflix and the only reason I went outside is to walk my little doggy. I have a little mini picture. She's outside now, but that was the only reason I left the house was to walk my dog.

Speaker 2: 15:35

But what I didn't know was and this is what I want to share it was a deep point of a surgery. What I didn't understand is that, thankfully, I was still seeing my therapist and she was like you're depressed, no, and I was fighting her. No, I'm not. I'm not depressed, but yes, I was depressed and she's like you should get Prozac. I can't prescribe that. I'm going to ask you to go see your doctor and get Prozac. And I'm like he was a wake-up call because I thought there's no way I'm going to take Prozac. I'm very adverse to medication, I'm very sensitive medication and especially I don't want to take a medication that has a risk of an addiction, where you just take it and take it. It's like I didn't want to do that. So I'm like, ok, this is a serious moment.

Speaker 2: 16:20

So, ok, I went and made an appointment with my endocrinologist and it was hard. It was hard to open up, like, hey, my therapist asked me to come here. This is what's going on, and thankfully, my doctor was extremely experienced with working with trans clients and this is the message I wanted to share. And he just said, no, before we do anything, let's get some information. And he goes first of all, let's get your hormone levels and we're going to figure out where to go from there he goes.

Speaker 2: 16:51

But let me explain what's happening with the body and this is what I want to share with everybody. What's happening with the body is, in essence, the hormone factor in your body, what used to be my testicles and all that kind of stuff. It's gone and that's been in your body for over 50 years. And now the rest of your endocrine system is trying to figure out what's going on, and your body doesn't know what's going on Because it's trying to search for something that's not there. So everybody's different. Everybody handles it different, so, in a weird way, the fact that this would happen to you is actually very normal. He goes we're going to double test your levels and then we'll figure out a course of action.

Speaker 2: 17:39

And so the thing to share is what it really came out is that all women have a ratio, all cisgender women have a ratio of estrogen to female testosterone, and when my levels came back, that level of testosterone was almost negligible.

Speaker 2: 17:55

It didn't exist. Or is it the lowest possible part of that band? And he's like OK, we need to add this back and we need to add back a little bit of testosterone into your balance of HRT, and so we're going to do this, but we're going to work out what is the right dosage for your body. It's different for everybody. So, to be honest, thankfully my doctor was so experienced that he had that maturity and he could explain it to me in ways that I could understand, because I'm a doctor and second, it was truly a doctor-patient relationship that I would do it for a while and it's like, well, I feel like it's too much testosterone now because I'm feeling really aggressive. He's like, ok, we're going to lower that and we'll change this and change that. And so we worked together for a few tries and we found the sweet spot. Ivan's