I do enjoy reading your blog and have been working up the courage to share a photo as it has been so affirming seeing others do the same!
The photo I have attached was taken aaages ago in 2006, during the summer. A friend of mine had made a 'bet' publicly that she could get me to dress up in a dress. This was from a conversation with her where I came out as a crossdresser. This friend, married, was wonderfully supportive and even made the offer that I could borrow her dresses at any point in the future. We shall call my friend "Catherine."
She was the one who took the photo and said that I looked better than she ever had in the dress. When I introduced my future wife to Catherine, Catherine showed her this photo and took my future wife aside to explain how lucky she was that I liked to crossdress. It was also when she sent the photo to me. Unfortunately my wife did not respond positively and denies to this day that she was ever shown the photograph, having blocked the above conversation from her memory.
So it is that this photo stands as testament to a time when there was much more hope about my crossdressing, than something that I did not exactly embrace and had been struggling with since being a teenager and at least since University.
It also represents the opportunity that could have been seized to live differently. But, for all of that, it is not a melancholy photo, it is a happy one. And it's perhaps the only photograph of my face that I can actually stand to look at ― in male or female garb. As for the experience at the time, it was wonderful and all too short-lived, as these things often are.
In sharing it I hope that I can offer even a small fraction of the inspiration and power that others have shown in sharing theirs. Thank you for the opportunity to share and keeping it going long enough for me to actually muster the courage to join in!
God bless,
Joanna
Wearing BB Dakota.
Hansi Sturm, German professional emulator, circa 1930