Hello, I’m Hannah.

Standing in my little patio garden, fifty-five years old. Out here, sweet pea blooms flourish, the scent an intimate memory of my grandfather’s garden. Inside, there’s a turtle, peering with his tiny marble eyes through layers of aquarium and window glass at the scene. Soon my son will come home from school, drop food into the watery reptile’s tank, and we will move into the rest of our afternoon.

This blog explores the transition from the cisgender heterosexual man I was. It reveals some of what came with making that choice as an older person and as a parent whose child began this journey with me when in primary school.

My pronouns are… unreliable, frankly. I am aiming for they/them, except when I am being served in shops, where I enjoy “ma’am”; and in restaurants with friends, where I’m happy to be addressed as “ladies”. What a pompous person I must be!