Gabriela's story

Gabriela - A beautiful person inside and out!

✨ My Pure Euphoria Moment

• Four years into my transition, following breast surgery, I joined a burlesque class. The instructor saw me perform and invited me to be in one of her shows. Backstage, in an open room with eight women getting ready, there was a large mirror. I caught a glimpse of all of us and I was one of them! Three years of surgery, electrolysis, and HRT, and there I was. Tears started to fall, but I couldn't let them ruin my makeup. I chinned up and gave the performance of my life. It was also, as it turned out, the last time I was ever on a stage.

Chapter 1: The Inner Awakening

• Early memories of feeling disconnected from assigned gender.
  I have always known. Not in the way people sometimes describe it—a single flash of clarity, a moment of revelation. For me, it was quieter than that, and far older. It was in the way I moved through the world, the way certain textures of light felt like home, and the way I watched women and recognised something in them that I was already carrying inside myself.

• The pivotal moment of self-realisation or acceptance.
  I grew up in rural Galicia during Spain's Transición—a child of the transition, which, thinking about it now, was already a sign, wasn't it? Back then, there was no language for what I was. There was no mirror that reflected me back to myself. What I did have was performance, and performing became my first act of self-preservation.The true turning point came when I ran away to Madrid at seventeen—the Madrid of Almodóvar, of La Movida, of everything that was suddenly, explosively alive. I found myself alone, walking the streets of Chueca, knocking on doors under red light bulbs. There, I encountered the older generation: the survivors, the women who never gave up on being their true selves, regardless of what the world demanded of them. It wasn't dramatic. It was just true. And truth, I have learned, is both the most terrifying and the most liberating thing a human being can hold.

• Internal barriers, fears, or doubts faced initially.
  The fears were real. The doubts were real. The danger, the rejection, the heavy price of being honest—all of it was real. Still, underneath it all, and louder than any of it, was a voice that said: this is not negotiable. This is who I am. This is me, and this is all I can ever want to be.
  

Chapter 2: Taking the First Steps

• The very first actions taken toward social or medical transition.
  It tickles me when someone asks how many years into my transition I am. All my life. And I will always be transitioning, for as long as I am alive—because that is what a life worth living is: a pure, ongoing transition.I remember the first time I wore heels. The power that came from the simple act of putting them on and standing up—straight, strong, unbreakable. It is the first time you stop performing and finally let her take over. We don't become women. If you feel you have to become one, you are on the wrong journey. The truth is, you just need to stop forcing yourself to be a man. That is when the magic begins. That is when your true transition starts—when you finally arrive home. That was also when I stopped being ashamed of my femininity and started being proud of it.

• Primary physical changes to facilitate social integration, and which elements you prioritised.
  But back then came the price. In the Spain of my seventeen-year-old self, all a trans woman could aspire to be was a sex worker. That was the only map that existed. I decided it was a price I would not pay. So, I found a different way to live in my truth. From twenty-one to forty-one, I built an extensive career as a drag queen—twenty years on stage. It let me live half my life in my true gender, and for a long time, it felt like enough.When I stopped performing, I moved to London to study fine art. During my dissertation on gender performance, I came across texts on sexual aim and sexual identity, and something cracked open inside me. It was an epiphany: if I had spent my entire life attracted to men—not as a man, but as a woman—then the only way I could fully embrace my own sexuality was to let the woman in me take over completely. That is exactly what I did, without ever looking back. I was fifty years old.I started with laser. Twenty years in performance had taught me every trick to present myself with confidence. A year later, I began hormones. Then came electrolysis—which is when Jenny came into my life. My lovely Jenny: my sister, my warrior, my friend, and my confidante. Then, breast surgery followed.

• Telling the first trusted person and how that felt.
  The first person I properly told was a close friend. He said: "I'm surprised but not surprised, and honestly, now everything makes sense." A week later I saw him again—I was in jeans with a shaved head, still visibly me—and when I brought our coffees to the table, he smiled and said: "It's funny. You told me last week. You're exactly the same person, but all I can see now is a beautiful woman who was waiting at the bar." He made me cry.I had been a performance artist for twenty years. I had spent my entire career helping audiences feel something real. And yet this—this quiet, private truth-telling—was the most terrifying performance of my life. Because it wasn't a performance at all. It was just me.
  

Chapter 3: Navigating the Waves

• Obstacles encountered in healthcare, workplaces, or relationships.
  Transition is not a straight line. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not lived it.The obstacles began at forty when I finally went to a GP. I was told: "At your age, hormones will do nothing for you. You'll end up a man in a wig, in the best-case scenario." I filed that away and kept going. Sometimes you will cross paths with ignorant people who hold titles, degrees, and a license to kill your spirit; all you can do is file them and their opinions away.The obstacle, always, was financial—and it still is. I have worked like a woman possessed, and I still do. But if there is one thing I possess, it is that I never give up once I fix my eyes on the prize. Do I regret any of the sacrifices I made? Not one. Every difficulty was a confirmation of my strength, my resilience, and my determination. They happened. I am still here. This is my life, this is my truth, and I own it—every single part of it. I made it happen. I am here to stay.

• Milestones achieved (e.g., HRT, legal name change, coming out publicly).
  At fifty, after the epiphany moment I mentioned, I told my friends and my family. I asked my mother's permission—not because I would have stopped if she said no, but because I wanted her to be a part of it, out of pure respect. The decision to transition was mine to make, but I was not the only one with fifty years of male experience to process. My mother had a son for fifty years; she needed to be ready to let him go in order to welcome the fifty-year-old daughter she never knew she had. She was ready, and so was my sister. From that moment, I never looked back.I changed my name to Gabriela. Years earlier, I had been struck by the beauty, gentleness, grace, and power of a friend of my brother's who was eight years my senior. Her name was Gabriela. I kept the name, and I grew into it.A year after starting hormones, Jenny came into my life. It was hard—I'm not going to lie—and it was painful, but it was so worth it. I found a friend in her, a confidante, a sister in crime. Breast surgery followed. At fifty-four, I changed my passport and my birth certificate. At fifty-six—six years after beginning my medical transition—I had lower surgery: a nine-hour colonoscopic vaginoplasty.My thinking evolved along the way. I used to believe that women have vaginas, men have penises, and trans women have whatever they choose to have. But years down the line, I understood it was far more complex than that. For the relationship I wanted, for the intimacy I craved, and because of a growing unease—and eventually, an outright avoidance—of seeing myself naked, I knew what I needed. I made it happen.

• Sources of unexpected joy, community support, and resilience.
  The person who held my hand when I woke up from surgery was the most extraordinary man—my partner, who adores me completely, all of who I am and all of who I was. He gives me everything I ever wanted, and he put a ring on my finger.What saved me—consistently, across all of it—was community. The women in my life. The unexpected sisterhood that appears when you are simply, finally, yourself—and, of course, the time spent in Jenny’s treatment room. And my art. My art has always been the place where I could be whole when the rest of the world wasn't ready.The Madrid Movida. The London art scene. Activism that predated the language I now take for granted. I am a proud trans woman and I always will be, because I am proud of my community and proud of my journey. But before anything else, once and for all: I am simply Gabriela.
  

Chapter 4: Finding My True Self

• The current stage of your transition journey.
  Right now, I am Gabriela. I am exactly where I am supposed to be—which took a very long time to say without flinching.

• Physical, mental, and emotional changes you celebrate most.
  The changes I celebrate most are not necessarily the physical ones, though those matter deeply. What I celebrate most is the meaning of all of it: a constant, relentless pursuit of my true self, and everything else that fell into place once I committed to that path. Today, I love what looks back at me in the mirror. I love being in my body. I love being me. I have nothing to hide and everything to display—and I do it entirely on my own terms, because I own the pace.

• How your relationship with yourself and the world has transformed.
  My relationship with myself changed the day I stopped asking for permission to exist. My relationship with the world changed when I stopped performing for it. I now coach other women—both cisgender and transgender—from exactly this place of radical self-acceptance. You are not broken. You never were. That is not a platitude; it is the most political and personal truth I know.

Chapter 5: Words for the Next Generation

• One piece of vital advice for someone starting their transition.
  If I could say one thing to someone standing at the beginning of their transition, it would be this: you do not have to earn the right to be yourself.Not from your family. Not from healthcare systems. Not from the internet. Not from other trans people, not from the community, not from anyone. You already have that right. It was never theirs to give.

• A message of hope or encouragement to your younger self.
  And to my younger self—baby girl, they will not make it easy for you. But listen: you will fight every single one of them, and you will win. Trust your strength. Get ready, because you are going to kick ass.I love you. I wish I could have been there for you—because I became the woman who got through all the things they were going to put you through. Fight, baby girl. Fight with everything you have, and be amazed by your own resilience. You still have no idea what you are going to be capable of.You were never performing the wrong life. You were surviving until you had the space to live it. And you will. You absolutely will.The road is long, and it is yours. Walk it in your own time, in your own way, in your own magnificent, unapologetic self.