Finding Mentors and Mapping a Path—Lessons from the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference
Binary to Binary: A Gender Transition Roadmap
by Susanna Blake, Part 3
Click here to read Part 2.
Making Progress
The best advice we received from a therapist was to attend the annual Philadelphia Transgender Wellness Conference (PTWC). I attended all three days for three years in a row. Caroline was able to attend with me the third year and, interestingly, felt that this was not her tribe. She might fit in with a lesbian crowd if she ever had the opportunity. Early on I said to her, “I can’t wait to meet your first girlfriend.” She responded with something along the lines of “You and me both!”
Now I digress. Attending the national conference (PTWC) was both exhilarating and extremely informative. It was free to attend, held in Philadelphia every year, and ran many seminars each hour all day long to pick from depending on the subjects you felt you needed the most. The first year of my attendance I kept seeing various attendees choosing mostly all of the same seminars that I chose.
I happened to sit next to a woman who was about six months ahead of Caroline in her transition (i.e., very early in the process). She became my brilliant mentor—young enough to be my daughter—who I could turn to for opinions and information from that day on. It was in that seminar that I raised my hand and asked, naively, “In what order do people usually do all of these steps?” The speaker explained that everyone chooses their own path.
That may be true, but I could have used an example of a timeline or a list of major steps rather than piecing together all of the information myself. Outside of the seminar room, my future mentor (then age forty) and a woman transitioning in her mid-sixties stopped me to offer advice since they were ahead of Caroline by several months.
Note: The primary host/sponsor, the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, has discontinued the PTWC as of 2025.
Part 4: From Hormones to Coming Out—The First Steps of Medical and Social Transition
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