Alan W. is sitting at a table in Starbucks, looking uncomfortable. His shoulders hunch up a bit in his suit and open-collared shirt, and his trim goatee is surrounded by the five o’clock shadow of a long day spent with numbers at his job managing a funding program at the Department of Children and Family Services, where he’s worked for 25 years.
Self-conscious and shy are lifelong defaults for Alan, who is 54. But, he said, he’s not nearly as awkward as he was back when he lived in a woman’s body.
“Everyone grows up not liking something about themselves, but to really be disconnected from who you are … I never looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t like to look at my breasts and all that stuff,” he said. Since transitioning nine years ago, Alan said he now feels free. “All of a sudden, you can be who you are and not be ashamed. I can look in the mirror and go, “ ‘Wow, I’m really who I am.’ ”
His confidence has been so lifted that he was able to stand up and speak before family friends at his adult bar mitzvah at Congregation Kol Ami four years ago — an unthinkable feat a few years before.
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Kol Ami has been an anchor for him and his wife, Yaffa. (Yaffa’s parents don’t know that Alan used to have female parts, so the couple is using only first names for this article.)
Yaffa grew up Southern Methodist, and Alan grew up in Beverly Hills in a marginally Jewish home — his family occasionally attended services at Temple Isaiah on Pico Boulevard, and they also had a Christmas tree. He connected with Israel on a seven-month kibbutz stay while in college, but other than sporadic shul attendance, he was mostly disconnected from Judaism. Yaffa, who converted three years ago, insisted when they got together 10 years ago that they find a spiritual community, and they became regulars at Kol Ami.
One of Alan’s most signficant milestones was a naming ceremony held for him on Kol Ami’s rooftop, where Rabbi Denise Eger bestowed on him his new Hebrew name, Avraham Saul.
“It was really the first step of me getting more in touch with my spirituality, my connection to community,” Alan said. “People we met in temple were there, and I could look out and see my family — they were proud and accepting.”
Alan’s split with his past has been pretty stark. He has changed his name and gender on his birth certificate, and he has a visceral reaction to seeing pictures of himself in his 20s and 30s. While everyone at work knows he transitioned, he doesn’t talk about it, and to new people he’s just another male. He showed up incognito at his Beverly Hills High School 30th reunion.
“I have had a lot of good experiences and good people in my life, but I want to go on with my life — I don’t want to always have to look back,” he said.
Still, he can also laugh about his transition. He jokes that after his mastectomy, he’s had to work out to build up his chest to look more buff. His nephew was 13 when Alan transitioned, and the two would compare facial hair growth and voice changes. He said he had the utter joy of going through puberty and menopause at the same time, and still laments the loss of his curly hair (he’s bald now).
But he knows some people lose everything when they transition, and he considers himself lucky for what he has — a supportive family, employers who stuck with him through transition, the resources to pay for treatments and a loving community.
“I have no regrets. I lived my life a certain way for a reason. If I had transitioned earlier, my life may have been different, or it may not have,” Alan said. “But I have no regrets. I feel a calmness and an acceptance in myself.”
