A Trans Woman Talks about Transitioning At 50.

Cassidy McKinnon shares what it looks like to transition from male to female in your 50s. Cassidy talks about how she slowly made the transition to ensure her wife, and especially her little girl, were OK. How the depression she'd been living since she was a teenager suddenly lifted once she began hormones. Cassidy's message to others thinking of or in the process of tranisitioning: Don't rush and be patient with yourself and others.

Transcript

Meeting Cassidy And Her Story

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When Cassidy McKinnon was 14 and going through puberty, she realized that something was not quite right. But as she grew up, she got married, she had a daughter who had some pretty significant medical needs. And life just happened. And it wasn't until she was in her 50s that she realized that she needed to start transitioning to from male to female. And Cassidy's on the show today just to talk about the process, um, how she came to the decision to transition and uh what the process was going through that and where she is today. I've known Cassidy, she lived in Niagara for a long time. We did a bit of work together, Cassidy. And then you moved to Nova Scotia about, did you say five years ago?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

That's correct. Yeah.

Moving To Nova Scotia For Safety

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Why did you make that move?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Um, I've got a high-risk daughter. It was uh COVID uh was an unknown, but our daughter had been in the NICU at McMaster for her first 207 days, and we had a lot of close calls during that. She had a um medical history that made uh COVID a real potential death sentence for her. So uh we looked at the numbers in Nova Scotia. There was also a highly uh ranked children's hospital with IWK in Halifax. I come from the Maritimes originally. So we decided that we could have even if we had to spend time sort of sequestered from the world, that we could we in that smaller community with everything close by, we thought that we could have uh the closest resemblance to an existence for us and and for our daughter. So we've we had moved uh during that period of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

You started transitioning about three years ago, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

And then you started your Cassidy McKinnon Facebook page last spring. And you work for a company where you have an international team of about a hundred people.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And you'd work a little over 200, actually. Yeah.

Coming Out At Work Abroad

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Oh, a little over 200. Okay. And you've been doing a lot of remote work with them for quite a long time and obviously started because of uh of COVID, and they knew you had transitioned, but you've never met these people. And you went to London to a big meeting a few weeks ago, and all 200 people were there. And when you posted on Facebook about the level of acceptance, you were nervous.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Of course, yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

And but you had an amazing, amazing uh meeting with with the people that you worked for and so much support.

Early Signs And Puberty Shock

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, it was um I think the biggest thing you do. I I transitioned out uh in my 50s. So you there's been a lot of fear and a lot of concern that you deal with. And the biggest one I had is uh is I have had a professional career. I've spent um 20 years basically working with architectural engineering construction companies. Um, and I came on board a company called Revisto uh a little over uh eight eight years ago now. And uh I started as the Canadian salesperson, then I ran a Canadian sales team as a national director. And then um, and then I as my transition try has started happening, though all the pieces that were happening in my personal life, I took a very long time, very different than a lot of uh trans folks that I've met. But I I I it was concealing it. I was I was living in an area without a lot of people that I knew. So I could be myself once I came out to my family. I could be myself here in Halifax. But I had a separate life for sales and with my teams, so I was I had good results from hormones. I was so I was having to wear binders and I was having to wear uh wear uh compression shirts and pull my hair back and really understate who I was, which was very difficult. Um the last October I had um a director's meeting in Switzerland. We're based out of Switzerland. And before I went, I reached out to my CEO and my director of HR for the company. And we we are a Switzerland-based company. We've got we're we're we're um we've we've got lots of awards for our culture and for the nature of our successes as a technology company. And I'm one of the early employees when we were little more than a startup. So I I set up a meeting with my CEO and with HR to say, hey, look, this is what's been going on. I don't know how that fits at our company. I'm very front-facing. I run webinars, I run meetings with clients, I close multi-million dollar deals. I'm uh I'm a face for our company. And we had a really maybe an hour-long conversation, really honest, really, and they were supportive right out of the gate. And they said, You belong here, we have a place for you here. This doesn't change anything. You've been successful and productive since you've been here. We expect that to even be better if you're happy and more fulfilled. And um, they said, just give us your lead as to how you want to do this and the pace that you want to do this. And I said, Well, I'm not gonna come out to anybody when I'm in Switzerland this time around. But I didn't know if there might be telltale signs that might have people start to observe things or say something. So I let them know that I went to Switzerland and I let I let two other people on my team know. And we had kept it under wraps, and my team was we went over there, and um my team was was great as they always are. But these couple of people who knew were just checking in with me, seeing that I was doing okay. So I I had that as experience and then started figuring out where I wanted to go moving forward. I was really, I was really nervous about some things, and we can get into that stuff if we if we want to talk about kind of the path to get here. But I knew I had the big global retreat that would be over 200 people that would there's over 200 people in our company. I guess maybe 125 or something were were on this uh were on this event. And we were meeting in Windsor. And uh so that spring, I deliberately started coming out to my social circle. Um, I was starting to let people know and I was reaching out to people individually. And then the two years prior to that, knowing what I was doing, I met with a lot of longtime friends in person. And just to, I wanted them to know the old me wasn't crazy when the announcement would come down the road. I wanted them to see, oh, I was sensible. I had my stuff together, I knew what I was doing. So I had these conversations, I bridged that gap socially. I sent out individual messages to talk to each person individually as to let them ask their questions, feel like they could confidently ask it and not not be um not be shocked by this sudden surprise of a person that they'd known in some cases many decades. Um, so I got through that and that gave me some encouragement, made me feel some confidence about going on this big trip to the UK. And uh I put out the announcement to my work group uh just before I went. And uh and and that we had we had a period of time to work together, and then finally I came to UK to the UK, and I was not misgendered a single time. Everyone was kind, everyone treated me as the same ridiculous character I've always been, and I treated them in the way that they expected from the same ridiculous character that they'd known all that time. Um I was included. The most the least inclusive thing about the trip was it was in the UK that a month before I came, it passed the law that you have to go to the restrooms by the gender in which you were born. So that was the first time I'd had to contend with that, going to a place. Now I was fully out, fully as myself female. And even when I went to the Apollo Theater in downtown London, which should be a queer a queer Mecca, I went there and there wasn't a restroom available for for uh all genders. And I literally had to have a conversation with the with the organization and they gave me access to another restroom, but that was a different experience than one I'd never that I never contended with. But other than that, all the experiences with my team, I was included. We had good a good time and it was a great connection now. So yeah, it was very encouraging.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

When did you get a sense that you wanted to um transition? Or um some people have said, you know, they they I have a friend who's transitioning right now, and they just didn't feel uh okay in the body. So they're transitioning from woman to male. And it wasn't until they started the steroids, and then it was like boom, I'm starting to feel myself. So when did you get a sense that this was something that was that you wanted to do?

Depression Therapy And Family Trauma

Hormones And A Sudden Calm

SPEAKER_01 9:44

It took me a long time. I'm maybe dumber than people think I am. Um, I doubt that very much. I I grew up in a small town in New Brunswick to my parents' are are ex-Navy. I was born in 66. I turned 60 years old this year. And um when I was young, I had a sense of difference, a sense of wanting. I I wished I was a girl, but there weren't mechanisms to make that real. I was a big science fiction fantasy writer, I could recognize the difference between what was fiction and what was reality. I knew that there was never gonna be a wish, uh a wish button I was ever gonna press and be able to do that. So you just accept that, oh, that'd be nice wistfully. And and I felt that more and more as I went. And then when I hit puberty, I really didn't feel right at all. Um, I testosterone came racing in and I couldn't connect with my emotions at all anymore. I was I had feminine leaning, but I was in a small town in New Brunswick, raised by traditional values. There was no I uh a young boy in that era has no room to cry, has no room to show emotion, certainly not in my world. So I girded myself. I I um focused through, chased girls and went through school and had my time with the arts and drama and all of the things that I was that I was drawn to. And um as I got older, I I I recognized that there was that there was a desire for more, but again, realistically, I didn't see a place for that to be. I got married young. I got distracted with taking care of a family and paying paying my bills and all of that sort of thing. And I kept myself very busy, and I that was a good way to keep myself distracted. In 95, I got to a point, 94 probably, I got to a point where I just knew there was something that was off. And I thought maybe, maybe it was something in the queer spectrum, maybe it was, I I I it just it didn't seem trying transitioning, still was even at that time, was not a readily available solution for for this, and it didn't, and I didn't think that that was me. Um just trying to conform, I think. And I went, I I moved from uh a small town to a city, and I've been wanting to live in in cities for a long time, and I moved down to I was in the States, I was in Phoenix, and I started having some space, some space. I had some time to myself. I and I started to figure things that again, there was something, and I didn't know what that was. And this went on for a long time, and it wasn't really not until the late 20 uh 20 teens that I started to think, is this what it is? And I was uh in therapy for I've I've dealt with severe depression my whole life. As soon as I had puberty, I had depression, always some anxiety too, but depression was my main thing, like self-loathing. That was the big thing. No matter what I did, I wasn't good enough, no matter what it how I dressed, it didn't look good enough. I never felt good enough because I didn't feel legitimate in some way. And in the late teens of 20, like 20, 2015, 2016, we had we had our daughter in 2014. She had a complicated childbirth. She was in the NICU at Matt at McMaster for um seven months. We almost lost her a bunch of times. We went through that whole thing as I was starting to come to this realization, and then there was no space for it. There was no space because we were focused on the care of our daughter. That's what that was ever we woke up to it and we went to bed to it every single night, woke up to it many times in the night. And that was our focus. And that remained our focus for several years. They there was no space for me to do this. Any anytime I started to think about myself that way, I felt selfish. I felt like I wasn't that that wasn't a good use of my focus or my time. Um, but as things progressed and my daughter got healthier and we started to to move our way forward, and I started in my career, I was starting to seek therapy more and more about my depression, more and more about getting things out. And as I went through that, I was given a safe space to start to figure this out for myself. And it was in it was sort of in 2019 that I was really thinking this this could be it. But I was sole breadwinner, child with a complicated medical history. Just we and then COVID happened, which turned into another series of dramas where this seems selfish again. I needed to put it aside. We had urgency to take care of. But at the end of 2020, I felt sure enough about it to talk to my wife. And um, I told her at the end of the year and said, Look, this is what the situation is. I'm not telling you this to veto it, I'm not telling you this to expect anything from you. I'm telling you this because this is where I think I'm going to go. And we've been through a lot together. My wife has dealt with an enormous amount of trauma, especially as it was really, she almost died when my daughter was born. My daughter uh was resuscitated back to like two dozen times. We dealt with a lot of trauma, a lot of PTSD there. And I did not want my journey to be another burden for her. So I decided my main priority in this transition was not speed. It was not, it was about making sure that my family were on board. And my family is my wife and my daughter, that they were on board, that they understood what I was going, and I and I opted for revocable changes, that I would be working towards this growing my hair out, layers of hair removal, lots of therapy, dental work, things that aligned to the vision of who she might be for me. I started working on those things that didn't, that if I continued through therapy and down the journey and realized either this wasn't the right path for me, or it was the right path, but I wasn't brave enough or capable enough to do it, because that was certainly a big fear, then I nothing would change. I just my wife would have known that I've gone on this journey with her. So I I did that for 15 months before I started on hormones. And I started on hormones in um in uh June of 2022. And three months into hormones, I got my first boost in in my estrogen, and my depression went away. The depression that had plagued me since I was 13 years old. Every day that I woke up to that hated me, that didn't think I was good enough. I woke up one day and I just felt like a normal person, I guess. I felt happy, I felt peaceful, and I knew then it didn't matter what physical results I got from from hormones, that if this was actually what was gonna happen by doing this, that I couldn't I wouldn't be able to stop doing this then. So it continued. My depression was gone. I had a joy and a happiness in me that I hadn't had since I was 12. So I continued down that path on hormones for 15 months before I told my daughter. At that point, there was only maybe 10 people who knew, like my doctor, my dentist, my hairstylist, things, people that were in my circle and a couple of friends that uh were longtime friends. And then when I told my daughter, 15 months in, uh I talked to my wife and said, Look, this is clearly where I'm going moving forward. I need, I need to not omit this from Amy's perspective perspective of who I am. So we we had uh we had a conversation with her. She was nine years old. She got it instantly. She loves her parents. We love her more than anything in the world, and it was just the next thing. And she has been my biggest champion of any anything I wear, anything I do, anything that I want to do. She she loves it. She loves me, so she loves it because that's who I am. So that's kind of where the path went. And then I stayed very quiet for many for a long time before I had finally had that trip that you talked about in the UK this spring, where I was finally in front of my coworkers after months of of them knowing me on Slack and by phone calls and Zoom meetings. And um, and then I get my whole team got a chance to interact with me. And it's been um it it's been it's been quite shocking to me because fear I I have I I do have higher anxiety than I've had in a long time. I've had days where I've gone out to go to the mall or gone out to go to a thing, and I've been like, no, I can't go out dressed like this today. I and I've turned around and gone home. Um, so there's moments of fear still, but I love myself and I respect the person, the male that I was who kept me protected until I was ready to come out as Cassidy, too. And that's kind of the journey out what got me to here.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Right. Well, and also the male that allowed you to be able to talk to your therapist, and and it it almost seems like the male part of you had to give you permission to say, you know what, you can leave me behind.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah, and yeah, and move forward. Yeah, I uh I have I have love and respect for that person than I never had when I was that person.

Telling A Child And Finding Joy

SPEAKER_00 21:01

So when you started transitioning, what were the phases that you went through? Well, just before I say that, growing up in a military family is a whole higher level of stress for conformity.

unknown 21:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And then being in the engineering business, that's also a stress level of conformity. What about your family? So your nuclear family has really done well um and embraced you, but but what about your you know, your parents and and your extended family? How is how has that been?

Extended Family Distance And Grief

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Um not really. Transitioning this late in my life means that they um their involvement is just not not close to it. Probably of all of the people that I've come out to, my family are the are the least. Um Engaged in it. I uh not not one of them have have have asked how things have things are going since I've come out. Um, we've had we we've had some family, uh some other fat family emergencies and and tragedies that have taken priority over this. So that's I I I don't mean to be um to say something like that when when there's been a lot of distractions in place. Yeah. But I I didn't rely on them. We are again, my wife and I have lived in different places away from our families for most of our lives. We've been married for 25 years this year. Um, we've lived in different cities where we didn't have family, so we're pretty autonomous as a unit. We've managed to go that way. So so it's not been part of it. And I had I my I had a brother that died suddenly last February, and that is obvious. I I had to come out before I went to that uh I had to come out after I went to that funeral and had to go incognito so as not to be the centerpiece of what was going on in that conversation at the funeral, right? So it was yeah, but that's I mean, again, we we try to we set up our support system by the people that we think are ones who can carry some of our burden and that we can carry the burdens and and understand where they're coming from and vice versa. That's just never been the role of my blood family, really. Not not since childhood.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

What were the stages? So where does where does where did you start with transitioning? So I I know part, but it was the acceptance was first, but then uh, and then you started on some hormones, and then where do you go from there?

Transition Stages Skills And Patience

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Um for me, I was I was very, very careful, very, very patient. Um, one of the things that was really important to me, I and uh before I go any further on, one of the things that's really important to say is that I've only come into the queer community in the last few years. I didn't think of myself as even being legitimately transgender until I was well into my 50s. I my perspective isn't uh is not a template that most people are going to follow. And my ideas may not be as well informed and mature as other people in the queer community who have been living that way for for and out for years. So I want to I want to say that out of the gate because I might say some things that people will go, wait a minute, that's not a fair comment. I'm gonna talk about it from my perspective.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Absolutely, absolutely. And everybody's journey in transitioning is is different, different family, different life experiences, different medical experiences.

Key Lessons And Where To Listen

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yes, yes. So, yeah, so given that, I um I, as I said, I went slow with with it, with my main my main goal was to build up my confidence about who I was as a person. What when the hormones started affecting me so positively as far as my emotions and as my mentality and my clarity of thought, that was already a win for me. But I know a lot of people transitioned late in similar ages to me, and I didn't have high expectations of what of what how things would work for me. I've I've been fortunate. My hormones, it's thickened my hair up, my hair is long and full, my brothers are losing their hair, and if they're listening, I apologize for rubbing that in. Um they that my my my skin has responded well, my breast development has been great, my my all of my all of the things that you dream about from hormones don't usually happen for somebody who transitions late in life. I got really lucky. I've had wonderful results that way, but I was also being patient and taking the slow game, and all of a sudden I have boobs that were trying to tell me that I was not going to be able to keep it slow without doing a lot of a lot of cover-up. So I the I spent a considerable amount of time worrying about being being caught up, and I was living the secret identity life. I felt like the comic book characters that I worked on when I was uh when I was a creator in comics. It it was this weird identity that you're you go home and you're yourself and then you go away and you're somebody else, and always concerned about uh about one of the two tripping you up. And it became a pretty heavy burden. But I think that that what happened after I came out to my daughter in 2022 is that um I was able to, I was able to at that point um start start presenting as myself here in Halifax. And so my all my off time was me as Cassidy, presenting as myself, learning how to walk in these shoes, learning how to wear this particular thing, learning how to style my hair this way. So I was building up skills to get myself ready for the day that I was going to come, that I was going to come out. It was, and I knew it was it was getting harder and harder to play the two parts. A lot of things that got impacted by that. Like I'm only just starting on my voice work this year. I'm only just starting on my makeup this year. Because when you're working a nine to five where you're male and you've got a couple hours in the evening that you might be able to do yourself up, there's no, even when I was taking voice lessons, there was no chance to use it. I would just be in my male voice all day long. So the biggest lesson I gave myself was grace and patience. Grace and patience, which are not my strong suits, became a real motto for me as far as the way I, the, the grace and patience I tried to give myself and the grace and patience I tried to tell to give people that learned about my identity. So it was slow, methodical, until such time as I knew I was going to be ready to come out at work. And I started reverse engineering, how far in front of that I wanted to start to come out because my goal was to keep people from learning about it through happenstance. And for the most part, I was pretty successful at managing that. But yeah, so it was slow, methodical, and patient as I went along. Started to connect with the community. That was another thing that started to make a difference was having conversations and realizing after a while that I wasn't just the newbie who was asking for help. I was starting to be the person that had some experience and could share what I'd been going through through a couple of years of hormones and transitioning and trying to do it. Most transition people lose their family. They're that's so my priority out of the gate was my family, was that made to make sure that they were good. And if they were good, I could take the next steps and the I would let the follow-up be whatever it was if everything was good at home. And that was what my focus was to just go slow and methodical.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Cassidy, thanks for coming on talking about this because I know it's very, very difficult. Um, and some people who I know are battling with what to do and and how to make that. And I think that your story will be inspirational.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Well, thanks. I I appreciate you bringing me on here. I think the biggest thing that I that I find with a lot of uh folks that I've talked to is that they are once they make the discovery, they're impatient to just start. And you need to realize that this should be a nuance of who you are, not everything that you are. This is a nuance of who I am. I'm a parent, I'm a I'm a partner, I'm a I'm a professional. Those are all aspects of who I am. My gender is a nuance of that. And I think when you realize that and you're patient, and if you want those people in your circle to stay in your circle, you need to give them the opportunity to have that. You need to apply that same patience and grace to them because they need to learn what you've learned to accept it the way that you accept it. And that's really what I've tried to take away today as something to share with people that I talk to about it.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Thank you, Cassidy.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Thank you, Janice. It was lovely talking to people.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

You can listen to all shows of Life Unscripted on your favorite podcast app or on my website at lifeunscripted.ca.