And why she's doing this...
My name's Aliyna, I'm a trans woman in her late 20's.
This project initially started as a way to express myself. I was feeling a lot and was mulling over the question 'what would have helped me the most with my transition when I was younger?'
While more readily available access to HRT would have been nice, what would have helped me out more was awareness. Growing up I had barely heard about trans people, they simply weren't something I was conscious of at the time. There are so many points in my life where I feel like something would've clicked if I had only know that was a thing you could be. And even when I became aware of trans people, it was under the understanding that they were 'born this way', that they had inherently know about this feeling since they were four or something. So when I began questioning anything about myself my conclusion about transness was that it simply couldn't be that because I hadn't 'always' felt this way. I'm sure some people who transitioned later in life may understand this feeling. If i knew then what I know now, I would have started down this road a lot sooner.
So that's how I came up with this idea. A repository of trans stories of becoming, stories of how people came to find themselves, readily available, to help anyone who could need it. While I think the idea of being 'born this way' does hold some weight, I don't think it's the be all and end all of being transgender, nonbinary, Takatāpui, gender-queer, transsexual, fluid, or any other label that someone could use to describe themself. Thinking about things in such a rigid paradigm is what held me back from understanding myself better and being happier with who I am. So its my hope that this project can be long running and spread awareness about just how diverse the way people can be are.