It has been four years since my husband made the decision to transition to a female with my support. The process itself from beginning to end took about three years. Three years of hormone replacement therapy and surgeries. Also involved were legal name changes and updating of personal documents.

That was the easy part. Surface stuff.

The hard part was telling our grown children, parents and siblings, and our friends and co-workers. That was the hard part.

This stuff, both easy and hard, we did together. We stood side by side while we explained and talked and answered a lot of questions. Together we faced every single up and down moment. Moments that sometimes turned into days and weeks.

That's the we stuff. What about the me stuff?

Me... the wife.

Well, it has been a mishmash of extreme ups and downs. You don't go through the past few years, watching your husband transform into a woman, without taking a hit. Nothing up until now in my life had prepared me for what I went through.

The stress and enormity of the transition took a toll on me. I was distracted and exhausted. I was grieving. I was adapting. I was grappling with my own loss of identity.

I took leaves of absences from work and went to therapy. I went to the gym to work off the junk food I was inhaling. My hands shook constantly. My brain was on constant overload that I couldn't find the right words to have a normal every day conversation. I ended up in the emergency room with chest pains and then sent home because my heart was perfectly fine.

It was all part of the process. With everything in my world changing, it would have been foolish to think that it was going to be easy. It wasn't easy at all. It was hard.

And anything worth doing is hard. My marriage is worth doing. My husband, now my wife, is worth doing.

And I'd do it all over again if I had to.

How am I doing now? A lot better.

Our new life has begun and we are settling into our new normal. What seemed impossible at times is now do-able without even blinking an eye... sometimes.

Transitioning from one gender to another is hard. Hard but not impossible.

And sometimes it's harder on the significant others. Hard but not impossible.

And so I ask myself, now what? Where do I go from here? How can I take my experience and share it with others?

I believe it is important to share my journey with others. To share my ups and downs. My thoughts and feelings. My hope and perseverance.

I hope that another person who is embarking on the same road that I just travelled on would not feel like they are traveling alone.

You are not alone.