A Trans Person Asks: How do you accept the old you?

Addison Smith
4 min readApr 19

Addi talks about how they learned to accept themself as a trans person.

Below is the teleprompter script for another episode of “Ask Addi,” my advice show on YouTube. If you’re so inclined, you could go to my channel and click like and subscribe. It would help grow the channel and allow me to keep making new episodes. Thanks, Addi

Hello Humans! Welcome back to Ask Addi, your source for . . . me, Addison Smith.

If you’re unaware or can’t tell, I’m trans. Shocking, I know.

I didn’t figure myself out until about 10 years ago when I was in my *mumble*ies.

That left me a lot of time to look back with regret about not figuring myself out sooner. Not transitioning earlier, so I would have been more femme-looking.

I wondered why I never figured it out before. I thought about how my relationship with my body was never great.

I thought about what good taste I showed when shopping with my female friends.

And I thought about how much I don’t like men. They can be really annoying, especially in the groups I was expected to be a part of. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not all men.

Sorry, had to.

Anyway, this question let me know, it’s not just me. An anonymous writer asks:

I’m a transgender person who is transitioning. Is there any tip on getting to accept your old you?

And yeah, I was right there with you. Once I knew what the underlying issue of a lot of my other issues was, I kept looking back and thinking, “Why didn’t I take the hint from myself?”

I mean, I didn’t have clues. My subconscious had giant red semaphore flags signaling You Are Trans!

It really got to me because I knew that wasted a lot of time. I knew that there were experiences that I would never have because I transitioned later in life.

Addison Smith

I’m an LGBTQ+ DEI educator, activist, and writer living in the Midwest with my cat. Call me Addi. They/She. Booking and more info at https://addisonsagenda.com