Guest post by Alma Frances Pellett. Alma is a transgender woman, living her dream as a stay-at-home mom in central Utah.

I have never experienced menses. I was born with neither uterus nor ovaries that would eventually mature and begin the task of cycling through a monthly preparation for creating children. At birth, the bits that were apparent caused me to be assigned male. All I had was an inner need to be just like the other girls around me, the mothers I wanted to be like, caged by the knowledge that it simply wasn’t possible, physically or theologically. 

But these desires have a way of seeping through, ignoring what we hold as impossibilities. For me, that manifested for years at a time as monthly cramps and even inexplicable bleeding for a time. Every time my wife (who was always exhibiting far worse symptoms) wondered why I would ever want to feel such a thing, how it could give me happiness when to her it was a lifelong annoyance.

Several years ago I learned of a new possibility for my life; I am transgender, a woman whose body needs help getting the proper hormones, who really had been a mother to her children the whole time. It has been wonderful feeling the changes happening to my body, even the now very real effects the body goes through in attempting a cycle lacking all the expected parts. It turns out that the body has plenty to do, even without a uterus. While lacking actual menses, my body is going through the cycle all on its own, without anyone sympathetic to take cues from.

But my years of children are now over. I am getting to an age where my peers are entering that stage in life where this cycle breaks down and stops; menopause, literally a monthly cessation, too often spoken of in sad whispers as “the change.” Even people around me who get their hormones from an outside source (not all of them transgender) are feeling the need to take this step as part of their life journey, as just another part of who they are as a human being who has lived with estrogen. We’re fortunate in that we get some choice in when we go through this, but for me, there remains one simple problem.

I don’t want to.

I’ve read lovely stories about transgender people who have timed it to coincide with their spouse’s unexpected menopause. I know about the increasing risk of cancers when menopause happens later than usual. I know many, many people who have gone through it and adjusted with only small annoyance, glad to be through with the entire mess. I hope everyone finds peace with it, no matter what the circumstances.

But it’s not for me. Not anytime soon, if I can at all help it.

In this past year, due at least in part to the introduction of weekly estrogen shots, I have been happier than I have even been in my entire life. I am finally getting to feel more myself, finally getting those body parts I put on back-order decades ago. Why would I ever, ever be willing to take the chance that it will stop?

Maybe this will change in the future. My life seems to be full of unanticipated change. Maybe I will count it as a way to affirm the woman I am, going through the process so many have gone through before. Maybe politics will change, disallowing me the hormones I have so quickly felt vital to my life. Will I come to terms with it as part of the aging process?

For much of my life I have longed for the ability to bear children, and have counted having menses as something that goes with that wish.  Though now, even if it were medically possible, the time has flown. I’m glad I am able to choose when and how my own menopause will start. But for me, I’m simply not ready.

This post is part of a series, Menopause and Me.