Hi from Tara

[tarawb]

Hi everyone,

I am Tara from the Hunter Valley, I joined early this year, was hoping to get to last nights meeting, had done my hair and was dressed in a nice tiger print dress and black tights. Then at the last minute decided to stay home and deal with a customers database issue.

Is there still a group meeting in Newcastle or is it just the Central coast group, its about the same travel times either way for me and everyone up here knows where Westfield Tuggerah is. For those that do not, it is about two minutes drive off the F3/M1 Sydney/Newcastle freeway.

So I have been in the IT industry all my adult life, presently am a linux consultant to the Westmead Millenium Institute in Westmead. Hobbies are photography and apologies to all the Nikon members but I am a canon fan, have a EOS 700D. I have been part of our local linux user group HVLUG for several years and we still meet monthly at Rutherford. I am also part of a local charity who trains assistance dogs for people with a variety of conditions, so I am the IT person, photographer, board secretary and acting assistant director.

As for my transition, I commenced that in November 2014 and have only recently taken a big step of presenting as female to the general public, so far all has been good, going to the last months meeting probably helped with my confidence. Needless to say being pulled over on the way home from the meeting for a random breathe test was not something I was expecting.

Hope to make it to the next meeting.

Tara

[Christine Parker]

Hi Tara

Welcome To the Seahorse Forum.

A group of girls do meet in Newcastle on Tuesday nights for dinner at the Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club.

Also, there is a restaurant night on the 2nd Wednesday each month at the Absolute Thai at Tuggerah shopping centre. I am usually at that one.

More details here:http://www.seahorsesoc.org/events-other.html

BTW, I have a Nixon.

[tarawb]

Tuggerah does sound awesome, after all I can hit the shops beforehand, and which girl does not love shopping.

I am on facebook and twitter if people want to follow me.

[Kate]

Hi Tara, nice to meet you.

Tara is my wife's name so obviously I really like the name. Up until recently it seemed the only other Tara's we used to meet were rottweilers!

Not into computers much myself, they are tools that perform certain limited functions for me. And I'm a shocker at photos. Our photo collection essentially consists of a large collection of reasonably gory medical photos from work cases!

Anyway, look forward to chatting.

[tarawb]

I have a lot of landscape photos, dog photos and a couple of the moon.

[tarawb]

Just Checking in and saying Hi to everyone,

Yes I am still about, I am a social butterfly, get around various transgender forums.

When I made the decision to transition my GP was very supportive, basically told me that there are other people like me and to go out and find them, hence me joining Seahorse. He gave me lots of encouragement over the last year until he recently passed away.

Summer has been a big thing for me, I am getting out there in public every day in pretty skirts or dresses and that is basically going well.

NSW Government is discussing updating the Births Deaths and Marriages act to reduce complications in that area which I have taken an interest in. I even got some interesting hate mail on Twitter recently on my views over the marriage equality debate.

Hopefully I will be at home of the up coming events.

[Genevieve]

Hi Tara - it's a great time of year for the for pretty skirts and dresses for sure!

[tarawb]

Quick transition update.

Some people may know that I am a member of Gender Diversity Australia(Genda) on facebook and I post heaps over there, but not everyone is on that group.

So I thought, maybe I should do a quick summary of stuff that I have not posted here.

My wife's employer has been aware of my transition and I have their support. A place I volunteer for has been aware of my transition for most of this year, we are now talking about changing my staff ID etc to Tara to reduce confusion. As for my paid work, well I am self employed and do some consulting in Sydney. The manager I do report to in Sydney loves my hair, some of my close friends there are aware of my transitions plans, after all I was accepted into the girls little club there while I worked on site for 5 years.

Family is work in progress, I think my dad is slowly coming to terms with it, he is too busy dealing with my sister and uncle who have terminal cancer, so he is overwhelmed with that. And my sister has basically accepted me and is probably out shopping for a dress for me. Her only question on that subject is does it have to be pink.

As for my wife, well she busy dealing with her own health and work issues, so my transition is probably rates low of crap she has to deal with right now. We have discussed changing my legal name and we were not going to do that until we had dealt with my family.

As for my clothes, well boy clothes are slowly disappearing, none of my male dress pants actually fit me, so they are in a pile to go out.

I also forgot one thing, I have also been contributing to the discussion about transgender rights in NSW and that issue was recently raised in the NSW Legislative Assembly, hopefully some good things will come out of it. So far my part is all of this is small, but every little bit counts.

Hopefully all that made sense, yes I am a social butterly and get around abit.

[Kate]

Well done Tara. I hope all goes well for you.

I have been full time now for close to 2 months?? I think. I've finally got my official name change through today even though pretty much everyone already calls me Kate. I could and had changed a lot of things without an official name change but to change my drivers licence and passport I needed to have an official change of name certificate registered with the NSW registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. Funny part, I could have changed my gender on my drivers licence just with the letter of recognition from my Endocrinologist, but I couldn't change my name on the licence without an official name change certificate. So I could have a licence in the name of Adam James Toyer, sex Female! Even the service NSW staff could see the ridiculous side of that.

We found it much simpler to just do the change of names relatively quickly. The period where we were half out it acme very confusing, does so and so know or not. I must admit that family have been the toughest to tell. Probably because they have the most to lose.