Mattie Schraeder

My first Explanation of Benefits dropped today for “The Surgery”

If anyone wants to help cover my healthcare costs, the link is https://www.gofundme.com/f/mattie-needs-help-paying-for-bottom-surgery

I hate the phrase “THE surgery” so of course that’s the subject of this post. “The surgery” makes it sound to me as if it’s the be all end all of being a transgender person. It’s not. It’s one step, a big, scary, expensive, and often important step, but that’s all it is. It’s not even a required step. Some transgender people don’t even consider it, and if you would have asked me when I first started transitioning, it wasn’t even something on my radar.

My sister-in-law sent me a picture of various questions for the Transgender Day of Visibility. Rather than rehashing what I wrote a few years ago, about why this day is so important to me, I thought I’d take the time to answer her questions, and share them here.

I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but dating sucks. Honestly, it always sucked, but dating as a late 30s transgender woman is even worse than when I was dating as a late 20s male-passing individual. Then you add in a global pandemic and the entire thing goes to shit.

That’s dating in the year 2022 as a late 30s transgender woman: shit.

An open letter to Facebook and those who friended me.

I’ve posted about my prototype, Walking Doggos, being available on The Game Crafter and Drive Thru Cards, but today I have an even more exciting announcement.

The game was signed by Sapphire City Games and is currently on Kickstarter! Check it out!

You can back the game for $26 and have a copy of your very own!

Like most of the world, my life has changed drastically since COVID-19. I live in Illinois, and the stay in place order has been active for a week now. Even before that my workplace closed its offices, forcing me to work from home. It’s been a week since I even left the house and honestly it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in regards to my being transgender. I was unemployed for six months, and even that was easier to deal with than the last two weeks.

I did something recently that I didn’t think I would ever do again. I put on a swimsuit and swam. It was one of the scariest things I’ve done since coming out as transgender. I was in the relative safety of my close family, but even then it was hard to show myself in a swimsuit.

I’ve been using Google Photos to backup all of the terrible cell phone photos I’ve taken since 2012. There’s maybe 50 photos of me before I started transitioning in 2017. Most of the photos are of pets and random things. Now there’s a huge collection of selfies that document my entire transition. At least once a week, usually 3-4 times a week, I’ll take a photo of myself. Either at my desk, in bed, on my couch, or in my car. Wherever the mood strikes me. That’s not something that ever happened before transitioning.

I’ve been catching up on a lot of the back catalogue of leftist YouTube personalities lately, and I finally worked up the courage to watch Philosophy Tube’s video on Suicide and Mental Health. It’s a rough video to watch, especially as someone who’s been there, has dealt with those feelings, and still deals with those feelings. However, it did convince me to write this post, despite having sat on it for months before finally posting it.