Nora's Biography

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Hi, if you’ve made it this far you evidently would like to know a bit more about me. My name is Nora Elizabeth Cress. I presently live in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and I’m a post-operative transsexual. I went to Phuket, Thailand in October 1999 and had vaginoplasty surgery to finally become fully female. This is the culmination of 10 years of planning and work on my part and I’m very happy to have made it finally. My present stats are: age: 45, height: 5’11", eyes: hazel, hair: brunette, and weight: 1*#$% (must be interference). My current hobbies are going to flea markets, the movies, reading sci-fi and fantasy, shopping (of course), I also enjoy braiding friendship bands, and I still enjoy watching a good sprint car race every now and again! Doug Wolfgang is just soooo kewl!

I was born December 19, 1954 in a very rural mountainous area of Eastern Kentucky. My parents were very poor but hardworking and honest people. My younger years were spent like most youngsters in mostly play and early school pursuits. I had always enjoyed playing with girls more than boys for some reason but hadn’t really delved into it until around the age of 12. By this time I had a younger brother by 8 years. He and I, due to the age gap didn’t have a lot in common growing up.

Sometime around 12 I realized that I had a longing to be female, not just a longing but a feeling that I should have been born a woman! In those days there was no information about transsexuals. I don't think the name had even been coined then. As with a lot of other T-girls I’ve talked to from my generation I would go to bed at night praying that when I awoke I would be a girl and would be treated like one from then on. I told no one of my hopes and dreams thinking that their must be something wrong with me since I wasn’t born genetic female.

I enjoyed playing with girls and playing their games. But at that age to them I was a yucky boy and the boys thought that I was a sissy to even want to play with girls instead of the rough and tumble male games. After many fights, with me on the losing end mostly, I decided that I was going to have to learn to fit in or suffer for the rest of my life. One thing that a transgendered child learns early on is to act well. It's a survival skill!

Around this time my father who was an avid outdoorsman decided that his "Sons" needed to be taught the hunter/gatherer skills. I had already been given my first shotgun when I was around 13, target shooting is one of the few things that I still enjoy from this period in my life. So it began, I went hunting and fishing with my dad but my heart just wasn’t in it. Not long afterwards my father started working in a coal mine on the 2^nd shift. After which time I didn’t get to see much of my father except in the summer when school was out. But hunting made a great excuse to my mom for me to get out of the house and just go into the woods and meditate on my life and how I felt. I just knew that I was the only one in the world to have these feelings and I had a lot of guilt associated with my feminine feelings and yearnings. I felt as if I were letting my parents down because I just couldn’t be the son that I thought they wanted! I had few really good friends growing up and never really let anyone get very close to the real me. I was terrified that someone would find out my secret.

As time went on I went through the motions of being male and got fairly good at acting it. I still ended up on the bloody end of fights occasionally due to my being very non-aggressive. The schoolyard bullies knew this and used it to their advantage. Finally though I made it through school..

At 17 I graduated from high school. By this time I had my act down pretty well. I still longed to be a woman with all my heart but had pretty much given up hope of it every happening. Then I chanced upon a magazine article about Christine Jorgensen, the Korean war veteran who made headlines by having a "sex change" as it was called in those days! She was gorgeous and I knew that I wasn’t alone in the world after all!! Their were other’s out there who had been born male and were changing their genetic sex to match their brain sex. I was one very confused and depressed person. Now I had found out that it was possible to change my bodies sex to match how I felt. But what effect would all this have on my family. They had always did their best to give me what I needed and all the love they had in them. I had so much guilt over how I felt that I turned my back on my female side. I was more determined than ever to not be the least bit feminine.

I had gotten a job in a local hardware store about a month after graduation. Around this time I decided to banish my femme side and be the person that society expected me to be. I wanted to make my parents proud of me and I thought that the only way to do that was to be a real macho guy. Before the year was out I had built my first dirt track race car and was the youngest driver at our local track at the time. I ended up driving for 19 seasons, a late model sportsman car the last 3 years. In the middle of my 18^th year I got a job at the coal mine my father worked at. It was filthy, dangerous work but it paid pretty well. I ended up working 22 ½ years in and around the coal mines all told. Eighteen years underground and 4 ½ operating heavy equipment outside.

I had made myself a vow early on, if it was male oriented and dangerous I would do it, if for no other reason than to reaffirm to myself that I was male! In 1976 a friend and  I brought the first hang glider I knew of into Eastern Kentucky, later on it was skydiving. I also owned some rather large motorcycles and as it happens it was after a very, very nasty wreck on a 750cc Honda that I finally came to the conclusion that I really had a death wish and was trying to kill myself without making it look like suicide. I came to realize that if I didn’t come to grips with my transsexuality that I would die in one these mishaps sooner or later. I was just taking too many chances.

The first of three marriages came in 1975 when I was 20 and my then SO was 17. I had thought we were in love after dating for 3 ½ years but then after 3 ½ years of marriage we split up and divorced. I had tried early on to hint about my transsexuality, feeling that if I had someone to talk to about it would help but she was adamant about wanting a very macho husband so I never pursued it. At the present time my first SO and I are currently back in touch with each other and have found that we still enjoy talking to each other so we now send e-mail to each other on a regular basis. She did say that it was certainly a shock when one of her family directed her to this website and she saw the radical changes that I'd undergone since she last saw me.

My 2^nd marriage came over 3 years after my first divorce in 1978. It was still a rebound marriage none the less. After dating for only 3 months we were married. We fought almost from day one but I had never let her get as close to my heart as my first spouse had and consequently the breakup and divorce 11 months later didn’t hurt nearly as bad. I never even hinted about being TS this time!

I suffered though bouts of depression for years during my 20’s. Going to see one therapist or psychiatrist every few months but I could never bring myself to reveal what was really bothering me. I tried almost every antidepressant made at that time. I thought that I could make it magically go away with drugs, but  none helped! I finally gave up and decided to just live with it.

When I was 30 a friend just couldn’t stand it that I didn’t date or have a girlfriend, so he took it upon himself to get the names of some Filipina women to be penpals with. I started writing to some of these ladies since I was lonely. After 7 month of writing to one lady we decided that I would travel to the Philippines and if we liked each other in person as well as through our letter’s and tapes then we would be married. If we didn’t then she would show me around and I would call it a vacation and go home. Well we were married 2 days after meeting in person! It was love at first sight. That was in April of 1985, over 15 years ago now. In late 1986 we had a beautiful daughter whom we adore. I had tried to forget my past but it was destroying me and so I finally came out to my present SO in 1989. She didn’t understand everything at first but after I got all the information I could on transsexualism and let her read it she understood that it wasn’t something that could be cured or as in my case even just lived with. Even though I could tell she was hurt very badly she promised to do everything she could to help me finally be the woman I was destined to be. She has been true to her word and even though it hurt her to loose the man in her life she has unselfishly given her all to help me transition. For this if for nothing else I will be eternally grateful to her! We are still in love however and a couple. One thing that I've found in talking to some gay, lesbian, and transgender couples over the years is that true love knows no gender barriers! If you ever find someone who really and truly loves you for who you are and not who they can make of you, you had better hang on to them with all your might because you may never find that kind of understanding and caring again!

As I said earlier I came out to my SO in 1989. At that time I started planning my future transition to womanhood. In 1990 the coal mine I worked at shut down and I was laid off for 3 years. This put everything on hold for those years. I was being paid to go back to VoTech school to learn a skill and of all things I chose Aircraft Maintenance! It must not have been that weird a chose after all because their were several genetic females taking the course also. After 2 grueling years I graduated as an A&P mechanic finishing at the top of my class. But the aircraft industry had taken a turn for the worse and their were no jobs available so after another year out of work I was recalled to an outside job at a coal washing facility for the same company I used to work for. I had self prescribed hormones for myself in 1994 after consulting a PDR I had purchased. My SO had gotten them for me in the Philippines where they were over the counter items. A bit later, in 1995, as my cash flow increased I started electrolysis and have currently received more than 300 hours of it. OUCH! Let me tell you if you've never had someone stick a needle into your face for 6 hours at a time before, it's a REAL experience.

In 1996 I finally made it into therapy and started going to an Endocrinologist who actually increased my Premarin dosage and added a progesterone to round out my hormone replacement therapy. It was this year that we chose to tell our then 8 year old daughter. She at first became very distraught as she thought that she was loosing one of her parents. Once I talked to her and found out what was actually causing her distress I assured her that I would never disavow her and would always be there for her when she needed me! After she realized that she wasn't going to being abandoned she actually got into having an extra mom around who could still do dad type things too. We had a lot of fun together. I always included her and my SO in any therapy sessions that they wished to attend and my therapist later said that our daughter was a very emotionally secure and well adjusted child. This was very important to me as I didn't wish anything I did to adversely affect my child.

I came out to my Mother in early 1997 and to my surprise she accepted me without reservations. I had always been very close to my mom and when she told me I would always be her child no matter if I was male or female and that she would always love me I was overjoyed! Later that year I went to my first Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta. My SO went with me that first year and joked that she almost couldn’t get me out the door of our room on that first day and then she couldn’t get me back in after that. I made some very dear friends that year, many of whom I get together with regularly at support group meetings and other functions. I also made it to the 1998 SCC event, it was the largest transgender gathering to date with almost 600 participants! I was unable to attend the 1999 SCC event due to preparations for my upcoming journey to Thailand but I have every intention of making the SCC 2000 bash.

After the 1998 SCC which I attended on my own I was getting ready for my first surgery, CTA voice surgery with Dr’s. Cohen and Meltzer in Portland when I decided it was finally time to come out to my dad. I was very apprehensive about this as my father was from the old school and fairly conservative or so I thought. I didn’t know how he was going to take it, though with all the changes in me over the previous years he would have been pretty much blind to not see something was happening. To my surprise he was much more knowledgeable on the subject of transsexuals than I had given him credit for, maybe he was a lot more observant than I had thought. He asked several pointed and insightful questions about myself and the surgeries involved with transition. After speaking with him I was on top of the world, I had told  my whole family now and they still loved and accepted me!!!!!!!

After 6 years on hormones, 300 + hours of electrolysis, and 3 years of therapy, CTA voice surgery and two facial surgeries, I lived full time as a woman in the Charlotte, North Carolina area for several months during my Real Life Test before going to Thailand for surgery. I was given final approval by my therapist for my GRS surgery on August 11, 1999 and after conferring with my chosen surgeon, Dr. Sanguan Kunaporn of Phuket, Thailand I had my surgery on October 20, 1999! At the time of this update it's been 7 months since my GRS surgery and I have been doing very well.

I recently decided to move back to my hometown in Eastern Kentucky. Once I had sent out the letter I had written to my extended family member's (on my coming out page) I knew it would only be a matter of a short time till everyone there knew about me. That is the main reason for this website. I knew that there would be all sorts of rumors and tales going around about me so I decided to tell my own story so that anyone who wished could find out first hand what I have to say for myself. In all reality, my personality and values are still the same as they always were, just the package they are housed in has changed. 

Well this is pretty much my story to date, I have gone into detail on the surgeries I’ve had and my coming out  in their own sections. I have also summarized my GRS surgery experience. Drop me a line if you feel like it, I always enjoy making new friends. I may be a little slow responding since I get quite a bit of mail these days but I will get back to you. Thanks so much for stopping by!