"Becoming a man of my own design has taken a lot of hard work. To make my body and gender presentation align with my masculine energy, spirit and disposition has come with great sacrifice and great reward. I watched my family grieve the sister, aunt and daughter I was then grow to celebrate the brother, uncle and son I became. It was a complicated and sometimes an exhausting process but all worth it in the end.

The scope of emotions, questions and challenges we face within our families is emblematic of the cultural shift that’s happening right now. We’re all being challenged to understand gender as a spectrum of possibilities that is determined by the individual not something rigidly defined on a binary axis. The transgender experience is being addressed within the LGBT movement and explored within the broader population as a means of understanding. For so long, a lot of the engagement with the trans community has been antagonistic and shaming yet now we are pushing ourselves culturally to reexamine gender identity and how it’s created or defined."