Imagine waking up one day and realizing that the person in the mirror has never truly been you. The reflection looks familiar, it wears your name, it carries your history, but something about it has always felt borrowed, like a costume that does not quite fit. For Lukrecja Kowalska, this quiet dissonance began in childhood, when she slipped into her mother’s lingerie not as a game but as a way to touch, if only for a moment, the truth buried inside her. Decades later, after forty-two years of living as Krzysztof, she would finally give that truth a voice in her book Lukrecja w ciele Krzyśka.
This is not a simple autobiography. It is a journey through silence, fear, discovery, and ultimately liberation. Kowalska takes her readers by the hand and leads them into the hidden corridors of a life divided between expectation and authenticity. She does not write as someone who has neatly closed one chapter and opened another, but as a woman who invites us to witness the messy, painful, yet luminous process of becoming herself. In her story the universal question “Who am I?” transforms into a matter of survival, a question with the power to break marriages, uproot careers, and alter family bonds, but also a question that carries the possibility of rebirth.
Lukrecja Kowalska is a Polish transgender woman known to the public even before the release of her book. She became Miss Trans Poland in 2012 and was invited to share her story in national media, including the television program Dzień Dobry TVN and the online platform Onet.pl. She was one of the heroines of the documentary series In a Foreign Body and made her literary debut in a book edited by sociologist Anna Kłonkowska. For many years, however, she lived as a man, carrying within her the secret that one day would change her life forever. She spent over four decades in a body that did not feel like her own, suppressing the feminine identity that she sensed from early childhood.
Her story is not one of sudden revelation but of a long, winding path full of hesitation, setbacks, and moments of deep reflection. From her earliest years she felt the pull of femininity. She secretly dressed in her mother’s lingerie, not out of fetish but as a natural expression of her true self. When her mother caught her and reacted negatively, she buried her inner world for many years. Marriage, the birth of a child, and the duties of adult life silenced that voice, but never erased it. After her wedding, she witnessed a striking scene that would remain in her memory. Among the guests was a man who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. For the first time she saw someone who could have understood her, someone she could have spoken to about her secret. Yet she knew that if she dared to talk to him, her marriage would collapse before it even began. That unspoken conversation haunted her as a symbol of the life she postponed for more than twenty years.
Accepting this truth was not easy. Kowalska describes the mood swings, fears, and confusion of those years. She no longer wanted to present herself as a man, but at the same time her appearance was not yet aligned with her gender identity. She tried to hide under wigs, makeup, and dresses, but hateful stares and cruel comments from strangers made her doubt whether she could continue. For a moment she even considered giving up and returning to a male role. It was only when she sought support from the Trans-fuzja Foundation and from professionals that she understood she could not live for others, only for herself. This moment of acceptance marked a new chapter in her life.
Transition, however, came with consequences. Professionally she suffered discrimination. Despite her qualifications and experience working in Germany as a caregiver for elderly and disabled people, she was dismissed twice when employers realized she was transgender. Her family life was equally painful. Her twenty-year marriage ended in divorce. Her ex-wife could not imagine being with a woman. Her son accepted her identity but kept his distance in public, reluctant to openly support her. Her parents reacted inconsistently; her mother struggled with dementia and alternated between acceptance and rejection, while her father remained detached. The most enduring bond came from her sister, who eventually embraced her wholeheartedly as the older sister she always was.
In her book Kowalska describes the medical and legal processes of transition with honesty, showing both the bureaucratic obstacles and the emotional relief that comes from each step. She was still undergoing psychological evaluations and preparing for hormonal treatment at the time of her early accounts. She explains the so-called real life test, when a person must live for a period in their affirmed gender before official recognition. She shares her hope that the new gender recognition law in Poland will make the process more humane, allowing transgender people to be acknowledged on the basis of professional medical opinions rather than court battles and family testimonies.
What emerges from her narrative is not only a personal story but also a commentary on society. In her small hometown she often experiences respect and understanding, yet she is still confronted with transphobia in daily life. Showing her ID at polling stations or using public restrooms becomes a source of anxiety and humiliation. She does not seek to live in an isolated enclave of transgender people. She insists on the right to live normally among others, treated with dignity and respect. Her hope is that the visibility of transgender people, strengthened by legal recognition, will normalize their presence in society.
Lukrecja w ciele Krzyśka is ultimately a book about courage. It portrays the pain of living a life that does not belong to you, the fear of rejection, and the price of honesty. But it also radiates hope, showing that even after decades of silence it is possible to break free and begin anew. Kowalska demonstrates that discovering oneself is not a single moment of clarity but a process of years, sometimes a lifetime, marked by setbacks and triumphs. Her story reminds readers that authenticity is worth every struggle, and that living one’s truth, however difficult, is the only path to real freedom.
Available via ridero.eu
Photo via wiadomosci.onet.pl
Post a Comment