Danielle Marie Bergan - It's Always Okay To Be Me

2012, Danielle Marie Bergan, English, Interview, USA,

Full title: "It's Always Okay To Be Me: A journey to recovering lost hope" by Danielle Marie Bergan.

"It's Always Okay to be Me, A journey to recovering lost hope, is a story of the life trail taken by Daniel Bergan to becoming Danielle Bergan. Daniel, a seemingly normal boy on the outside to family and friends, suffers from Gender Identity Disorder (GID). 

His brain tells him he is a girl yet he has the body of a boy. This heartfelt book documents Daniel/Danielle’s life from growing up as a baby boomer in the fifties to becoming the complete woman she is today. Along the way an inner source of God through his Catholic upbringing allowed Daniel to believe one day that Danielle would go away by finding the one true love of his life. Yet in waiting for this, alcohol and drugs did for Daniel what God could not, they numbed the pain and kept his female side at bay.

Daniel’s inner insanity grew steadily. In his search for clarity, addiction takes over leaving him lost in an abyss of agony and despair. The normal life he leads on the outside is challenged constantly by feelings of being Danielle. A shield of denial forms around her presence as Daniel constantly seeks an escape from his gender conundrum."

In 2014, I interviewed Danielle and asked her about the book: "I wanted to share my story with the world for a few reasons, but mainly to help others. My story is not just for the transsexual who still suffers but for anyone who is living a life addicted to drugs or alcohol. (I found clarity in my life when I got clean and sober in 2001). So far, my book has been received well by both these groups. It just makes me smile with gratitude to know I am helping someone else."

Danielle Marie Bergan is a Community Coordinator at Mental Health America based in Alexandria, Virginia. According to a MauiTime article, Danielle underwent gender reconstructive surgery in July 2010 in Trinidad, Colorado, and medically became a female after a painful recovery that lasted until November of that year. Her memoir, "It's Always Okay To Be Me," is a detailed, earnest account of her life, the vast majority of which was spent as a man, Daniel Francis Bergan. Growing up in an Irish Catholic family made life difficult, but it was nothing compared to what would later happen to her. Combine gender identity issues with a father who died young, a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse, self-destructive behavior, crushing depression and suicidal thoughts, you pretty much have Bergan’s book.

Available via Amazon

and The Heroines of My Life

Photo via The Heroines of My Life