Grace Anne Stevens - No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth

2015, English, Grace Anne Stevens, Interview,

Full title: "No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth" by Grace Anne Stevens.

 

It is hard to live authentically when you are trying to meet the expectations of everyone around you while quietly silencing the inner voices that know your truth. That tension between who we are and who we believe we are supposed to be sits at the very heart of No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth by Grace Anne Stevens. This book is not only a memoir of a transgender woman who transitioned at the age of sixty-four, it is also a deeply human story about relationships, change, self-listening, and the courage it takes to finally say yes to oneself after decades of hesitation and denial.

 

Grace Anne Stevens spent more than sixty years hiding and questioning her inner truth. The title itself reflects the emotional rhythm of that long internal conversation. No captures resistance, fear, and the desire to conform. Maybe reflects curiosity, uncertainty, and the slow emergence of self-awareness. Yes marks acceptance, alignment, and the decision to live honestly, regardless of age or circumstance. What makes the book especially powerful is that Grace does not present this journey as linear or tidy. Instead, she gives voice to many internal parts of herself, an approach deeply influenced by her training in the Internal Family Systems model, allowing readers to witness how conflicting inner voices coexist, argue, protect, and ultimately guide a person toward authenticity.

 

Grace’s life before transition already reads like several careers woven into one. She earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree in 1969 and spent more than four decades in the tech world, holding Director and Vice President roles in engineering and program management. Over the years she helped build teams and processes in both startups and large corporations, earning a reputation as someone who, by her own admission, turned out to be a better manager than engineer. Change was a recurring theme long before gender entered the picture. From the 1970s through the 2010s she experienced repeated layoffs and company failures, followed by job hunts that ranged from brief to painfully long. Survival and reinvention became familiar adventures, teaching her resilience long before she consciously understood why adaptability felt so necessary.

 

Teaching also emerged as an unplanned but constant thread in her life. Somehow, in every decade, Grace found herself explaining, mentoring, guiding, and supporting others. This instinct eventually led her back to school at the age of fifty-eight, when she pursued a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology, which she completed at sixty-two. Alongside her academic work she completed over one hundred hours of training in the Internal Family Systems model for individuals and couples. For six years she worked simultaneously in the tech industry and in a substance abuse clinic, facilitating psycho educational groups and counseling people who were often frightened, angry, and deeply disconnected from themselves. In her words, she discovered that she carried both a type A engineering manager part and a calm, curious counselor part within her. Who knew, indeed.

 

Family life is also woven gently but honestly throughout the narrative. Grace married in 1976 and remained married for twenty-five years. She raised three children, now adults in their forties, and is a grandmother to three grandchildren. She coached her children’s sports teams for about a decade and shared her life with several dogs along the way. One of the most emotionally charged fears she describes is the fear of losing her children when she came out. That fear lingered longer than professional worries and reveals how deeply relational her understanding of self has always been. At the age of sixty-four, Grace came to terms with her gender identity and transitioned while actively working in two professional environments. She often describes this period as a profound blessing, one marked by acceptance rather than loss. In No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth, this moment is not framed as an act of dramatic bravery but as an inevitable alignment between body and mind. The anxiety leading up to transition was far greater than the reality itself, a contrast that taught her a lasting lesson about trusting inner truth rather than imagined catastrophe.

 

The book resonates far beyond the transgender experience because it repeatedly asks a question that applies to everyone, whose life are you living. Grace has described the book as something that felt almost channeled, emerging from an internal necessity rather than a strategic decision. What began as a small blog post became a full narrative because others sensed that there was more that needed to be said. That sense of purpose is palpable on every page. Grace does not limit her story to personal reflection. She places it within a broader social context shaped by activism, education, and public dialogue. During the 2010s she spent more than eight years leading a large transgender organization and conference, taking on leadership and political roles she never planned but felt called to accept. She has since created a speaking, training, and coaching business titled So Many Changes: A Journey of Adventures, reflecting her belief that change is not something to fear but something to engage with consciously and compassionately.

 

Her writing career is equally expansive. Grace has published three books, Handbooks for Humans, Volume 1, No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth, and Musings on Living Authentically. She has written over one hundred blogs for The Huffington Post under the column “My Transgender Life,” as well as for Medium and Substack, reaching readers from all walks of life. In 2016 she was selected by Amtrak as a Writer in Residence and traveled across the United States in 2017, documenting the journey through a series of reflective blogs. In March of that same year she was honored as Person of the Year by New England Pride TV. What stands out is how Grace embodies change not as disruption but as evolution. Now in her eighth decade of life she is an active traveler, walker, swimmer, and enthusiastic e-bike rider who has cycled through France, the Netherlands, and Italy, becoming an unofficial ambassador for electric bikes. This vitality reinforces one of the book’s most important messages, that it is never too late to become who you might have been.

 

The impact of No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth has been widely recognized. The San Francisco Book Review described it as an important and inspiring read that helps readers better understand the struggles of a transgender person, praising its precision, passion, and educational value. Yet perhaps the book’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to speak only to one audience. While it has inspired many transgender women to ask essential questions about their own lives, it also speaks to anyone who has ever delayed authenticity out of fear, obligation, or habit. This sense of openness and generosity was also evident in Grace’s interview for The Heroines of My Life, where she spoke with warmth and clarity about her journey. In that conversation she described herself as deeply grateful to have transitioned later in life without losing the people she loved, a perspective that continues to shape her understanding of relationships and authenticity. She reflected on her long tech career, acknowledging both its successes and its limitations, and spoke candidly about the moment she realized that something fundamental was missing despite professional achievement. Quoting George Eliot, she reminded readers that you are never too old to be what you might have been, a line that feels almost like a quiet thesis statement for her entire life.

 

Throughout the interview, as in the book, Grace emphasized that real change happens person by person. She does not frame herself primarily as an activist but as a teacher of compassion, knowledge, and acceptance. Whether speaking at universities, counseling in a clinic, writing a blog post, or answering a simple question about how to greet a transitioning colleague at work, her message remains consistent. Say hello. Be human. Choose connection over fear. No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth ultimately invites readers into a relationship with their own inner voices. It does not promise certainty or ease, but it offers something more durable, permission to listen inwardly and to believe that transformation is possible at any stage of life. Grace Anne Stevens often calls herself a poster child for change, not because her life followed a planned blueprint, but because it demonstrates how curiosity, resilience, and self-acceptance can quietly reshape an entire existence. In telling her story with such honesty, she extends an invitation to all of us to ask difficult questions, to honor our own internal dialogues, and, when the time comes, to say yes.

Available via Amazon

and The Heroines of My Life

Photo via liveurtruth.net

 

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