"The true story of a girl born into a boy's body and her struggle to find her real identity in a conservative family. Born a boy in post-war Germany, Paula Goergen uprooted to live in Ireland and was constantly on a voyage of self-discovery, struggling to find her true gender identity while trying to maintain a normal life, which finally culminated in gender transition and re-alignment surgery.
Now under self-imposed exile in the UK, Paula tells the dramatic story of what it means to struggle with gender identity and the high price to be paid for facing up to the truth."
"My name is Paula Grieg. I have three children and no stretch-marks. Therein lies the story of my life; a life of inner conflicts and contradictions. My early life, childhood and adolescence were spent in Germany, a country to which I am now bound only by memories, since almost all my family there have vanished.
I first became aware of my gender ambiguity before I reluctantly left Germany for a new life in Ireland, though at the time I had no clear idea what this meant or where it would lead.
In Ireland I fell in love, married and started a family; raising those same dearly loved three children. My career took off and I built an existence. Those who looked on might have thought I had it all, but everything I built always stood on shaky foundations, because at the very heart of it I was not who I seemed to be.
Progressively I realised that I needed to acknowledge my true self or I would never find peace within myself. But that personal inner peace came at a high price - the disintegration of family, the loss of friends, home, career and status, and once more, emigration.
Both my career and my thirst for knowledge of other places and other people have led me through five continents and more than 50 countries. They have given me a broad and tolerant outlook on diversity in every sense, while my life in two genders has given me unusual personal insights available to few. But it is also true that the more I travelled, the more I have become displaced and lost all sense of home."
Available via goodreads.com
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