Katie Wilson’s book I Need to Be Myself: 100 Transgender Poems is not simply a poetry collection. It is a diary of awakening, a record of years when a life quietly rearranged itself, and a soul finally found vocabulary for feelings that had slept for decades. The poems were written between September 2015 and July 2017, a period when Katie first allowed herself to explore crossdressing and when she finally understood that this exploration was not a curiosity but a recognition of something essential inside her. Poetry had always been her natural language. She had written verses for years, long before she ever took a dress from a hanger or shaped her name into Katie. When her identity began to rise to the surface, poetry rose with it and gave form to what was happening. The result is this collection. One hundred pieces that show the stumbling, reaching, glowing, frightening, liberating messiness of realizing you are a transgender woman.
Katie often says that her writing comes out in the same way a heartbeat comes out. It arrives because it must. She has joked that she writes poems as easily as breathing, yet there is nothing casual about the emotional weight carried in her lines. She makes no attempt to hide the imperfections in them. A couple of words and lines she would probably write differently today, but she keeps them exactly as they were born because they are true to the moment. They show a woman writing as she was becoming herself. When she describes her work as something that came out of her soul, it feels literal. These poems are snapshots taken in the dim light of self discovery.
She often credits Oasis for giving her the emotional courage to keep digging inward. Their music helped her reach feelings she had learned to bury. Songs became a path toward identity and poetry became the act of walking that path. For Katie, creativity was the handrail that kept her upright as she stepped out of the old narrative and into the new one. The book is shaped by rhythm, by raw honesty, and by the private conversations she had with herself at a time when she was trying to understand what she was supposed to become.
Katie’s story did not begin in 2015 though. She was born in 1968 and she would be fifty in March 2018. Her life had been full of searching long before she picked up a dress with intention. She had always felt that something was missing. She suspected for many years that it might be connected to being adopted, yet no hobby or interest ever filled the space that felt hollow inside her. There was a restlessness in her, a longing that refused to be satisfied. The feeling stayed quiet until loss brought it roaring forward.
Her mother died in October 2012 and grief arrived with a heaviness she had not experienced before. Katie was extremely close to her mother and the loss shook loose pieces of her identity that she had kept hidden. One evening at work she felt a sudden urge to dress as a woman. It was a feeling without a warning. Many transgender people often recall discovering their gender identity early in childhood. Katie’s first conscious realization came later in life and arrived almost like a message being delivered from the part of herself she had ignored. It felt unusual to her at the time, but it was her truth.
When she looks back at her childhood, she sees little clues scattered through the years. She remembers being about eight or nine and wishing she could join the girls who were making daisy chains on the schoolyard grass. She remembers her brother hitting their mother and how that shaped her understanding of womanhood, protection, and vulnerability. She remembers the way she would watch women in dresses or skirts and feel something difficult to explain. It was not envy. It was not desire in the traditional sense. It was a pull, a fluttering, an electric recognition. The sight of feminine clothing felt like an invitation to a home she had not yet lived in.
For Katie, putting on a dress or skirt is the best feeling in the world because it aligns her inner truth with the physical world. It settles her. It lifts her. It quiets the lifelong noise of confusion and gives her body the same comfort that poetry gives her mind. Each poem in her book carries a small spark of these realizations. Some poems hum with joy, others ache with longing, and a few sit in that vulnerable space between fear and courage where most transitions begin.
Her book does not try to educate through theory. Instead it educates through honesty. Readers do not walk away with definitions. They walk away with understanding. They feel the confusion of the early days, the thrill of recognition, the sorrow of pretending, the weight of grief, and the relief of acceptance. Katie hopes that her poems will help people understand what it feels like to be transgender, but she also hopes they reach those who are going through something similar. She wants them to know that they are not alone. Her poems are a hand held out. They invite. They reassure. They reflect.
She signs her story boldly. I am Katie and I am a transgender lady. It is not a declaration for attention. It is a declaration of peace. A long delayed affirmation that finally feels right. Katie started dressing in September 2014. The poems followed soon after. Her comedy followed too. For anyone who does not wish to read the full story, she even offers a simple shortcut to her Dropbox where readers can enjoy her poems and comedy for free. That generosity is part of who she is. Her writing is not guarded or hidden. She shares because she wants others to feel seen.
Her book stands as a witness to her journey. It shows the earliest steps of self recognition, the tears of grief, the quiet secrets, the hesitant triumphs, and the final acceptance that identity is not something you invent but something you uncover. Katie’s poems are written in the voice of someone who searched for decades, who tried to fill an unnamed void, who grieved deeply, who resisted truth for a long time, and who finally learned to say yes to herself.
I Need to Be Myself is a title that captures everything she was trying to do. It is a declaration made simple and pure. It is the truth she spent years chasing. It is the promise she kept to herself when she picked up a pen and let the poems pour out. Each piece in the collection is a step toward becoming, and together they form a map for anyone who needs the courage to begin their own journey.
Available via Amazon
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