Original title: "Three Weddings and a Sex Change" by Kirsty Jayne Crow.
When Kirsty Jayne Crow published her memoir Three Weddings and a Sex Change, she gave readers something far deeper than a simple recounting of life events. She offered a raw, unfiltered journey of self-discovery, love, heartbreak, resilience, and ultimately, authenticity. With humor, candor, and a willingness to revisit painful memories alongside joyous triumphs, Crow’s story resonates not only as a deeply personal narrative but also as a universal meditation on what it means to live truthfully.
She recalls a pivotal moment from her childhood with striking clarity. Her mind drifted back to the winter of 1968 at St Marks Primary School in Jersey. The Railway Children dramatisation had recently been screened and was very much the talk of her class. One day a teacher walked around the room asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The usual answers flowed: doctor, nurse, pilot, astronaut, scientist. Then suddenly it was her turn. “I want to be Jenny Agutter.” The teacher smiled a little quizzically and then announced, “Julian likes trains, he wants to be a train driver,” before quickly moving on to the next eager child. But it wasn’t like that; it was something altogether different, something of which she had no understanding, yet something that nonetheless was there. Jenny Agutter lingered in her mind all those years ago and returned again in her hospital room, as she anticipated the most momentous event of her life.
