The 2-Year Transition Mark: Why Trans Women 30+ Struggle Here

You're two years into transition—maybe a little less, maybe a little more. You've done the major milestones: started HRT, came out, legally changed your name, updated your documents. You thought by now you'd feel settled, comfortable, like you'd finally arrived. But instead, you're struggling in ways you didn't anticipate. Your relationships are strained, the physical changes have plateaued, grief is catching up with you, and you're exhausted from managing everyone's reactions.

After 20 years specializing in transgender adults and conducting over 7,200 comprehensive assessments, I see a clear pattern: the two-year mark is when the initial momentum of transition stops carrying you. The first two years run on novelty and concrete tasks—every change feels significant, every milestone feels like progress. But around year two, you hit a wall. The physical changes slow down, you run out of obvious next steps, relationships reach breaking points, and you're forced to confront the reality that transition solved your gender incongruence but didn't fix everything else.

In this video, I walk through the five major challenges that hit trans women at the two-year mark and explain why this isn't about failing—it's about reaching the stage where external transition is mostly done and internal integration work begins.

Watch this video to understand why years three and beyond require different work than years one and two—and what questions you need to explore as you move past early transition into building an authentic life as yourself.