As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.
Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy. Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin.
She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy. “I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me.
It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex. Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body.
Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.
