Late Blooming: My Gender Journey

Book excerpt: Allison Lenore Annalora (then known as Larry Duane Miller) was given up for adoption at birth in May of 1955. In January of 1992, after a lengthy search for her biological mother, in anticipation of their meeting for the first time, "he" started a journal. Both of "his" alcoholic adoptive parents had passed and at long last "he" hoped for closure. This journal evolved over time into a story of survival, courage, self-discovery and happiness. As therapeutic as the process of writing this has been for her, everybody she knows encouraged her to tell her story to the world. Her intent is that the reader will be inspired and enlightened and will understand that despite adversity, life can be beautiful. She has survived being raised by alcoholic adoptive parents and an abusive childhood; struggling with gender identity issues; addiction being shunned by peers; the beginning of the AIDS epidemic; lifelong persecution by closed-minded people because "he" chose to live life openly as a feminine gay "male" and now as her transgender woman self. After she experienced the joy of finding her birth family, Allison's beloved biological half-sister Leslie Shawn was brutally murdered. In the end, Allison discovered the courage to leave a loving, long-term gay relationship to transition to my true self. This is her story.