Morgan1979
Member
The mourning piece is real and mostly skipped in the success narrative - when the body changes that much after 23 years of trying, there's a grieving process for the version of yourself that fought so hard without the right tool. The old self didn't fail; the biology made it structurally harder. What usually helps is holding both: the relief of it finally working and the grief of what it cost to get there. Most people find the identity shift completes somewhere in year two when the new normal stops feeling like a borrowed life and starts feeling like the one that fits.