I agree that funerals are always rough. I'm also at that age that they are becoming more common. Fortunately my mother is still alive but lately been having a lot of friends that I grew up with. I wish you the best today. I know you'll get through it.
I made it, no anxiety attacks, no need for a sedative. Of course it was sad and all that, but at the same time as nice as funerals can be. The ceremony was simple and quite quick as my uncle was cremated so no hassle with coffin and long walk on (huge) cemetary on a warm day. It was also nice to meet my relatives.
Uncles wife, my "spare grandma", she's one tough lady, in as good spirits as someone losing a seventy years husband can be. She even smiled a bit, told some stories about him and stuff. I'm going to visit her some time soon as she now lives alone. My cousins visit from time to time but everyone lives all over the place and have their own lives and so on. Not surprisingly all closer (older) relatives were cool with me as they're in the know and have met me from time to time during last two years but kids/wives etc. of my cousins were so weirded out, I got so many long stares and obvious wondering and trying to connect the dots about who I am and all that.
That was priceless... This one guy in particular, every moment his gf/wife wasn't paying attention, he just couldn't keep his eyes off me very obviously thinking really hard trying to make it all work in his mind. It was kinda funny, I mean most of them I have met 15-25 years ago when I was kid and they were even smaller kids. I have met my cousins (Uncle has three sons) from time to time but their kids only very rarely. And then "suddenly" me being there as a woman after years or decades of not being in any contact must be one weird experience. Obviously someone has been talking and gossipping about me so they know my name and that I'm transitioning but that's about it.
I bet this will become even funnier in about two years or so, once most of my transition is complete. I know I wont see many of these people any time soon. Next occasion will likely be another funeral or perhaps a family meetup, wedding or what ever. We don't have this kind of formal stuff often so can't tell when is the next one coming.
And we got to eat well, hear some stories about my uncle and people were on as good mood as what it can be. I think it was a happy closure and very much the way my uncle would have wanted it. I know he wouldn't have wanted people to cry their eyes out and stare at the floor but rather share all great memories instead and that's how it turned out.
What I really liked a lot was how respectful and nice my relatives were with me. Not a single screw up with it, they're quite cool bunch and that's lucky. Other kind of people would hate my guts.
I'm glad that today was a pleasant experience for you as everyone celebrated the life of your uncle.
Funerals can be tough indeed! I am glad that folks behaved themselves, and that some of them are allies if not at least understanding! Grief is managed or not by everyone in different ways, and it lightens my heart hat the day has been as pleasant as it can given the time.
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I'm very happy that things went well for you. I'm sure that you are happy that things worked out though funerals can be emotional.
(12-08-2023, 06:47 AM)HelloDiDi Wrote: [ -> ]It is tough... And I know there will be a lot in the next ten years, I'm an evening star, my parents and their siblings are near or in their 80s so there will be a lot of this coming up. I've been to quite a lot, grand parents, three out of four, one uncle (other died but I didn't attend as it was really small number of people.), my cousin when we were kids, my best friend couple of years ago. Ex gfs grandfather years ago, that was of course easier as I wasn't related. And now another uncle, still many to come. C'est la vie. I know I'll be really exhausted afterwards, this uncle in particular was quite close and meaningful person in my life. He and his wife were like spare grand parents when I was kid when my own had passed away.
If there's something happy about it, he lived very long life, almost all that time healthy and quite happy, he was sick for about three years and once the end came, it took him fast so he didn't need to suffer for long. It just hurt so much to see one of the brightest most fast witted and cool guy to get sick with altzheimers and succumb to that. He was two weeks shy of his 90th birthday so obviously it wasn't surprising.
More coffee now, then some more breakfast and I need to start to get ready. I'll try to stay as cheery as I can, I know my uncle would wish us to remember him for all the happy times and not cry our eyes out. 
I think we all can say, that we hope things go smoothly for you. I might be wrong in assuming this. But i feel if family and friends are ok with someone being gay, then i would assume they would be with you being trans. But people can react strangely and unexpected. Generally from older generation and the religious nut jobs.
I like to say that route of all evil comes from politicians and the church. The evidence of this, is undeniable. Just see the divides of people and our ideology.
I have no issues with what people believe in, but i personally believe that we need more tolerance and live and let live. If its not affecting you, you have no concern over these related issues as it does not affect you.
At the end of the day we share the same biology, regardless idology.
I was a bit worried about DHEA + PG + E2 combo maybe causing some androgen issues. I have felt many times lately as if my E is too low and what not. What ever it is, nothing appears to be bothering my breast growth. The pace is off the charts. I just made a comparison picture with something from two days back and guess what, there is a visible difference that is easy to detect. Again as usual, pictures are scaled using the three moles and then the lines used to figure out pics with same camera angle.
Red line is where the moles are. Cyan is where there's a fold around where bra centre/underwire sits. Yellow is where my tummy folds below underband area. Green is line from right nipple, purple the lowest part of right breast.
Two days. I'm telling you this combination is amazing. No idea how far this goes, how long will this kind of pace keep on going... I love it, my bra just is getting kinda annoying.
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I heard little something about the funeral two days ago... Apparently my uncles wife and their sons had been talking afterwards and they had brought me up. It was the first time people there met with me, for most it was at least ten years since last meeting and to some even more. (Kids of my cousins in particular.) My mothers extended family is huge, so many people that I can't even remember their names and most of them live all around the country so meeting like that is quite rare and its usually either a funeral or a wedding.
They were surprised about how happy and "stable/balanced" I seemed. This because I do post on facebook some times and I'm quite open about my mental health struggles, transition and so on, so its not always glitter and rainbows because life is rough. I guess they expected me to be really anxious and depressed... The only negative feeling was sadness and longing because I love my uncle, he meant a lot to me. Anyway, they were pleasantly surprised and they also pointed out how beautiful I was. This isn't tiny because they had mentioned all this to my mother and she told me.
She doesn't compliment me often and my relatives almost never do, this was the first time something this nice was said about me. If anything, my confidence got a nice boost from this. If my stuck up relatives talk about how balanced and happy I seem and how pretty I am, wow... That's kinda cool as I never thought they would say such things. I was rather expecting total silence or something negative instead. And these are people who are much older than I am so known me since I was little kid, just not seeing each other often.
Day 785
So, it seems that I am getting some mild androgen symptoms while on the topical program. This is peculiar because at the same time my body changes are in such a spurt I haven't seen before. Boobs grow super fast and my thighs have got very thick, I measured and they're between 80-82cm now, or 31,5"-32,2" which is way more than on previous measuring.... Seems like I'm getting about one cm per month on them. My waist feels like it might have shrunk a bit too. Once I'm hitting 26 month mark, I will do measuring as its long overdue and now there are cool new things to have on record.
Anyway, I'm trying out upping my cypro to 25mg per day for a week and see if the possible androgen issue goes away, also I will bump my EV dose to 0.09ml for a while as I've felt several times on days before injection that my estrogen is too low. So has the balance shifted or is my body burning through E faster than before? I don't know, but I will test this out and see if it helps. I'm thinking about booking labs quite soon, maybe in September as its been a long while without.
Its timely to talk about the experiment on boosting night time HGH and IGF-1. The ingredients for that are L-carnitine at 500mg dose and L-ornithine on 25mg - 100mg. The latter is to be kept low enough, splitting 200mg capsule is easy enough so I might go that route. These are to be taken few hours before sleep and no food afterwards so if I eat something at nine in the evening, take my meds and stuff and go sleep around midnight, that's perfect. This combination should elevate HGH and IGF-1 levels considerably. This also means moving GABA to morning and/or daytime and adjusting the dosage as I wont be overdoing this. From GABA and other stuff, I have experienced the same effects the study on the stuff mentioned here is describing. I'm really eager to give it a try as I know GABA does some of this same thing already and both of these can be easily found.
I'm adding the research .pdf to this post, feel free to read through it.
despite the sadness of your loss and the funeral, the family's response is amazing and i am so happy for you x