mylifebyandrearaven

 Yesterday the 17th of January was apparently Blue Monday, said to be the most depressing day of the year. That was certainly not the case for me as I had a very long and entertaining conversation with a dear friend, that certainly brightened up my day. But that was obviously not the case for all. I personally do not ascribe this sort of 'Day' as who is to say if I am happy or not. Especially as the term "Blue Monday" was coined by a UK travel company, clearly more interested in selling holidays than the mental health of the nation.  I think this time of the year is a time for looking forward, over the New Year period we have looked back at the last year, but now we need to look forward. Everyone has had a very difficult few years, potentially this year will also be hard. But we have to make the most of it, look on the positive side and move forward. Personally there are lots of things I want to do, but for whatever reason I seem to find an excuse to avoid doing it. S...

  This time of the year is a time to be thinking about the people we love and those that are no longer with us. I found a photo of my mum when she was in her early twenties, I should think, taken during the Second World War. I looked at the photo and perhaps for the first time in my life I realised just how beautiful she was. As the youngest of four, my Mum always seemed 'old', well to a youngster anybody that is thirty years older than you is bound to seem old. As such I saw her very much as an older person and could not imagine her in her youth. Until I saw the photo I always thought of her just as my Mum, yes I loved her very much but I am a little sad that I was never able to see her in her prime as the beautiful young lady she had been. We lost Mum thirty years ago now, she was only 63 at the time of her passing, to his day when ever I think of the events on her very last day I cry, I get very emotional because of the love I had for her.  The point of this post is that on...

 As someone who crossdresses regularly, a thought occurred to me the other day. I can dress and act feminine but am I really feminine? The trouble is, how do you know? What is it to be feminine?  In times gone past I would describe myself as a man in a dress, but not now, as I have travelled along the road this journey has taken me on I have progressed closer to womanhood than ever before. If dressing and acting feminine is not enough then that more is needed and how do I asses if I am in fact feminine? Well I believe to be truly feminine it needs to come from within, 'acting' is not enough, you have to be feminine.  But how do you assess if you really are feminine? For me that was answered in two ways. Firstly I have two female friends that always refer to and think of me as female, they know I am not of course, but in their minds I am a female, one referred to me as her 'sister'. To be thought of in this way I have to exhibit some feminine traits and do so irrespectiv...

  I have always had a thing about wedding dresses, I suppose that could be common for lots of people, both male and female, because they are in general the most spectacular dress a woman will ever wear, and of course on that special day only the best will do. I think my interest was aroused when my eldest sister got married, over fifty years ago now, as a young boy with more than a passing interest in all things feminine the wedding and bridesmaids dresses held a fascination for me. Obviously I never had a clue as to why an outwardly run of the mill boy would have such an interest, I never discovered the reason for that for decades. But the interest was there, I never saw the dresses before the wedding, so it was something special for me on the (very cold) day.  I had to go in a boring suit and tie, my Mum even had to bribe me to wear it!  I did try my sisters dress, long after the wedding, which was a lovely experience, nobody knew of course and I had no idea at the time...

 From the title of this post, you would be forgiven for thinking I get out and about on a regular basis, alas due to a number of reasons this has not been the case. Wherever you are in the world you almost certainly have had some restrictions due to the COVID pandemic that has swept the globe. Here in the UK we have had numerous lockdowns and restrictions placed upon us, which given the circumstances is quite right. But it does make getting a night out very difficult, as if it was not difficult enough! Anyway after a gap of almost nine months I managed a night out with the girls, originally the format was to have been the same as before, meet Friday afternoon for drinks then change and an evening meal. However this time as it had been so long since we were all together we decided to add another evening, so we stayed Saturday night as well. This meant that we also had the whole of Saturday to enjoy in girly mode as well.  I prefer to arrive at the hotel in male mode and then ta...

 I came across this on the internet whilst looking for something else, this is an interesting phenomenon that has I believe a bearing on the life of a crossdresser, me in particular. Fraternal Birth Order Effect (FBO) is the result of a study of 12,000 men in America, the researchers were looking into the effect older siblings may have on a person, with particular interest in homosexuality. I won't go into all the details, you can find it very easy on the web, but essentially they discovered that a male with an older brother was more likely to be homosexual and this effect increases with the number of older brothers.  However the trial also discovered that the effect does not increase with sisters older or younger and younger brothers do not increase the effect. In numbers terms, each older brother increases the chance of being homosexual by 33%, in overall population terms, that rates the chance of being homosexual from 2% to 2.6%. Analysis suggests that between 15% and 29% o...

  Gil Elvgren (1914 - 1980) may not be a name you know well, but it is almost certain you have seen some of his fabulous work. He was a prolific commercial artist that produced illustration for calendars and advertising, working with oils on canvas the resultant paintings are truly magnificent. Nothing demonstrates the glamour of the 1950's more than Evlgren's wonderful illustrations. His work depicted beautiful women in an American utopia where everything was just fine.  The illustrations were primarily for advertising and calendars and as such were intended to depict someone the viewer found attractive and perhaps aspired to. He did some nudes but most of his output depicted women in beautiful clothes, with fantastic hair and makeup. These were true glamour pinups that teased the viewer, sometimes a little bit saucy and often showing a touch more than a girl would want to reveal. Ladies in their underwear were also frequent subjects with the lingerie superbly painted. His me...

 I read an article in the Daily Mail newspaper here in the UK a while ago about a trans woman called Diana Thomas. I wont go into the full details of the article as you can read it here:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9280379/DIANA-THOMAS-spent-six-decades-man-does-say-trans-militants-stoking-intolerance.html The thrust of the article is really about how trans is dealt with by institutions, which in this case is the local health authority. The story concerns Brighton which is one of if not the most trans friendly places in the UK. It appears there are a number of trans-men who retain they female reproduction system from birth and wish to have a baby. In order to avoid upsetting potential trans-men they have changed some of the terms used, for example the maternity unit is now 'perinatal services' mothers are referred to as (gender neutral) parents and apparently the term for breast feeding is now chest feeding. As Diana says in doing this the health authority are i...

I love photography, I have thousands of photos on my computer, in the past, not so much these days, I printed a large amount of my work and often had it hanging on the wall, but as I say, not so much these days. That change was largely due to me losing interest, and being far too busy with work and life in general. I suspect millions of photos are taken every day around the world, it is so easy these days with a reasonable smart phone to capture life as it happens. Most photos probably go no further than the phone, but lots do surface on social media and many on photo sharing sights such as Flickr. They used to say a photo tells no lies, well that may have been the case in the days of black and white film, when press photographers took the photos and processed them before wiring them to the newspaper. The days when an accused person would be huddled into court with a blanket over his head to protect his identity. In general what the photo depicted was the real thing, but even then ...

Do you think crossdressing is a curse? Thats a question I have answered in different ways during my life, but is it really a curse? When I started crossdressing as a young boy I was just enjoying myself, I had no idea what I was doing or indeed why. Apart from the risk of getting caught, there was very little that I had concerns about. But as I grew older the crossdressing started to become a problem, no matter how hard I tried, it would just not go away. Then for various reasons I didn't crossdress for about twenty years, I had left that part of my life behind, crossdressing was just one of those things I did a youngster, just one of those thing you do as you grow up. Then it came back, stronger than ever, at first I enjoyed the thrill of it all again, but this was not right, this is not something a man of my age should be doing. I tried to convince myself I was just being stupid and should grow up! This is when it became a curse, the urge would come, I would give in and t...