Gender Affirming Chest Surgery for Coraline
Hi, My name is Jennifer and I am one of Coraline's partners...
About Coraline
Coraline is an artist, game developer, and a loving girlfriend but for the last decade has suffered from Gender Dysphoria around her body size and shape.
She is the most amazing artist I know and I'm so lucky to be able to witness her creativity and excitement when she has energy to put pen to tablet. This dysphoria however has crushed her and her productivity entirely, she has been unemployed for a year and while her works are exciting they are not focused enough for her to work on a product that could earn her money for this.
Some days are a struggle to get out of bed for her. As a social transgender woman myself I see a lot of dysphoria from members of our community but I haven't seen anything as pervasive as hers. It has eaten her self worth entirely and I haven't seen her reach out for social interaction in over a year. She leaves the house maybe once or twice a month at best and mostly for doctors and therapy.
On a good day she will draw and we'll play games and watch TV together. On a bad day she will be mostly asleep, despondent or escaping from the world that is too harsh for her to be a part of.
With therapy and love she's doing a little better. She holds on to hope, tries to find time to exercise indoors and we were able to get her into a gender diverse employment program so she could apply for government benefits to help us pay rent which helps her feel like she is contributing to our lives. However, she's reluctant to face the outside world as her body dysphoria stops her from being able to do more, leading to challenges applying for full time work.
Top Surgery
We have done some leg-work organising a surgeon who has confirmed that she has a good chance of a positive outcome for chest surgery and is ready to go when we have raised funds. Luckily we're not on any time limit so we can build funds over time.
We have been saving slowly over the last year ourselves, but having recently started a career in the games industry, and her other partner being a minimum wage teacher, it's a difficult process. There is no payment assistance around gender dysphoria in Australia and it is mostly seen as a cosmetic surgery. My biggest fear as her partner is her losing hope that positive change is possible and that working on herself and engaging in life has value.
The nature of depression is that all of her problems will not instantly be fixed by something like this but I believe it will greatly benefit her outlook waking up in the morning and seeing something about her body she identifies as a positive feminine trait. A trait that came from the help of the people in her life that are cheering her on and reminding her that dysphoria is valid, a condition she is suffering from and that it's not just something broken about her that she has to face alone.
Hope, validation and support. ❤
How can you help?
I know it is a rough time for donations, there are a lot of valid causes with half of Australia in a crisis situation. But any funds that can help us meet the financial costs of this procedure would mean so much to Coraline and speed up this process for her.
If you don't have any spare funds right now helping us signal boost can really help. Retweeting, sharing on Facebook and @everyone in discord (probably don't do this last one) would really help get more eyes on this.
We are looking at cost effective ways we can reward people who have donated. Signed art prints and thank-you cards. Cora hasn't done prints before but I have and we'll get these out after the campaign. Stay tuned for news on this.
I will most likely be running fundraising events in the next month so stay posted for those too!
Thanks for reading all this, I love Coraline so much and I want to do everything I can to support her mental and physical health.
Again, Thank you.
