To my community, near and far,

My name is Lyra, and I'm a white transgender woman. I need your help.

When I was in early high school, I started going bald. For a girl undergoing the trauma of masculinizing puberty, this was the keystone nail in the coffin; ever since my hairline started creeping up, I began dissociating whenever I would look in the mirror. My height and low voice were things I could live with, but the "male" pattern baldness made me feel irreconcilably disembodied. Like so many trans folks, I started to accept that feeling at home in my skin was a privilege I would never experience.

As of October 2019, I have been on hormones that have given me so much of my life back. My body hair has all but disappeared. I have begun to embody some feminine secondary sex characteristics. I've discovered my hips and started to dance for the first time in my life.

My hair did not come back. Some of the baldness has filled in, but my high, masculine hairline and thinned crown still fill me with dread whenever I see my likeness. I obsess over how my hair falls and whether it obscures or highlights the baldness. I can't pay attention to the beautiful parts of myself because I've learned that this part—this part that I've gotten bullied for since adolescence, this part that bars me from being seen as my gender—trumps everything else.

This is where you come in. There exists surgery to fill in my hairline and crown in a natural-looking way that will make me feel at home in my body. It's called FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) and it is something I've been saving up for for years. However, life keeps throwing expenses in my face that necessitate my dipping into this savings fund. If I could raise this money, if you could help me, then I will be able to be at home in my body and live these precious years as a young adult woman who feels like a young adult woman.

Please, consider helping me, whether that means donating or sharing. Feeling like oneself when looking in the mirror is a huge expense for most trans folks; some can have surgeries covered by insurance in order to address this dysphoria, but the source of my dysphoria isn't considered by insurance companies as something necessary to address. It is necessary for me. I need this, and I need your help to get it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read, share, and donate, whether I've met you or not.

With all the love in my heart,

Lyra