Support Brodie's Top Surgery ️‍⚧️✨

Hey there!!

My name is Brodie! I’m trans (specifically a demiboy/trans masculine) and I’m starting this fundraiser for my top surgery on July 7th! I really didn’t want to start this until I had an exact amount that I needed, but the day is swiftly approaching and I need all the time to get as much help as I can get.

I’m an Autistic, Hard of Hearing person with Borderline Personality Disorder and I work as a paraprofessional at a Deaf school in NJ. I’m also a tattoo artist on the side at the moment. I feel like I’m constantly doing everything I can to earn money for me, my wife, our cats, and our dog, but it’s always just enough to get by and nothing left to save. This is something I knew I’d need help with although if you knew me in person, you’d know asking for help is very much a last resort for me.

I grew up in a Baptist Pastor’s family and was homeschooled my whole life. I very much lived in a bubble and barely knew anything about the outside world except the horror stories.

I was always a very energetic, happy, and creative kid. But something happened as I started to go through puberty that I couldn’t explain. I had said before that I really felt more like a boy than a girl, but my Mom would always explain it as me being a tomboy like her. I was constantly depressed and always going through something really emotional. A lot of my friends would step back and eventually fade away because of it. I was starving myself and suffered from anorexia and started self-harming both of which I struggle with to this day though as I write this, I’m a few days away from being 3 years clean of SH.

But something was wrong that I couldn’t describe. I didn’t want to wear dresses or stockings. I remember finally finding a style that I felt comfortable in to go to church (a button up shirt and nice, unripped jeans), but it wasn’t acceptable in the eyes of my parents who were afraid of the backlash that they would suffer from the congregation. I was really finding myself in my 20s. I was secretly identifying as Bisexual while continuing to play the role that I was assigned, but every time I would try to express myself and how I really felt and wanted to dress, it wasn’t met with listening ears.

In 2019, I as decided that I would play the part. I bought more feminine clothes and dated boys who were good Christian men. But then I found a way. I changed my nickname to one that sounded more androgynous. And my parents accepted it, everyone did though it was more difficult for some. I had a taste of that euphoria I had been starved of. I didn’t have to hear that awful name again.

Fast forward to the Summer of 2020, the pandemic had hit the entire world hard. I was working at a Target Starbucks at the time, and the store had just opened it back up after shutting it down for months.

When we started work again, I met a girl who changed my life, my wife. We ended up falling in love and started dating that December. I had her meet my family on my birthday and then told them that we were dating. My family wasn’t the most supportive at that time because she was trans.

Then after a few months, I finally figured it out. All that time hating myself and having unexplainable depression…constantly in a battle of getting my body to look like what I thought everyone around me wanted, I knew it when I was little. I just didn’t know the words.

I am Trans.

I spent months really thinking about it to make sure this is what I really wanted, but, man…after a few months on testosterone, you could see my confidence change. Now, I’m 3.5 years into my transition and I’m so much happy to be in this body. My family has event come around too!

The last piece of the puzzle is my chest. I wear a binder every day even on the hot and sweaty ones. Seeing my chest the way it is now is the one last piece of dysphoria to resolve. And that’s where top surgery comes in!

Thank you so much if you read this entire thing. I really wanted to put myself out here for everyone to see and understand and maybe even empathize. Thank you for anything you can do whether that’s donating, or sharing with friends and/or family! ✨