Dear fledgling transgendered men and women,

I would like to talk about potential. More importantly, I'd like to talk about your potential.

At the beginning of transition, many of us wondered how we would look as women (or men as the case may be). Pre-HRT, pre-transition, boy mode pictures are an awful indicator how how you will look as a woman. In the majority of cases, how you look as a woman is light years different than how you looked as a man. Makeup does wonders. Hair color and styles do wonders. Clothes do wonders. Attitude does wonders.

How you're going to look as a woman is really only determined by how much dedication you have to learning about life on the other team. If you have the attitude that you're only going to transition if others think you're going to make a beautiful woman, then you're finished before you even started. Ultimately the goal of transition is to become a woman. Not a pretty woman, not an ugly woman, but a woman. Ask around to many of the ladies that have been here awhile. They don't care if they're seen as a pretty woman, an ugly woman or an average woman. They're perfectly happy just being seen as a woman!

There exists a spectrum of women, much like there's a spectrum of men. One one side you have the very pretty, drop-dead gorgeous model. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here on the other side is the Wicked Witch of the West (from The Wizard of Oz), who's still considered a woman! Your goal should be to fall somewhere between those two extremes. It doesn't matter where you fall as long as it's between those two.

Your potential to do that depends on how much determination you have to look the part, act the part and be the part. If you don't invest the time and energy to learn this stuff, then you have no potential. If you're not motivated and determined, then there's no potential.

Motivation is the desire to want to do these things, to become what you want to be. To stop making excuses and get off your butt and do them.

Determination is the ability to continue persuing your dreams despite obstacles in your way. Facing challenges, overcoming them, learning from them and continuing on.

If you're both motivated and determined, then you have great potential.

If you're lacking both, you have zero potential.

What's your potential?