My psychic journey
Transitioning from male to female had a surprising spiritual side-effect for me! By Becs Sawyer, 64
On the screen in front of me, Jane Seymour’s beautiful Solitaire was reading Tarot for James Bond.
I was watching Live and Let Die, and I was rapt. But unlike the other hormonal teenage boys in my local cinema I didn’t just want to be with the psychic medium Solitaire. I wanted to be her…
This wasn’t the first time I’d fantasised about being female. At the age of four, shopping with Mum, I’d pointed out dresses I liked. By seven I was dreaming of being a mermaid.
Trouble was, growing up in the Sixties, people didn’t really talk about being gay or transgender. So I tried to be ‘normal’.
After school I made my body hyper-masculine, becoming a bodybuilder and personal trainer. Then, in my 20s, I saw the medium Doris Stokes on telly and realised that what I really wanted to do was talk to the dead, like her.
I joined a development circle, but I didn’t get much through, and soon gave up.
In time I became a full-time karate instructor, although mediumship remained what I really longed to do with my life. Still, as it seemed I didn’t have ‘the gift’, what could I do?
At 37, I met Nicola. She was also into spirituality and we started going to our local spiritual church together, marrying there a few years on. By then, of course, I knew that transitioning from male to female was possible. But I also knew that I was six foot three with a manly face and I couldn’t face being a ‘bloke in a dress’.
Then one day I read online about facial feminisation surgery and my world opened up.
Nicola was amazingly supportive as I saw a private doctor and started taking male hormone suppressants and female hormones.
Even as I awaited the facial surgery, there was no long-term plan to fully ‘transition’ — Ijust didn’t want to hate my reflection any more.
The operation and recovery was gruelling. But afterwards my new face felt really right.
At the same time as I was changing physically, I was opening up spiritually too.
I put it down to finding the right teachers at last, as I attended more courses and workshops and regularly sat in circle.
Eventually I decided to fully commit to becoming a woman. One day, walking in the grounds of the Arthur Findlay spiritual college, near my home in
Essex, I got a message. ‘We have your new name,’ Spirit told me. ‘You are Rebecca.’
I learnt that Rebecca means ‘bound to God and owned by Spirit!’ You clever b*ggers! I thought. At 48, I had gender reassi
