Today's audience caller is Chloe and she's a milestone guest for The Real Stuff: our first trans guest in three seasons! A couple of past callers with similar stories backed out right before we hit record, which tells you everything about how much courage this actually takes. I'm endlessly grateful to Chloe for being the one who said yes.
Here's the twist: Chloe didn't discover she was trans as a kid, or a teenager, or even in her 20s. She was 45 years old and sitting in a UK office on her lunch break when she downloaded a FaceApp filter that gender-swaps photos. It started mostly as a joke. She pressed the button expecting to laugh. Instead, she disappeared into the bathroom for almost an hour, just staring at the picture. That was October 2023.
What follows is Chloe walking us through absolutely everything—and I mean everything. The month she couldn't sleep. Coming out to her wife of nearly a decade (whose response was somehow even more generous than you'd hope for). Coming out to her parents, her job, eventually the whole world via a single Facebook post. The diagnosis process. And yes, the actual cost of transitioning, dollar for dollar and pound for pound. From NHS waitlists to $80,000 surgeries in California to significantly cheaper options in Thailand.
We also get into a genuinely fascinating deep dive into the anatomy of the surgery itself.
Chloe, now separated and in her late 40s, is traveling solo, dating again, and finally—for the first time in her life—getting to be herself, out loud, in public.
Thank you, Chloe, for trusting us with your story!
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Watch this episode in video form on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjmevEcbh5h5FEX0pazPEtN86t7eb2OgX
To apply to be a guest on the show, visit luciefink.com/apply and send us your story.
I also want to extend a special thank you to East Love for the show's theme song, Rolling Stone.
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Executive Producer: Cloud10
Produced by Dear Media.
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