This Is Ripley

Ripley Tamborello reflects on her gender-affirming transition journey.

By ZACH M c KENZIE

to just compartmentalize those parts of myself. I did it so well that I tucked away who I really was deep inside to protect myself.”

Ultimately, with help from online message boards and other resources, Tamborello decided to reclaim her life. “I’m in my 30s and I thought, ‘Who am I living for?’ There came a moment of clarity where I questioned why I wasn’t living an authentic life,” she says. “Now that I have accepted this deep truth, this calm has entered my life. The last four months have been incredible. I was reading about what it was like to transition and learned that a lot of people stop experiencing depression a couple of months into gender-affirming hormone therapy. I’ve been struggling with depression—even wanting to die at times—for so long. The moment I realized who I truly am and that I was living my life for the wrong person, my depression literally just melted away.”

The mental-health benefits of seeking gender-affirming care have proven to be undeniably more important than the physical changes she’s experiencing. “My hips are getting wider. My skin is like, oh my God, it’s so soft these days! Getting into bed, I understand why women want to shave their whole bodies. When you shave and you slide into bed at night, it is absolute bliss. I’m developing breasts slowly, but they’re definitely there,” she says. “The physical effects are great, but the mental benefits overshadow everything.”

Tamborello describes the process of seeking gender-affirming hormone therapy at Planned Parenthood as “one of the easiest processes I’ve ever been through,” adding that the organization was a lifesaver. Tired of seeing her deadname on social media, Tamborello came out via her Instagram post in March. “I was ready to tell people, ‘This is who I am. If you have a problem with it, you don’t need to be in my life anyways. I’m going to need people in my life who uplift me, understand me, and love me for who I am, down at my core.’”

She made a point to come out to her mother before hitting the Instagram Share button. The results were hilariously surprising. “My mom was so supportive! I didn’t think she was going to be. I was crying before I called her, but when I told her I was trans, she was like, ‘Well, I figured you probably were.’ And I was like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?!’”

Honoring herself with the name Ripley (an homage to Sigourney Weaver’s character in the film Alien that was originally written for a male actor), Tamborello is grateful for her past life, but looks ahead with wide-eyed optimism. “This is who I am inside, not that person that I was,” she emphasizes. “I’m really, really grateful for the person I was, because he kept me alive up to this point, but I’ve got the journey from here. He and I had a good time together, but it’s time for Ripley to take over. And I think she’s going to be much better at navigating life.”