The Transistion Project
Welcome! I am glad that you have found my website. I have had multiple personal website over the years and none have spoke to me the way that this one has. Maybe, just maybe, it is because I have dug and uncovered someone that was buried a long time ago. My name is Emilia and I am a trans-woman.
Before I dive into what The Transition Project entails, I felt that a little backstory of who I am and what I have been through would help encourage others to seek and find their real self and let all of the bullshit wash over their shoulders.
The whole world changed in 2020 and I am in included in this. I was (and still am) working in the casino industry and found myself out of work for a couple months due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. During this time, I found that I could not sit at home playing video games and decided on going back to school to finish something I had attempted 7 years earlier.
At 29 years old, I was going to go back to school and work hard to start and finish my Master of Music in Composition. Little did I know at this time how much my life would be turned upside down. By this point, I had come out to my life partner and wife about my sexuality but was still shoving down “Emilia” into a pit and rejecting any possibilty that I was transgender from many years of indoctrination.
That first semester changed my entire direction and reasoning to be in school. Originally, I was there to prove to those that told me I couldn’t do it or that I was to stupid to do a Masters program and I was doing it out of spite. I found out that I was doing this for all of the wrong reasons. This wasnt to prove people wrong… It was to take me to where I wanted to be which is/was teaching in academia.
Between my composition lessons, seminars, and research methods classes, I had found a supportive community of professors, colleagues, and friends. I had rediscovered my passion for writing music and doing research and so I quickly applied to the musicology program was accepted. So I had decided to be a glutton for punishment and do two Master programs simultaneously.
The following fall, I took my first ethnomusicology class and met someone who would become my best friend. One who would call me out on my shit, knew exactly when and how to provide support, and cared for me as a person without my cultivated personality.
This class was the next step into realizing the scope and type of research I wanted to continue doing for the rest of my life. But, there was a problem… How could I talk about others and what music means to them if I could not talk about who I am?
The next two years became a journey of self-discovery and learning self-love. In that journey, I discovered that years of repression had hidden the real me and that I was getting to old to keep myself hidden. I had decided at 32 years old to consider transition.
I entered therapy in September of 2023 and came out to my family a bit before that. On January 10, 2024, I received the order to proceed with my name change. On January 15, 2024, I took my first dose of feminizing hormones. It was at this point that I decided to make a long term project documenting my journey and so begins The Transition Project.
There are two main goals for this project. First, it is a unadultered daily accounting of my own journey and the trials and tribulations associated to transition. Second, I hope that my words will become a beacon of hope for those that are hiding. A side goal of this project is to become a research project to document and hopefully reach other queer music academics and document their journey.
And so, I have set my self a task to write at least 500 words daily in a journal format. I have decided with much thought to leave comments open but still need my approval to be seen so that spam comments do not fill the posts.
I hope you enjoy what you find here.