Cherylin Hall: Trans woman, 57, who came out after wife's cancer death says she had a 'eureka moment'
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND: A 57-year-old person has opened up about her struggles as well as the “eureka moment” after living as a man in a woman’s body for years. Cherylin Hall was born as a male named Tony, and went on to marry a woman named Therese. The pair reportedly remained together for three decades, until Therese died of cancer.
It was after Therese’s death that Cherylin decided to stop living a lie and come out as her true self. Sharing about her childhood, Cherylin told PA Real Life, “I used to watch my mum put her make-up on, thinking ‘when can I do that?’ My first recollection of wearing women’s clothes per se is when I used to go to a Catholic school. When I was seven, if we’d been good all week in the class, we would be allowed to play in the corner. There was a lovely bright pink, flowery tutu, and I used to wear that every Friday.”
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Cherylin used to wear women’s clothes at home whenever she was alone. She said, “When I was young, there wasn’t a name for people like me. I grew up sort of cross-dressing and wearing make-up. There’s no way I could go out wearing a dress and be the real me,” before pointing out, “I settled for a life that was a lie. I’ve always imagined myself being a female growing up. I think people like me, not that I can speak for everyone, I think we live in a bit of a fantasy world, imagining what life would be like if I was a real woman.”
Cherylin continued, “When people ask me ‘when did you first become a woman?’, the truth is, I’ve always been a woman. But, how do you put it over to people that you’re really female? How can I convince people that I am genuinely female inside?”
At the age of 23, Cherylin met Therese, who was the mother of a two-year-old child, Rob. She said, “I would never have chatted her up, I was far too shy, and I was far too interested in looking like women, but obviously, I couldn’t. So she spoke to me, and we got together. The rest is history. She was five foot four, blonde, and always wore heels and a dress. It’s exactly what I wanted, and what I wanted to be. I think that’s some of the reason why I fell in love with her – I wanted to be her.”
Cherylin even admitted to being a “crossdresser” before Therese. “I think she thought ‘OK, I can live with that’. She sort of put up with it for the first year or two. But by the end, she knew there was a lot more to it. It caused an awful lot of problems in our married life and was the crux of most of our arguments,” she stated. “My wife used to make me feel ashamed, to be honest. But, through time, she helped me buy clothes. I’ll be honest. My cross-dressing was a poor substitute for having to live the lie that I was living.”
But things changed with Therese’s diagnosis of breast cancer in 2016. Though she overcame it, in 2018, the disease returned as bone cancer, resulting in her death a year later. Cherylin explained, “She was only 54 when she died, and I thought life was far too short. I just had to take the wheel, which was my eureka moment. I spent that year knowing that I was no longer going to be Tony, I was going to become Cherylin, and throughout that whole year, obviously, I’m still grieving but also filled with excitement.”
“I revisited many of the places we had been over the years. I was reminiscing about some of the things we did together because I knew that part of my life was going to pass,” she added.
After that, Cherylin started taking hormones recommended by her doctor. She will soon have her vaginoplasty too. But despite it all, she feels unaccepted in public. “I feel vulnerable whenever I go outside. I’ve always been sensitive to the way others view or perceive me. I’ve always felt uncomfortable in my body, and I feel uncomfortable now because it’s not the body I was meant for,” she remarked.
“I am still met with a lot of resistance. Whenever I’m out, you’ll see couples poke each other in the back and sort of laugh and giggle, and I can imagine what they’re saying. But I just have to be me, and I have to put on this brave face and pretend everything’s alright. I think trans women have a valid place in this world. We’re just misunderstood,” Cherylin concluded.