From humble beginnings...

Hi there! My name is Trisha Madeline Nail — local newspaper reporter, casual hiker, regular traveler and a dabbler in photography. I'm aspiring to try more hobbies like crafting and cooking. And I might be the biggest lover of dogs without currently owning one.

This beginning blog post comes after the end of what's been the most significant eight months of my life: I graduated from college in journalism, packed my car and moved cross-country from the Deep South to New England to accept my first full-time reporting gig. And when I turned 23 years old in October, I made what felt like the most consequential announcement of my life. Instead of writing news about others, I published news about myself: last year I realized I’m a woman, and I’m all the better for knowing and embracing that fact.

After living throughout my childhood, teens and college years trying to conform to a masculine identity I was always told I had to follow because of how I was born, I confronted the fact that I’m transgender, or more colloquially called being trans. If you’re among my family, friends or Facebook connections, you may have seen my letter where I tried to sum it all up in about six paragraphs, but maybe this blog will reach others outside my personal network.

In the seven months since I had my moment of realization following a life of signs it feels like only I saw, I’ve told myself that I don’t seek to be an educator about transness or the LGBTQ community. I’m just a woman trying to live my life to the fullest and appreciate every week as it comes through my news stories, my experiences and the people I meet. But at the least, I’d like to put my life into an absorbable perspective and clarify some things that can’t fit into one Facebook post, one phone call or one face-to-face conversation.

People have a lot of questions — about life in New England, about being a journalist and about why I’m trans and how I came to that conclusion. But let’s start simple with question one: Is your name short for anything? No, it’s just Trisha.