Alex: A quick heads up that this episode contains a mention of suicide which could be upsetting to listen to. Please take care while you’re listening.

Karen: When you think you’re going to lose everything, but actually… you expect the worst from humanity and what you see is actually the best.

Alex: Today we’re hearing the bravery it took to face an impossible decision: choosing between the people you love, and living the life you were meant to.

Meet Karen Robertson.

Karen: I’m 54. I work in the oil industry. I live in Perthshire in Scotland, in rural Perthshire just at the foot of the mountains. We live in a little village. It’s a strange place, if you put your finger in the middle of a map of Scotland, that's pretty much where we are.

Alex: Unsurprisingly for this part of the world, Karen lives an outdoorsy kind of life. Mountain biking, skiing, walks by the loch – and – Karen’s all-time love – sailing.

Karen: People talk about mindfulness, and I've tried meditating, I can't do it. But when I'm on a boat, I am completely in the moment. Nothing else matters. I don’t think about anything else but from sailing the boat when I’m out there. So if I'm out for an hour from about I guess from the moment you’re starting getting dressed or rigged until the moment the boat’s put back away again after taking nothing else but sailing. And that really takes you away from things; nothing else matters apart from the next gust or the next wave.

Alex: Even when Karen was little, sailing was a source of calm. Because back then, she was going through something … unsettling.

She has this very faint memory – of being at her grandparents’ house when she was about three years old.

Karen: It was a…I suppose it'd be a 1950s council house, a couple of seats with those lacy things to stop the grandfather's Brylcreem going o n the back of the seats. TV on: probably watching the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon.

Alex: Karen was sitting on the dark brown carpet, in front of the fire.

Karen: I was sitting on the floor and I have no idea why it came in, it just came into my head – that I should have been a girl. But at the same time, it came into my head that this was wrong and I mustn't say anything.

Alex: That feeling – it’s one of Karen’s earliest memories.

Karen: Being trans…. this is… it's been with me forever. You hear people talking about the wrong body and so on. It’s never been that – it's just always been this, ‘should have been a girl’. And that’s just been with me forever.

I suppose the early recollections of it, is somehow knowing that it was wrong. But something that can never be said out loud … something that can never, never happen, but it was just always there, this notion that I should have been a girl and nothing ever, ever got rid of that.

Alex: The feeling stayed with Karen as she got older. Sometimes it was really strong.

Karen: I was absolutely convinced that my parents would hate me; I'd be outcast; I thought I'd never be able to sail again. So it was something that just got put away. And I am quite a stoic person so it was just…it got packed away is probably the best way to put it, put inside a cage and buried as best as it could be.

Alex: Karen would be careful not to look at the women’s clothes in the window of Marks and Spencers – just in case anyone saw her and wondered.

There were so few public examples of people who had transitioned, but she does vividly remember opening The Sunday Times one weekend.

Karen: And it had an interview with Caroline Cossey, otherwise known as Tula, who was famously a trans Bond girl in the 70s. And I kept that magazine for years.

It was a cherished, cherished magazine if you like that. It was a story of somebody who had done it. And it just seemed to be everything that….. this is possible. This is a thing. It was sort of, maybe not a role model, but it was something there to look up to.

Alex: Still, transitioning seemed like something famous people did. Something you read about in the papers, not something that could actually happen in real life.

It was just something to be hidden, buried away and never, never to surface.

Alex: Karen got married and started working in the oil industry in Aberdeen. When she was 40, she got offered a job in Abu Dhabi. She was ambitious and keen to work her way up the ranks of engineers, so she took it.

Karen: It’s all modern buildings, so everything is new and shiny. Very, very big, big roads.

Alex: One morning, Karen was on her way to a meeting with clients. Driving through the busy city centre in the sweltering desert heat.

Karen: And we were on a main road, which is probably four lanes wide. We had this grey hire car; I was sat in the passenger seat. My colleague was driving.

Alex: Karen’s colleague brought the car to a stop at a set of traffic lights, where they waited for a few moments.

Karen: And there was just this… I got a cramp in my stomach. And it just started getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And then I had this enormous, how would you describe it, this enormous feeling– this thought that became overpowering that I had to be a woman. And then almost like this would move from my head down through my body, like my arms, which well, to me, my arms were shaking, my legs were shaking. Nobody ever noticed it, as far as I know. But it had this intense intense feeling that I have to be a woman and it would wash over you. And it was just…initially completely out of the blue, it was like where on earth has this come from? But at the same time it was so powerful. It was so forceful.

Alex: This visceral, full-body feeling – the pain and shaking – Karen had never experienced anything like it before.

Karen: In the past, maybe these thoughts would come and go without being… not too obtrusive, but without being quite so powerful. But this was a whole level up from anything I've ever experienced before.

Alex: Karen managed to make it to the clients’ offices without anyone noticing, and somehow was able to focus on the job and get on with her work day. But she was really confused – baffled by what had happened.

And the sensation didn’t let up – it kept happening.

Karen: And I can remember having it in meetings. So you’d be sat in the boardroom of an oil company, and you’ve got the client there and you're trying to do a good job for the company you’re working for. And the same thing would happen again. I would have this cramp in my stomach. And then all of a sudden this overwhelming whoosh as it goes down from your head down to your toes. And your limbs would shake or tremor at least. And it got it just got more and more intense. And I struggled to even look at women. I could not look at women at all without just feeling crushed. And “I have to be like that”. I remember sitting in the office and staring down at my computer, just trying to not see anybody else in the office. Because if I looked and saw a woman in the office at all, I would just…. I would just feel crushed.

Karen: So over the course of about six months it built from something that had been relatively contained into something that was physically painful.

Alex: Karen suffered through this alone. She kept it from her wife and two kids, who were seven and three years old at the time. It was the first time she’d properly been away from her family – they would stay at home in Scotland while Karen was in Abu Dhabi for weeks at a time.

Karen: There was this huge conflict between the love for the family, and this immovable force that was coming up through me… sort of an unmovable object and unstoppable force coming together. I had a family I absolutely loved to bits. And this is – this is the really hard bit because I ended up with something that I didn’t want to do. But something that was so powerful and saved me that was forcing its way through. So I ended up in this really, really hard place.

Alex: Things came to a head over the Christmas period in 2008. Back home in Scotland, Karen had been drinking more to try and cope with the pain.

{Possibly silence under this next clip?}

Karen: And one night I couldn't– I was crying and crying in bed and my wife woke up, what's wrong. And I said, I can't tell you. And it went on for a while. And I can't tell you, I can't tell you. And eventually it broke out: ‘I think I have to be a woman’. And she was, she was brilliant in understanding it. I don't know what on earth she thought I was going through … but it was very, very real at the time. So went to the doctor probably the first day the doctor was open after New Year and I think was possibly her first patient of the new year. And I went in and explained everything and she was really helpful and gave me some drugs just to try and calm things down, mentally. I was really really in a bad place.

Alex: Even though Karen had taken that first step in opening up to her wife, she still felt trapped.

Karen: I fought for several years not to transition because I wanted to keep my family. I was terrified of losing my family and the house and my job and I just thought everything would just completely fall apart. I fought so hard not to transition and that’s something maybe people don't realise, is a lot of people… it becomes a… a last resort.

Alex: The way Karen saw it: if she stayed, she would be tormented by the agony of not living as herself. If she transitioned, she risked losing her family.

Karen: I ended up pretty suicidal for quite a long time because I was stuck in this jam, in a no win situation.

Alex: Karen spoke to various healthcare workers, and went to a gender clinic.

Karen: And pretty much the first thing they said was, ‘it's not going to go away; there is only one way out of this’. And that was to transition. And they brought me in a couple of people that had transitioned and said, ‘Look, life can be okay on the other side’. Their key message was, if you made it to this point in life, and it’s come back with such vengeance, it's not going to go away again. But there is hope. Here are some people you can meet that there is hope to live normal lives and productive lives. They've got family, they just becomes normal people on the other side. And I… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I couldn't bring myself to do that to my family.

Alex: Karen felt like she was in an impossible situation. She would be in tears most nights, but kept everything from her friends and colleagues at work. She even stopped going sailing.

This went on for years. Until Karen was in her mid-40s.

Karen: We decided, well I decided, that in 2012, there was no way out of this and I had to transition. It was the only way to make a move and keep me alive. So at that point, we sat the kids down and tried to explain to them. I think they were both shell shocked us, as I imagine you would be. It was… I probably survived about five minutes into it before I started weeping gently so I’ve probably got my wife to thank for an awful lot for for bringing that across to them and explaining to them a bit more.

She’s an amazing woman. Absolutely the most amazing person I've ever met in my life, I still love her to bits.

Alex: Karen decided to quit her current job – and the team threw her a leaving do. They asked where she was going next, but she kept quiet – didn’t tell them what was going on.

Karen interviewed for a new role, and explained to the company that she was transitioning.

Karen: So then I started at the next company on the Monday morning as Karen. They were fine – I knew them before because they did some work for me when I was at a previous company. So I went in there, everything was fine.

Alex: While everything was going well in the new job, Karen feared the worst about her old colleagues. That they wouldn’t accept her after she transitioned.

She decided to send an email to a few closer ex-colleagues. They passed Karen’s message around the company for other colleagues to read.

Karen: I thought everybody would just turn their back on me and reject me.

As it turned out, within a week or two, I started getting messages from my work colleagues.

Alex: One particular response stands out in Karen’s memory.

Karen: He was in his 50s, he hadn’t cried since he was a kid. And he said he was in tears reading my message. And that was really, really touching to see something like that coming back from an old colleague.

It was just an outpouring of relief on my side that I'd still… these people were still friends and colleagues. When you think you're going to lose everything, but actually… you expect the worst from humanity and what you see is actually the best.

People I would just have normally just said hello to in the corridor would send you really good messages and it was… it's very touching. And… see, I was expecting the worst. I was expecting to be laughed at and ridiculed and never … be able to be taken seriously again, but what I actually got was I got an outpouring of support and love from all these people I used to work with and it's…. it was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever had. You expect the worst and actually it turns out to be not so bad.

Alex: Within six months, Karen was back at her old job.

For Karen, one of the joys of life after transitioning has been getting back into sailing.

Karen: And it had been a huge part of my life. A huge, huge part of life.

Alex: After years of not sailing, one day a friend invited her down to their sailing club, to try out a light, fast dinghy.

Karen: We went out for half an hour, 40 minutes and absolutely fell in love with this little boat.

Alex: The sailing club invited her back, to an event they were having a couple of weeks later.

Karen: And I wasn’t sure. I really wasn’t sure. I still thought everybody would laugh at me, and I would be a ridicule.

Alex: But she went for it – turned up at the club on the day. The boat was rigged and ready to go.

Karen: And everybody was so nice and everything was going ‘It's good to see you back, how are you doing Karen?’ Everybody used my name. And I just had an absolute ball of a day.

And it wasn't just the sailing. It was everybody making me welcome. And that was the most amazing thing and it suddenly gave me this… this opportunity that life… it might not ever be the same as it was before. But if there’s something there, I could go back to the sport I loved. I could turn up at events, nobody was going to ridicule me, everybody was going to just be happy to go sailing. And at the end of the day, that’s it: people just want to do their thing and have you join in doing their thing. So for me, it’s sailing. And it’s just… that was pretty much a rebirth for me in many ways.

That day just gave me something to look forward to and go, well here's the old thing from life that you loved: on you go and do it again.

Alex: Karen ended up buying a boat of her own. Sailing is once again something that lights her up.

She no longer experiences those stomach cramps or tremors.

And in the end, she didn’t have to choose between transitioning and the people she loves.

Karen: My partner’s still with me. We’re still together. We’re still a family.

Alex: Karen’s 17-year-old son lives at home – and her daughter is off at university.

Karen: We're a pretty tight family.

Alex: Now that Karen’s able to live as her authentic self, she feels wonderfully… normal.

Karen: I am kind of who I always was, just a bit different. I’ve not changed fundamentally as a person. I’m still… still myself, still fairly placid that I don’t really get angry. I just try to be myself… but with different shoes, you might say.

Alex: I found listening to Karen’s story extremely moving. She talks about her experiences with great generosity and openness and provides a genuine insight into the struggles that she’s faced. Transitioning from one gender to another is something which is still regarded with confusion and suspicion by many in society. This reaction often comes from a lack of understanding. Karen’s story makes it clear that the decision is not one that is made lightly. The palpable fear that she would lose her job, family and friends shows us how much was on the line. But the need for Karen to be her true self became all-consuming. She had hidden for 45 years, the rest of her life was in danger if she’d continued to hide for any longer. It was the support of Karen’s family and friends which eventually allowed her to embrace who she really was. Hopefully this story will inspire PEOPLE to be similarly supportive of others who will one day have to make the profoundly difficult decision to transition.