Hey my squirrels.

This is probably the most intimate thing I ever shared, because it's about something very personal: my mental health, my happiness, my life. It's about my transition.

This is one of the very few times in my life that I have to ask for help. Not for a crazy project, not for art, not for a documentation, not for Psyland. This time I ask for help for myself. From you.

Come with me – my private diary

I built a private page where I post the real updates: the clinics, the consultations, the numbers, video diaries, and the honest talk I don't put out publicly. Everyone who supports with €25 or more gets a personal access code by e-mail, right after.

→ lily-lu.com/journey  —  go and have a look. You can already see that the entries are there. You just can't read them yet.

10 years of putting myself last

It's around 10 years now since I started my transition and went on hormone therapy. I planned my breast surgery a long time ago – but it never happened. Every cent I had went into YouTube, into producing content, into building Psyland, into creating art. I tried to share as much of my life as I can, mostly for free, as inspiration for what you can do with your life when you are creative, disciplined and just do it.

Over all these years I sacrificed myself a little bit. With my crazy sport, my crazy life and all the healing phases, I always pushed it back. I forgot myself.

The "official way" – three years, and nothing

For the last three years I went the legit, legal way here in Germany, hoping my health insurance would pay at least something. Special therapy, sessions, documents, doctors – a big bureaucratic nightmare that cost me a lot of time, money and energy.

I now have the indication letters: written proof from several doctors that this is not fixable with therapy or anything else than surgery. But I have a private health insurance, and they pay nothing at all. I know many other trans people with exactly the same experience.

The only thing this process really did: it made me much more aware of how far away I still am from how I want the world to see me. At home in my bubble I feel like a little girl playing around all day. But when I go out, everybody still sees a man – and this really bothers me now. For eight years I've been wearing a bra with fake boobs, even at home. It's part of me without being part of me. And it's frustrating.

I changed everything that is within my reach – my tattoos, my hair, my whole appearance. I'm on the absolute limit of what I can do myself.

What the money is for

• Breast surgery — €4,000
  The first step. Not the most expensive one, and it will make me feel so much better in my body.
• Facial feminization — €17,000–23,000
  Adjusting my face to my gender, so I can go out in the world and just be seen as who I am. This will be the biggest and most expensive step, as it involves a couple of surgeries paired together to make my face look feminine and take the male characteristics away.
• Voice surgery — €4,000–8,000
  I tried speech therapy, I tried a lot. I just can't change my voice without surgery.
• Beard hair removal — €20,000+
  This one surprises everyone, including me. Because of my tattooed skin normal laser removal doesn't work – a laser targets pigment, and my tattoo is pigment. It would burn the ink instead of the hair. The only way left is electrolysis: one single hair at a time, over 250 hours, spread across two to three years. And as someone with a strong growing beard, I shave every day and feel my hairs growing and being visible.

Altogether that is around €50,000. I'm not asking for all of it. €25,000 gets me through the first real steps – and I'll do the rest the way I've always done it: slowly, stubbornly, by working for it.

What your help unlocks

Every euro goes exactly here. And I will show you every single step on the way.

I'm looking all over the world for where I can get the best result for a fair price (surgery in Asia is a lot cheaper than in Germany), so I can get the most done without it becoming impossibly expensive. Because geting this done in germany it will be a never ending financial disaster and honestly im at a point i better have some not so well done surgery and look like a not so prity women than still looking like a guy.

I saved a little bit myself – but as a self-employed, half-retired-not-retired artist who invests everything into her art, I'm on the financial edge as all my life.

Why now

This path is already so long. I decided: it's time. It's really time. I hope to make the first big step this winter or next year and not postpone it anymore.

I'm not depressed and I can live my life. But this is the one big issue that follows me every single day. Closing this chapter will free so much room – for new content, for my next books, for the big projects that are waiting in my head. I'm not a person who sits on the couch. I fill a void with something new.

I will do it anyway. But with your help I can do it much faster.

This is your time to give something back

If I inspired you, entertained you, if you took my art as inspiration for your art, if you are a tattoo artist working with my style, if something from me became part of your life – this is your moment to give something back.

It doesn't need to be much. Many people donating a little bit can make a really big impact in my life. I'm not afraid to say thank you – I'm much more afraid to ask for help. So this is a little experiment. An experiment that can change my life.

Thank you. Peace out.
Lily