When Stephanie Mott was young she always felt there was something different about her. With time, she concluded she was a young girl trapped in a boy’s body.
Mott, now 54 and formerly known as Stephen, began her transition of becoming a woman when she was 48, but she knew she was a “girl on the inside from the age of 6,” she said.
Mott has turned this revelation into a mission, including touring Kansas towns and teaching people about transgenderism.
Mott, executive director of Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project (K-STEP), said her goal is to help others who feel the way she did to know they are not alone in the world.
Mott was in Iola Saturday to put on an educational presentation about transgenderism, but was met by no one save this reporter.
“This hasn’t happened very often, maybe two or three times,” Mott said. “But it does happen.”
Mott is not only proud of her transition as a woman, but if it weren’t for her faith, she said, would have never reached her current happiness.
When she attended the Metropolitan Community Church of Topeka for the first time she met a girl who was transgender. Mott was astounded by the fact that “she looked like a girl,” she said.
As she listened to the morning’s sermon she realized she would need to begin her transition of becoming a woman to be truly happy with herself.
“For the first time I felt truth and self in the eye of the Lord,” Mott said. A few weeks later she attended the church as Stephanie.
Her journey wasn’t easy or quick. When she began her transition she was an alcoholic and homeless.
“I was struggling with every aspect of life,” she said. “Six years later I haven’t had a drink of alcohol … and I am going on my second year on the board of directors for my church.”
She remembers the lowest part of her life and feeling like the only way the pain of her gender identity issues would end was with death.
“I remembered what it felt like to feel alone,” she said. “I just want someone to know there is one person traveling around Kansas who went through what they are going through.”
THOUGH NO ONE appeared at the Iola Public Library on Saturday, she said she will remember her experience in Iola as pleasant.
Mott said when she first arrived earlier in the day she drove to McDonalds.
