People.com online editor Janet Mock has
come out transgender in an 'It Gets Better' video.
“I was welcomed into this world as
Charles,” Mock says in her two-minute-fifty-second video. “I was
probably about 4 years old when I knew that I was a girl.”
“It became my very first conviction.
My gender was my very first this-I-know-for-sure moment as Oprah
likes to call it.”
“Throughout middle school and high
school as puberty began to hit, I began to hate myself. I began to
hate my body. I began to hate the fact that real girls were
blossoming into these women and I remained this trapped girl in this
boy's body.”
The
It Gets Better Project urges troubled LGBT teens to not cave in
to bullies, because life eventually gets betters.
Mock, who also co-hosts the podcast The
Missing Piece, explains how it
got better for her.
“I
wasn't able to thrive until I asked for help,” she says about her
four years in college.
Mock
adds that after college she moved to New York, where she “found her
people.”
“I
have a boyfriend whom I love. Friends who love me just as I am.
Despite my past, despite everything. And I have a career as a writer
that gives me meaning and gives me real purpose.”
“And
I know that you can live the life of your dreams, as well,” Mock
adds. “I promise that it gets better.” (The video is embedded
in the right panel of this page.)
In
an interview with Marie Claire, Mock talks in detail about her
journey from Charles to Janet.