[uplifting brass music]
- Kristyn Weed: I didn't start transitioning
until I was 58.
- Sue McConnell: I guess I was 50.
- Kristyn: How'd your family accept you?
- Sue: Well, my son disowned me.
He told his mother that he didn't want anything to do
with the f----- freak.
So I don't get to talk to my grandson or my granddaughter.
- Kristyn: My family is similar to yours.
- Sue: Your daughter disowned you?
- Kristyn: Both my daughters disowned me, yeah.
- Sue: Yeah. - Kristyn: Yeah.
- Sue: When I was growing up,
I always knew there was something different.
I didn't like the same things the other boys did.
You know, they wanted to play Army and cowboys and Indians.
And I wanted to be the girl on the wagon that was sewing
and making coffee. [laughs] - Kristyn: Right.
- Sue: But you know, I had to be who I wasn't
so that I could survive.
- Kristyn: I spent 15 years in the Army
and I enlisted of all places,
as a paratrooper going to the 82nd Airborne Division.
And the units I was in,
the soldiers were pretty hard-charging.
So that was the image you had to portray.
I didn't start wearing women's clothes
until I was out of the military.
I wouldn't do it because I was afraid.
- Sue: But then, we met at the transgender support group.
- Kristyn: Yeah, the VA support group.
- Sue: And we started joking and then just
like nitpicking at each other and stuff--
[Kristyn laughs] --and people said,
"Well, you guys really are sisters!"
We do sit around and talk a lot.
We would sit in Denny's for coffee
at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it'd be dark--
- Kristyn: And leave there at 10 o'clock at night--
- Sue: --10 o'clock at night. [both laughing]
- Kristyn: The servers all know us, the managers know us.
- Sue: She flirts with all the waitresses.
- Kristyn: Me? - Sue: Yes, you do! [laughing]
- Kristyn: We get 20% military discount!
- Sue: Yes, we do! [Kristyn laughs]
You know, it hurts to have lost my daughters,
but I found out love is not a two-way street.
And love is not unconditional.
- Sue: It is for some of us.
- Kristyn: You're always there for me.
There's never a doubt or a question
as to whether you would be or not.
- Sue: You are my sister.
- Kristyn: I'm glad of it.
["Filing Away" by Blue Dot Sessions]