Portia Smith told her mother that she was transitioning to female in 2015. “We talked about it. It wasn’t a dramatic thing,” she said. “She just wanted to make sure that when I went through Hormone Replacement Therapy I did it within the health care system. It takes years, the same amount of time a young person goes through puberty. She wanted to make sure I didn’t get the hormones elsewhere – you can buy anything on Amazon. So I’m holding out until the government says that HRT is covered by public health care. It’s why my voice is still this way.”