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reason for unnecessary modesty in this matter. This was my hope and intention and many, many of you have told me that it succeeded for you. For this I am glad. But is it not true that there was a period in your development when you first made contact with someone else when you found great relief, an almost painful release of pent-up emotion, in actually being able to communicate with another person about a subject so dear to your heart yet so terribly secret? DO YOU re- member your ever having written to me or to any one else about the clothes you were wearing or at least that you owned? There are very few of you who could honestly say that you didn't. And why? Because this is the first stage in achieving self acceptance. Alcholics Anonymouse (I am not a member, not being a drinking girl, but I have been to several of their meetings) they have a series of twelve steps in arriving at a "solution" of their problem. One of these (I don't remember the number but it's one of the first) is, "I admitted to God and to another human being that I could not manage my "life". (This may not be the ex- act wording but it is close enough). This act of ad- mission is what I'm talking about. You have to say it out loud if possibe-on paper if it isn't--to another human being--"I like to wear dresses and heels and lingerie and express my femininity" or words to that effect. After years of repression that is not easy to do, but it must be done because it is the first step. That is why some letters of this type appear in the pages of TVia--because it is therapeutically useful to provide this opportunity to the locked up spirit to make a semi- public admission even if it isn't signed with his own legal name. He knows he made it and is helped by doing so.

Case Histories are the next step in this process and that is why they too appear in these pages. Such his- tories are therapeutically valuable to the one's that gives them, but also to many of those who read them. It is helpful to know that you are not alone, that others feel as you do and that they went through many of the same experiences and felt the same feelings that you feel. When you are not the exception in the world, when there are hundreds and thousands of others like you, you don't have to feel alone and you can regain

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