About Nicola
I am a Pakeha (non-Maori) trans woman living in Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland) in Aotearoa New Zealand. My Scottish, Welsh and English forebears settled here in the 1800s.
Monday to Friday, when not coaching, I support people with mental disability. I am also an Anglican Priest. On the weekends I work as Vicar of a South Auckland parish.
I come from a very conservative Christian background and the thought I could be trans didn't even occur to me until I was 54 years old. I was the "ugly duckling" who assumed from childhood that I was the problem, that I was simply an ugly "duck" (a defective boy and man). It took me six years to make peace with being trans and another five years to come out.
I began hormone treatment early in 2021 while a Senior Chaplain in an Aged Care Village. The human reality of gender affirming hormone treatment is that one goes through puberty with all the mental and emotional dysregulation that can bring. For a "late blooming" trans woman this may follow a lifetime of severe dissociation and disconnection from body and emotions to escape the trauma of growing up trans. For me the contrast plummeted me into the three most wonderful and terrible years of my life. I retired on Good Friday 2022 and came out as Nicola on Easter Day 2022.
I share this deeply personal part of my story so you know I understand how confusing and frightening this journey can be both for a trans person and for their family, colleagues and friends. I would do it all again but with better support. I launched this website and coaching practice at the urging of two of the professionals who supported me on that journey. They both felt I had a lot of offer others.
