Lea de Vries is an inspiring artist and lives in Harderwijk, in the Netherlands, where music has become both her lifeline and her voice. Four years ago, Lea came out as a trans woman and began her transition, a journey that started with a single, terrifying visit to her doctor and has since carried her through hormone therapy, bottom surgery, and countless smaller, quieter victories along the way. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Lea found songwriting. Her original songs, including “Reflection” and “Missen wat ik nooit had,” carry the weight of everything she’s lived through: grief, dysphoria, hope, and the fierce will to keep going. She has taken that music to stages at Paradiso, and multiple Pride events, turning pain into performance and performance into connection.
Lea’s story is not just one of transition. In 2019, she and her ex had to go through losing a son twice, Evan and Levi, one in February and one in December, both born too early to survive. It took her years to find the words, but she eventually turned that loss into a song, and with it, some long-awaited closure. Alongside the joys of her music career, Lea has also faced real hardship: housing insecurity, financial strain, and the exhausting, everyday battle of simply being seen and believed. Through it all, she has kept showing up, on stage and online, asking for nothing more than to be heard and to help others feel less alone. This is a conversation with someone who has turned nearly every hard chapter of her life into something honest, something shared, and something that might just help someone else keep going too.
Monika: “Reflection” and “Missen wat ik nooit had” both carry so much personal history. When you sit down to turn something painful into a song, where do you actually start, the melody or the memory?
Lea: For me it has so far been the memory that comes first. Besides ‘Reflection’ and ‘Missen wat ik nooit had’, I have two more completed songs. One is called ‘Cleansing Fire’, about the moment I decided to stop being paralyzed by the fear of rejection and chose my own path. The other is called ‘One Million Fireflies’, about how I, on the one hand, want my daughter Ella to forever keep the limitless kindness and empathy towards others that she has now, but also fear how the world might abuse it. I wrote these four songs in the first six months after I started writing songs. These were the four things I had wanted to write about for years but never knew how to begin. The music came to me through writing about those ‘themes’.
Monika: You once said it took years before you could finally write the song for Evan and Levi. What changed, six months ago, that made the words finally come?
Lea: With ‘Reflection’ I had finally shown myself that I was able to write a song that helped me get through past experiences and at the same time could stand on its own as a solid, well-written song that can move the person listening to it. I also knew that losing my boys was something I had not fully healed from and that I could use this newfound courage to write songs as a way to work through the grief and trauma. So in the end, what made the words come was to stop pushing away the feelings and just sit down and let them wash over me.
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| “I always ‘enter’ my own songs.” |
Monika: Playing guitars worth more than 10k with your best friend sounds like a dream come true for any musician. What did that day teach you about your own sound?
Lea: It is a cliché, but I felt like the proverbial child in a sweet shop. I do remember thinking that it requires a good amount of trust in your customers to just hang them on the wall for anyone to pick up and play. I felt nervous playing on something that is more expensive than all my own instruments combined. I guess there is still some good old trust and integrity between human beings, which is a nice thing to realize.
Monika: You’ve performed at places like Paradiso and on Pride stages this summer. Is there a difference in how it feels to sing your own story to a crowd of strangers versus a crowd that already knows part of your journey?
Lea: Not really, no. Whether I am alone in my home or on a stage in front of a crowd, I always ‘enter’ my own songs, if that makes any sense. When I sing my songs, I feel like I am in the moment that the song is describing, and the rest fades to the background for a couple of minutes. With covers it is a bit different, though. With those I am much more busy with remembering lyrics and chords and more aware of people watching me.
Monika: Let’s talk names for a sec. How did you land on your name Lea? Does it mean something to you, or tie into your journey in some way?
Lea: It is a bit silly, to be honest. The name my parents gave me was ‘Leendert’, which is a very Dutch-sounding name. Before I came out as trans, I was active in some online communities in which the question of how to pronounce my name came up often (it is ‘Lane-dirt’ for those who are curious). But in the end they gave up trying and settled on just calling me ‘Leo’ instead. Then when I first started to put my toe in the water of presenting myself as a woman, I did so online. Since I was already used to being called Leo, I felt that Lea would be a good fit for the moment. At that point I was not even thinking about it being my official name for the rest of my life, but it has always felt like it fits me well, so I never felt the desire to change it again.
Monika: Do you remember the first time you actually met a trans woman in person? Or saw one and thought, “wait, that’s me”?
Lea: Whether or not they were truly the first I met, I am unsure. But I very much remember the first trans women I consciously registered, talked to, and who made me explore my own gender identity. They were two beautiful and confident women I met at the birthday party of a mutual friend. It was one of those parties where I only knew the friend whose birthday it was. I talked to them for quite a while, and they inspired me to care less about what people might think and more about what I need to be happy.
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“When I sing my songs, I feel like I am in the moment that the song is describing.” |
Monika: When you came out, did your mother embrace you as her daughter right away? And do you feel like you carry any of her, in how you move, your style, little mannerisms?
Lea: I wish that were true, but no. I was raised in a strict Protestant Christian household, and I am the youngest of six children. My parents love me and I love them, but especially in the first months after I told them I am transgender, they had trouble finding a way to get to grips with it. After asking for time to process it, they did not talk to me for about four months. After that they slowly came to terms with the new situation. I think they will always find it difficult, both emotionally and religiously, but for a year or so now I feel that our bond has for the most part been restored and they have started seeing me as their daughter. And for the second part of the question, I don’t really know whether I do. I never noticed it, but now that you have asked, I will surely pay some extra attention to the way my mom moves and carries herself to see if I can find some similarities.
Monika: I have to ask: what was the hardest part of coming out for you? So many of us lose people along the way.
Lea: Telling my parents. I knew it would not be a warm and supportive talk. For a while I was counting on and preparing for letting them go. Luckily it didn’t have to come to that.
Monika: Was there one moment, or maybe a bunch of little ones, where you just felt like “okay, this is me, I’m finally home in myself”?
Lea: Yes, there have been many. I still remember the first time vividly. I had just received my first package of clothes, my first heels, and a very cheap wig that I had ordered online. I stuffed a bra with socks and put on a dress, my heels, and the wig. I looked down at my raised chest, my feet in these cute heels, and the strands of long hair in my peripheral vision, when those words you said came to me: “This is me, I do not want to be anything else anymore.” It might be a bit of a cliché, but I cried tears of joy at that moment.
Monika: You started HRT on November 27th, 2023, exactly 621 days after that first appointment. Why do you think that number stuck with you so hard?
Lea: The number does not mean anything special to me, but it does give me a better feel for how much time it was, as opposed to ‘almost two years’. I do struggle a little with the experience of everything taking so long and the progress feeling so excruciatingly slow, but at the same time I know and hear from others how lucky I have been when it comes to the tempo and the lack of problems during my transition. I feel bad complaining about my transition when I know there are so many people out there who would give anything to have such a smooth and relatively quick transition.
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“I am still trying to find what part is really me.” |
Monika: Looking back now, how do you feel about everything HRT has done to you, physically and emotionally?
Lea: It is impossible to overstate how important it has been for me. I still feel happy tears well up sometimes when I see and realize I have breasts. HRT and the other gender-affirming care have given me moments of gender euphoria, and those have made it possible to love myself sometimes. By doing that, they might have saved my life.
Monika: Okay, real talk: I remember the euphoria right after my own transition, and my closet is still stuffed with dresses I bought by the dozen, like I was making up for lost time. Did you go through that too?
Lea: I have been in that headspace for sure! Sadly, my financial situation did not allow me to really go wild, but I never could have guessed how amazing shopping can be until then. In the end I still managed to fill up my closet with bubblegum pink dresses, glittery skirts, sexy crop tops, and too many pairs of size 47 (13 US) heels.
Monika: Speaking of closets, how would you describe your style these days? Any go-to outfits, or trends you’re obsessed with?
Lea: I think most of the time it could be called a ‘trendy young mom’ style. I like to wear one eye-catching piece with the rest of the outfit being a bit toned down for contrast. Not too baggy, complementing my curves, but also not too revealing.
Monika: And makeup: are you a “full face every day” girl, or more “basics and out the door”?
Lea: Not anymore. For performances or parties I still love to put a lot of time and effort into my makeup, but on most days I keep it to eyeliner, mascara, lip gloss, and maybe some eyeshadow that matches my nails or outfit.
Monika: Honest question: do you actually enjoy compliments on your looks, or is it hard to just take them in?
Lea: I mostly enjoy them. With the risk of sounding arrogant, I think I have a couple of good-looking features, and when people point that out and compliment me about it, I feel flattered and thankful. When the compliments are about something I dislike or have dysphoria about, it gets a bit harder. I am 1.96 m (6’5”) and wide-shouldered, which always makes me feel very masculine. When those are the things that others compliment, I find it harder to feel good about it.
Monika: Did you ever feel pressure to fit some ideal of femininity, like I did trying to look like the women around me?
Lea: My entire life I have been actively trying to ‘fit’ into the gender assigned at birth. I did not really know how to ‘just be’. So yes, at first I was trying to analyze how women talked, how they laughed, how they walked and moved. I was still trying to fit into a stereotype because that was all I knew how to do. I sometimes still judge myself when I think I sound too masculine or when my movement is not refined enough. I am still trying to find what part is really me and what is still me trying to fit into a certain stereotype.
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“I struggle more with my own judgment than with that of the world.” |
Monika: And then there’s the flip side, the pressure to “pass,” even after everything, surgeries and all. How do you deal with the world still judging you on that?
Lea: I struggle more with my own judgment than with that of the world. Most people will always notice I am trans. Nothing I can do about that. If they are okay with trans people, then there is no problem. If they aren’t, nothing I do in that moment will make them accept me, so why bother? I am lucky that, in my experience, here in the Netherlands most people are either totally okay with people being trans or don’t care enough about them to make a fuss about it. So all I have to deal with is some turning heads and some poorly hidden pointing and whispering. I can deal with those.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Lea de Vries.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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