Monika: You’ve spoken so openly about your transition itself, but I’d love to hear about what came after. Once the surgery was behind you, what did life actually look like?
Tina: Well Monika, it was a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest. In 2006 I had my SRS surgery in Bangkok with Dr Chettawut, and medically everything went really well. When I got back home, I tried to settle into what I thought would be normal life again. But in reality, things weren’t good at all, especially at work. I’d been with that company for sixteen years, and after my transition, the atmosphere there changed completely. Life at that point was really difficult.
Monika: You say work became a real problem. What changed, and why was that period so hard for you?
Tina: Things just turned sour. Not long after I got back from Thailand, while I was still healing from surgery, something really awful happened. One day, as I was walking home from work, four guys started giving me grief in the street. They had these big Perspex globe lights they’d stolen from the Tesco superstore that was being rebuilt at Top Valley in Nottingham.
One of them threw one of those globes at me and hit me in the back. I told him to pack it in or I’d call the police, and that just made everything worse. All four of them started chasing me down the road.
Monika: What do you remember about those moments when it escalated and you realised you couldn’t get away?
Tina: I panicked and headed toward Southglade Park, but just before I got there, one of them caught up with me and smashed one of those big plastic globes straight into my face.
I remember seeing stars and then everything went fuzzy. I must have partially passed out. When I came around, I was completely dazed, my nose was split wide open, and my face was pouring with blood. There was blood everywhere. The next thing I knew, a man driving an articulated lorry had stopped and asked if I was okay. I just said, “I’m hurting, I’m in a mess.” He immediately called an ambulance and the police.
Monika: That’s absolutely horrific. What happened once help arrived?
Tina: I was taken to Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre and spent several hours there while they dealt with the bleeding and patched me up. My parents arrived, and once everything was under control, we went home. I was in total shock and completely shaken by the whole thing.
What still amazes me is that after just one day, I went straight back to work and tried to carry on as best I could for my employer. But there was no understanding at all, not from him and not from my work colleagues. That was the moment I realised I couldn’t stay there anymore. After sixteen years, I knew I had to walk away, so I handed my notice in to Dave, the owner of the company.
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| With Pinocchio at Disney's Magic Kingdom. |
Monika: Leaving a job after sixteen years is huge. When you walked away, how did you start imagining a future for yourself?
Tina: It was terrifying, but I also felt like I had no other choice. I’d helped build that business from the ground up and even helped get it BSI approved. I thought to myself, if I can do all that for someone else, maybe I can do it for myself.
So I started looking around for ideas. I knew a woman in Nottingham called Carol who owned a nail salon called Elegant Nails. We’d talked a few times before, so I asked her about training as a nail technician. She ran courses in acrylic nails, fibreglass nails, and gel nails, so I enrolled. I did the course, passed it, and got my certificate.
After that, I found an empty business premises, spoke to the owner, took on the lease, and built my own salon from scratch. That’s how Tina’s Transform Nails came into being. It was scary, but it was also empowering. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I was rebuilding my life on my own terms.
Monika: So how did this go for you, setting up the salon and striking out on your own?
Tina: It actually went fine at first. I fitted the place out myself, built everything from scratch, opened the business, and got it running. It did well for a few months, and I finally felt like things were turning around. But then the next big problem hit.
Monika: And what was that?
Tina: My dad had been treated for dementia for a couple of years already, but around then it progressed into full-blown Alzheimer’s. My mum just couldn’t cope on her own anymore. I knew I had to make a really serious decision about what to do next.
After a lot of thinking and sleepless nights, I realised I had no choice. I had to close the business I’d only just built and move back home to help care for my dad. I looked after him for the next few months, and honestly, it was an incredibly hard time for both me and my mum.
Monika: How did that experience change what you needed from work and from life at that point?
Tina: That’s when it hit me that I needed something I could do from home. So in 2007, I came up with the idea for Pink Butterfly Plants and started building that instead. At the same time, I still had things I wanted to do for my transition, especially facial feminisation surgery. I spoke to surgeons like Douglas Ousterhout, Dr O in San Francisco. I sent him photos, and he gave me a quote. Then I sent the same photos to Dr Chettawut, along with Dr O’s quote. Dr Chettawut came back and offered to do the surgery for half the price.
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| At Newquay Fern Pit Café. |
Monika: After everything you’d already been through, that sounds like a lot to carry. What happened next?
Tina: Sadly, things got worse. My dad took a sudden turn for the worse and passed away at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre. That was a massive blow. It completely broke my mum. They’d been married for over fifty years.
Not long after that, my mum had a terrible accident. She shattered her hip and needed a full hip replacement. She was in two different hospitals for more than seven weeks, and I went to see her every single day. After she came out, for the next three years I pushed her everywhere in a wheelchair. I also took her on what turned out to be the holiday of a lifetime, a trip to the USA. I even got her a passport so we could do it together. I’m so glad I did that. Then came the final blow. My mum passed away as well, at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre.
Monika: Losing both your parents like that is devastating. Where did you go from there, emotionally and practically?
Tina: Monika, I was completely lost. I was suddenly on my own in the world, and it felt like a really dark, hostile place. I knew I couldn’t just stay shut inside the house. If I did, I honestly think I would have had a breakdown. I needed something to occupy my mind, something to give me purpose again. So I came up with an idea.
Monika: What was it about that idea that helped pull you back from the edge?
Tina: I decided to go into Nottingham city centre and do makeover and makeup videos with cosmetic companies, the big-name brands. I even rang Clinique’s head office in London and asked if I could do a makeup video with one of their artists in Nottingham to help raise trans awareness. To my surprise, they emailed back and said yes. I just had to pick a day, a time, and a store. When the day came, I went and did it. After that, over the following weeks, I did several more videos in different shops and stores around Nottingham. I did that for about six weeks in total. I can honestly say that doing those videos saved me. They stopped me from going over the edge emotionally after losing my mum. They gave me a reason to get up, to be seen, and to keep going.
Monika: What helped you move forward after all of that?
Tina: Doing those makeup videos really gave me the will to push on with my life. They tied my brain up and stopped it from spiralling with all the stress and grief I’d been carrying. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I had direction again.
Monika: Was that also the point where helping others became more important to you?
Tina: Yes, very much so. It gave me a reason to try and help other people like me who were on similar journeys. I already knew that my website, Tina’s Transgender World, the second version of it, was helping people. I used to get messages in the guest book from people saying how much it meant to them.
The site even won four awards from transgender organisations around the world. They sent me banners to display, and I added them to the site myself using HTML coding.
Monika: You’ve mentioned before how closely connected you became with people online. Did that lead to anything new?
Tina: It did. One of my friends, Chloe Prince, was going to Suporn in Chonburi, Thailand, for her FFS surgery. She was absolutely terrified. I promised her I’d webcam her every day while she was there, just to support her and keep her calm, and I did exactly that.
When she came back, she thanked me and told me she’d found a platform called Ning where she was building a transgender social networking site called Pink Essence. I took one look at it and realised I could build something like that too.
Monika: And that’s how the Pink Butterfly Network was born?
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| Looking up. |
Tina: Exactly. I got myself a Ning platform and started building The Pink Butterfly Network for transsexual, intersex, and transgender people. It really took off. We had several thousand members from all over the world, and it grew every single day.
Everyone had their own page, a bit like Facebook, and it kept my mind busy. It helped pull me away from the pain of losing my mum. Running it took a lot of time every day, and after a while the costs went up because of how much web space it used, but it was worth it.
Monika: Did that online success make you want to connect with people in real life too?
Tina: Very much so. A lot of people on the site wanted to meet me in person. So I came up with the idea of doing a Pink Butterfly Tour of the USA. After a few weeks of planning, I arranged a five-week tour.
It started in Sarasota, Florida, with Veronika, then moved on to Wisconsin and other places. I had a whole load of flights booked. It was quite something.
Monika: That sounds huge. How did the tour actually go?
Tina: Monika, it went really well. In Sarasota, they even arranged a special evening at a community centre to welcome the Pink Butterfly Network and me. I met so many trans people on that tour, including female-to-male transsexuals.
The tour ended five weeks later in San Diego, California. While I was there, I met up with my old friend Professor Paula Carrier. She took me to Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which was absolutely breathtaking.
Monika: Looking back, what did that experience mean to you?
Tina: It showed me that I hadn’t just created a space online. I’d created real connections. I got to meet people face to face, hug them, talk properly, and share experiences. That meant everything to me.
Monika: And yet, you’ve said something happened afterward that really surprised you?
Tina: Yes, something totally unexpected. I was still running Pink Butterfly Plants in Nottingham and using my time with customers to gently educate them about being a woman who had transitioned and about gender dysphoria.
Then one day, out of the blue, Caroline Cossey messaged me on Facebook and asked if I wanted to chat.
Monika: That must have been surreal. What happened between you?
Tina: We hit it off straight away. Over the next few weeks, we talked a lot about all sorts of things, books, Kindles, our mothers, and how daunting it had been for her to appear on American chat shows.
I gave her my UK phone number, as she was living in Atlanta at the time. One Saturday evening she rang me, and we talked for nearly an hour. She told me she really admired the work I was doing to raise trans awareness in the UK and thanked me for it.
She also talked about taking her case to the European Parliament, using her own money, to get transsexual people recognised by law. That fight eventually led to gender recognition certificates being introduced. I have one myself, which later allowed me to get a female birth certificate.
Monika: You were doing so much for others. Did you ever do anything bold or symbolic locally?
Tina: I did one very bold thing in Nottingham. I dyed my hair dark brown, dressed up as Wonder Woman, and walked the streets around the Motorpoint Arena like that.
It definitely served its purpose. People could see I wasn’t some monster. I was just a human being who’d taken a journey to live as my true self.
Monika: At what point did you decide it was time to step back?
Tina: Gradually, I started scaling things down. I realised I’d given about ten years of my life to raising awareness. My attitude shifted, and I knew it was time for someone else to take over that role.
When my website fees came up for renewal, I decided not to renew them. I closed Tina’s Transgender World, and shortly after that, I shut down the Pink Butterfly Network as well.
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| I am 70 and I am happy enough. |
Monika: Was that decision connected to where you were in life personally?
Tina: Yes. My age and my health were catching up with me. I reached state retirement age and decided to retire. I closed Pink Butterfly Plants and focused on just living my life. I carried on travelling, enjoying good conversations, and spending time on my hobbies, art, painting, and model making.
Monika: Thank you, Tina, for sharing your story with such honesty and warmth. Your journey is a powerful reminder that choosing yourself, your health, and your joy is not giving up, it is growing into a new chapter.
END OF PART 5
All photos: courtesy of Tina Marie Phillips.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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