is a story that intimately explores the transition experience of Ryan Sallans, born Kimberly
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Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love and Life
is a story that intimately explores the transition experience of Ryan Sallans, born Kimberly Ann Sallans. Each chapter viscerally pulls the reader through Ryan’s transition from infant to child, child to body-obsessed teenage girl, teenage girl to eating-disordered young woman, female to male, daughter to son, and finally a beloved partner to a cherished fiancé. It offers readers a unique glimpse of life and love as lived by a uniquely talented and truth-telling man.
Ryan candidly shares with the reader how he struggled to find love and acceptance, when he initially didn’t even love or accept himself. Before his transition, as an insecure female college student, he nearly died from an extreme case of anorexia. The only thing that saved him was his inner spirit begging for a chance to live. His fight to survive required him to overcome his internal complications and fears, which eventually led to an estranged relationship with his family.
Feeling out of place in this world, Ryan believed he’d never feel loved, until he met an empathetic and caring woman. He battled to win her unconditional love, but in the end surrendered to the fact that she was a lesbian and Ryan was, indeed, a man.
Second Son chronicles Ryan’s battle with his family, his romantic partner, and his body. It unblinkingly focuses on the empowerment that he achieved as he underwent gender reassignment surgeries, and traces his evolution into manhood through the use of testosterone.
With each surgery that removed or changed an aspect of his body, and with each legal procedure filed away and processed, Ryan began to feel his internal self align with his external body. It took twenty-nine years for Ryan to finally find himself. In this intimate and honest autobiography, Ryan Sallans describes how the years that have followed his surgery have allowed him to reshape himself into a true lover, speaker, author, and man.
Beyond being the step-by-step journal of a female’s transition into becoming a male, it is the celebration of a person becoming who he was always meant to be. It is the universal story of a person discovering his humanity and embracing the unsuspected strengths that always lay within. It is a tale that will resonate with people everywhere who are journeying to find their own destinies, love, and life.
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