Shahin Vatani
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Former Navy SEAL Chris Beck has stepped out as a transgender woman, today identifying herself as Kristin Beck while seen today as the founder of Healing Grounds, a Florida nonprofit that provides support to returning combat veterans.
A former Navy SEAL who once served in the elite Team 6 responsible for the capture of Osama bin Laden has stepped out as a transgender woman.
Kristin Beck, formerly known as Chris Beck, served 20 years in the military's most elite unit where she underwent 13 deployments and seven combat deployments.
It wasn't until Beck retired from the Navy in 2011 that her battle over her true identity could finally be fought — and, to her surprise, she was warmly received not only by friends and family but her fellow SEALS as well.
In Beck's new biography, "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender," she reveals her lifelong struggle in a man's body while going on to serve in SEAL Team 6, the group that found bin Laden in the months after her retirement.
"[Beck] had considered living as the woman he felt himself to be for a very long time, but while he was serving as a SEAL he couldn't do it," reads an excerpt from his book published this past weekend.
She describes herself as "living basically asexual" her entire life while stifling any urges to genuinely express herself.
After her military retirement, taking with her a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, Beck began undergoing hormonal therapy.
She cut off her burly beard and began wearing women's clothing before - in a daring final step - she revealed her new look and name to friends on LinkedIn while publishing a photo of herself as a woman standing before an American flag.
"I am now taking off all my disguises and letting the world know my true identity as a woman," Beck wrote with the photo published earlier this year.
To her immediate surprise, she received outpouring of support from other SEALS.
Beck details her life's struggle over her true identity in her new book, Warrior Princess, after serving 20 years in the Marines as part of the elite Navy Seals Team 6, the team responsible for capturing Osama bin Laden.
"Brother, I am with you ... being a SEAL is hard, this looks harder. Peace," one wrote her, as the Atlantic Wire reports.
"I can't say I understand the decision but I respect the courage. Peace and happiness be upon you," wrote another.
"I just wanted to drop you a note and tell you that Kris has all the support and respect from me that Chris had ... and quite possibly more," another wrote her. "While I'm definitely surprised, I'm also in amazement at the strength you possess and the courage necessary to combat the strangers and 'friends' that I'm guessing have reared their ugly heads prior to and since your announcement."
Beck writes that she wrote the book, "to reach out to all of the younger generation and encourage you to live your life fully and to treat each other with compassion, be good to each other, especially in your own backyard (whether it be high school or your community)."
Her memoir comes roughly three years after the Department of Defense lifted its ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in uniform.
Transgendered men and women are still banned from serving.
That's an issue far from lost on the National Center for Transgender Equality that warns that such men and women like Beck, who would have been disqualified from serving because of her gender, hurts our national defense.
"Not only is this unjust to individual transgender people who wish to serve their country through military service, it weakens our national defense by barring qualified people from duty," the NCTE states.
Today Beck is the founder of Healing Grounds, a Florida nonprofit that provides psychosocial support to returning combat veterans through landscape assistance and gardening experience.
She writes that it's this outdoor landscaping work that brought her calm after retiring from the service as a wounded, disabled veteran.
"When I sit in my backyard or at my fishpond, it is very hard to feel anger, resentment or depression; I feel peace. I want to give this opportunity to my veteran brothers and sisters," Beck writes of her St.Petersburg program on her LinkedIn page.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...eal-article-1.1362490?localLinksEnabled=false
