Romana Mewett - PFC campaigner
Key Activist
| Name | Romana Mewett |
| Age | 44 |
| Occupation | CISM (Critical Incident Stress Management) Counsellor and Debriefer and Transgender Support Counsellor and Advisor in a voluntary capacity at Panderic, the Torbay Sexual Health Centre and the local prisons. |
| Joined PFC | 1996 |
| Campaign Responsibilities | Key Activist, general dogsbody who is willing to tackle anything and PFC Representative on The Equality Alliance. |
| qdrytgdr@aol.com |
It is hard to write about what I feel has been an uneventful life, different, YES, but special and unusual, to me, NO.
I had an uneventful although confused childhood and joined the Royal Navy in 1971. After nearly five years of service I met my first wife in Australia and transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1978, leaving in January 1993 after nearly 22 years combined service. In August 1993 I became totally desperate about my gender and consulted a Psychiatrist in Sydney who told Val, my partner after separation that I was a transsexual and would be a woman in a year. Once she told me, I moved fast and two months later Robert went to bed and Romana got up and never looked back.
Everthing up till my surgery in October 1994 was done as a team with Val and Jason, the only one of my four children I got custody of and because of that we stayed together. Once my surgery was completed and my divorce granted, I married Val at the Sydney Registry in February 1995. Jason was the only male present and it caused some eye raising especially at the pronouncement of “Man and Wife”. We all decided that we would live in the UK and arrived on April Fool’s Day 1995 and settled in Torquay, my home town and looked for work or things to do. I found Panderic in 1996 and took over from Stephanie Foster when she left. Val has now joined me at Panderic and we act like ’Heckle and Jeckle’ when we work together. We do very varied work and both of us love what we do, Jason also assists when families are involved. All three of us are dedicated Christians and very well accepted within our Church and the community as a whole.
I first found out about PFC in 1993 when I was handed one of Stephen’s MTF newsletters at the Gender Centre in Sydney and always wanted to be involved with the organisation, I have now achieved that. We are very lucky in that we went through my change as a family discussing every step fully before it was taken. This allowed us to adjust to, cope and survive the change and still remain a family unit, something we all would like to see more of. My future lies in transgender and its people and one day I intend to design and have my own University qualification in transgender studies. own University qualification in transgender studies.