She Practised for 45 Years. The First 15 as a Man.
Dr Michelle Peterson is a trans dentist who began her transition in 1995 in the American Bible Belt, keeping her practice open throughout. It’s a story of resilience and living your truth.
Every now and then, someone comes along whose story just stops you in your tracks, and Dr Michelle Peterson is one of those people. She reached out to me after appearing on the Dentistry Unmasked podcast, and I have been thinking about her ever since. She has been practising dentistry for 45 years, and for the first 15 of those years she practised as a man. For the last 30, she has practised as herself.
Born in Widnes, England, Michelle knew she was a girl from around the age of four. She spent decades hiding, protecting, surviving. When she finally faced her truth in 1995, she did not run away to a new town, take on a new name, or leave her patients behind. She stayed exactly where she was, in the American Bible Belt, and she came out to every single one of her patients, one appointment at a time.
I want you to sit with that for a moment. When most people come out, they tell a handful of people they love and then they carry on. Michelle had to do it over and over again, to ten or fifteen patients a day, for months. She lost 80% of her practice. She went bankrupt. She had people throw Bibles at her and tell her that her lifestyle would put their families in danger. She had a gun pulled on her at a dance club by a man who was furious to discover she was trans. Through all of it she kept going, because she had two small boys who needed their parent, because this was her home, and because she refused to believe that she had to choose between being alive and being herself.
Where This Story Begins
Michelle’s transition was set in motion by grief. Her younger brother, who was gay, had been rejected by their parents, spiralled into alcoholism, and died alone. When Michelle flew in to clear out his apartment and found it in a truly devastating state, she made herself a promise: she would not end up like this. She knew, with quiet and painful clarity, that if she did not face her truth, she would not survive either.
That is the kind of moment that changes a life, not a grand declaration or a dramatic turning point, but a private reckoning with what happens when you spend too long pretending to be someone you are not. She found a therapist, began hormone therapy, and started the long process of transition. Her wife, to her enormous credit, said something Michelle has never forgotten: she would never take the children away, because she knew what a good parent Michelle was. That one act of human kindness, Michelle says, may well have saved her life.
Coming Out, Over and Over Again
There is something I find deeply moving about the particular courage it took to stay. Michelle could have started fresh somewhere else. Her colleagues suggested it. The logic was understandable enough: why put yourself through all of this? Her answer was simple and fierce. She refused to leave her home and her children because of other people’s ignorance.
So instead, she had the conversation every day, with patients who said nothing and simply never came back, with patients who told her what God thought of her, with patients who assumed that being trans meant she was promiscuous or dangerous or somehow a risk to them, and with the few who stayed and, in staying, became her foundation. She had a terrific practice before her transition: 5,000 patients, an associate dentist, two hygienists. By the time the dust settled, 80% of them had gone, and she had been pushed into bankruptcy. She rebuilt anyway.
“Trans people are probably some of the strongest people I have ever known. We have to be, to put up with all of this.”
She is right, and she is living proof of it. I find it hard to overstate what it would take to walk into that practice every morning, knowing what the day held, and do it again and again with grace.
What She Would Tell You
When the podcast hosts asked Michelle what she would say to any trans colleague who had not yet transitioned, she did not hesitate. Listen to your heart. Be true to yourself. Do not live a life of misery, and live the life you were meant to have. Her message to those who encounter a trans person was equally clear: extend a little kindness, because that is all it takes. There is a person behind every trans experience who has almost certainly already been through more than you will ever know. They are not asking you to understand everything. They are simply asking you to be decent.
Michelle also offered something I have not been able to stop thinking about. She asked one of the male podcast hosts to imagine going through the world with everyone calling him ma’am, addressing him as a woman, day after day. That is what it feels like, she said, to be mis-gendered. That is what trans people live with when the world refuses to see them. It is one of the clearest and most compassionate explanations I have ever come across, and it came so naturally to her, drawn from a lifetime of knowing exactly what that experience costs.
A Dentist Who Is Also a Lighthouse
Michelle describes herself as someone who rarely tells people she is trans now. She lives her life quietly and on her own terms. She is, as she told me herself, a pretty private person who has spent years living stealthily. So it matters enormously that she decided it was her turn to stand up and speak. She despises bullying, she has watched enough of it go unchallenged, and she felt it was time to say something.
I am so glad she did. Somewhere out there is a young trans dentist, or a trans student considering dentistry, or a trans person in any profession at all, wondering whether there is any version of this life that is worth fighting for. Now they can hear Michelle’s voice saying yes, there is, and she is living it.
The Dentistry Unmasked podcast has released both parts of her conversation, and I will link them below. If you work in healthcare in any field, please do listen. If you do not work in healthcare, please listen anyway, because this story belongs to all of us.
Michelle, if you are reading this: you did the right thing, and you have always done the right thing. Thank you for letting me share a piece of your story.
You can listen to Dr Michelle’s conversation on the Dentistry Unmasked podcast at the links below. To read more pieces like this one, visit www.helenwebberley.com.
PODCAST PART 1
PODCAST: PART 2
If this piece resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to read it. If you have a story like Michelle’s, I would love to hear from you at www.helenwebberley.com.