The man who got to 55 before finally 'coming out' as a woman. And what a woman she is.

Lt Col. Cate McGregor is not the same person today as she was when she joined the army.

Born Malcolm McGregor, she endured decades of a private struggle – unsure of why she felt the way she did – before finally coming to realise that she was a transgendered person when she was in her 50s.

Her story was told on ABC’s Australian Story last night, with Cate to sharing her perspective on the most difficult decision of her life.

Cate says that throughout her life she felt, “conflicted”, describing the feeling as being “like an out of tune orchestra. It’s like some screeching that’s not right”.

She was serving as the speechwriter to the Chief of the Army David Morrison – Cate penned Morrison’s landmark speech last year, which went viral – when she realised that something had to change.

A few years before that speech, Cate had fallen into a deep depression, and went back into therapy, where she says she “started to disturb my subconscious”. After seeing a newspaper story one weekend about a transgendered woman, it clicked.

“At the next therapy session I went to, I just burst into tears and said, ‘It’s really simple. I’m a transsexual’.”

“We all wear masks. At some point you have to rip it off, and say, who am I?” Cate says.

But Cate had always known – on some level – that she was confused about her gender. Cate’s father died when she was eight, which had a profound effect on her family.

“The year after my father died I tried on some of my mother’s clothes,” Cate explains, “And she found out that it happened, and she was very very upset about it. I learned that it wasn’t a good idea.”

Cate, as Malcolm, went on to join the army, before working for both the Labor and Liberal parties.

“I was overachieving at one level, but my personal life was in turmoil,” Cate says of that time. “I guess I always had some level of ambiguity or tension about my gender. But in 1985, it reached a real intensity, and I sought out specialist medical help.”

She was identified as being transgender, and her doctor encouraged her to transition into becoming a woman. But eventually, Cate says that she ‘lost her nerve’.

“The job? Gone. Name your top ten friends? Gone. Your future in politics? Gone. I was terrified. I lost my nerve. I just spiralled into rally serious drug and alcohol abuse to deal with just batting on.”

After 9/11, and a career as a political commentator, McGregor re-joined the army.

“I was rebuilding my life,” Cate says. “And I met the woman I married. I met the love of my life. She is a fantastic human being. She is my soul mate.”

And then came the realisation.

The “feeling that I was meant to be a woman – conflicting with that was the grinding, crushing reality that I was a 55-year-old male.”

And so McGregor told her wife. She moved out of their home. She told the Chief of the Army, David Morrison.

His response was: “I’m with you.”

The support from friends and colleagues was greater than Cate had ever imagined.

She says that she has only faced a handful of offensive remarks about her decision, but has also allowed herself to be drawn into “unedifying spats” on social media. There are, of course, aspects of her previous life that Cate has lost. Cate and her wife have now separated, but remain good friends.

But Cate has a newfound contentment with life. People who knew her before, tell her that she’s “so light now”.

“It’s almost too exquisite being alive. I really mean it. It’s a wonderful thing to be alive, and to be me.”

You can watch Cate McGregor’s amazing episode of Australian Story here.  

Cate McGregor’s story is truly inspirational. Do you know anyone who has  ‘come out’ as a transgendered person?