Another upvote or seven for fastmail.com - I spent a little too much time spinning my personal domain hosting through Fastmail, Tutanota, Proton, mailbox.org… and then came back full circle to Fastmail.

Their shortcomings, if you’re concerned about privacy, are listed right above^^^ but I don’t think you can find a better email hosting provider for the pricing.

Having just had my first appointment for HRT, I can tell you that I did not start right off the bat with a GAHT provider - I started with my regular old general practitioner, who - by my research and switching to her - was already very LGBTQ+ friendly.

And then something unexpected happened: it turns out my GP studied under Dr. Jerrica Kirkley, one of the founders of Plume.

If you have the ability to throw a $99 charge on your card, your health savings account, etc, I would absolutely recommend at least an initial consultation through Plume. You can always get another opinion/option later.

Hey there Jasmine - this part resonated with me almost word-for-word:

I feel like I’m not meant to be a girl, that I am meant to be a boy, and that I shouldn’t transition because it’s against my cultures.

Literally this is what i read (from this article) that kicked my transition into gear:

As a child, I knew with unwavering conviction that I was a boy. I had boy parts, I did boy things, and everyone treated me like a boy. There was never any doubt or distress about my gender. I may not have fit in well with the other boys, but there were lots of other reasons for that. I still knew I was one of them.

and then a little later

In the years before realizing I was trans, my therapist and I would often debate the meaning of gender identity. I insisted I didn’t have one. She strongly suspected otherwise. Sure, I’d researched the effects of feminizing hormone therapy and loved everything about it, but that didn’t mean I was a woman. Yes, I’d been using a female persona online ever since the days of dial-up chat rooms, but again, that didn’t mean I was one. It was just a fantasy. Cross-dressing was just a fantasy. Wanting to be a woman does not make you a woman, I insisted. Trans women believe they are women; I believed I was a man. Therefore, I could not be trans.

In retrospect, refusing to begin a gender transition because I didn’t already feel like a woman was like refusing to take flying lessons because I didn’t already feel like a pilot.

I could not find a better way to express to anyone else why I never started this sooner.

it’s been eating away at my mental health. I need help.

Please get help. I don’t know where you are, what country you’re in, what your family/support situation is, but I assure you there is absolutely help for you out there. Feel free to DM me :-)

So what method do you use to backup everything?

Depends on what OS that server is running. Windows, Unraid, Linux, NAS (like Synology or QNAP), etc.

There are a bazillion different ways to back up your data but it almost always starts with “how is your data being hosted/served?”