An 84-year-old man who spent eight years living as a woman before finally detransitioning to being a man again has penned a book about his experience and decision to embrace his masculinity. Walt Heyer is 84 today and detransitioned over 40 years ago after living for years as a woman by the name of “Laura Jensen.” His book, Embracing God’s Design: Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity is co-authored with  Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, Director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council (FRC), and the two are speaking out about the overlooked psychological and physical trauma that impacts individuals struggling with gender dysphoria.

Sitting with Fox News Digital, Heyer discussed how as a young child, his grandmother made him a dress and “cross-dressed” him, leaning into his gender confusion. When he was molested by his father’s teenage brother, his sexual confusion continued. Bauwens stated it’s a common experience of trans-identifying individuals. “When you look at the data, around half of those who identify as transgender also report some type of abuse, whether it be emotional, psychological, physical, sexual abuse,” she said. She called the current treatment practice, where counselors now encourage individuals to embrace a new gender identity “criminal.” “Some of the reasons that are used to quickly get people ‘gender-affirming care,’ such as suicidality, that’s a very common experience of someone who’s had abuse. Self-harm is a very common experience of somebody who’s abused,” she added.

Heyer’s own battle with his identity would lead him to taking cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgery in his 40s, all at the behest of his therapists. Despite all the changes he’d made, however, Heyer had to accept it was still an illusion. “After identifying as a woman for eight years, I had to accept that the magical transformation doctors had promised had not occurred. Even after years of ingesting female hormones and undergoing sex change surgery, I was still a man. No doctor using hormones and surgery has ever successfully achieved a change in a patient’s biological sex,” he told FRC.

It was with the help of Christian counselors and God “redeeming and restoring his life” that Heyer was able to deal with alcoholism and trauma. He now runs a ministry to help others and serves as a Senior Fellow for FRC. His ministry helps people to focus on the things that have made them hate themselves. “When we dive into this discussion, they peel back the issues, and we look back, and we find out that they were sexually abused and emotionally abused, physically abused. They were abandoned. They were in foster care,” he told Fox.

Detransition stories have become increasingly more common as former trans men and woman share their stories of being affirmed into a new gender without any of their mental health issues being addressed. Chloe Cole has made a name for herself on social media as she shared how she was medically transitioned from the ages of 13 to 16. At the age of 14, she had a double mastectomy. She now speaks out against the medical community that rushed her through the process. Bauwens said the trans movement is about more than just gender. “It’s actually about erasing the very image of God and family, because family is the first place that we learn safety, security, and there are attributes of male and female that God has uniquely embedded in our DNA, in our design,” she said. “And when you erase those or attempt to erase those, you’re erasing an aspect of the very heart and nature of God.”