In 2013, those who entered Chris Beck's LinkedIn profile saw a photo of a brown-haired woman, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, posing smiling in front of the United States of America flag. "I take off all my disguises and let the world see my true identity as a woman," she wrote. Chris had now become Kristin.
For many years Kristin struggled with her demons and her religious family. From the age of 5 she felt like a girl, she loved her brothers' dresses and tights. But he also had a dream: to pursue a career in the army. And then it was unthinkable to be gay and serve in the US armed forces.
She followed the career path she wanted, got married twice, and at almost 50 felt she had to live in the body she wanted, with the look that made her feel like herself, without limitations or hiding. And he did…
Chris Beck served 20 years in the elite unit of the US Navy. As a frogman he lived a hard, often violent life. He took part in 13 combat missions, from the Pacific Ocean to the Middle East, including the Battle of Basra in 2003 alongside British commandos.
As a member of Navy Seals Select Team 6, Chris joined Operation Jeronimo on May 2, during which Special Forces USA They stormed the residence of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killed him.
His bravery on the battlefield earned him the Bronze Medal of Valor and the Purple Heart, awarded to those wounded in the line of duty.
Chris didn't just mask his identity in his professional life. He did the same in his personal one. "I was trying to live three lives," he told the BBC. “I had a secret life with my female identity, I had a secret life with the Seals, and I had my life at home, where I had to show certain things to my husband, kids and friends. Most people knew me in bits and pieces, nobody really knew me."
Chris was married twice. From his first marriage in his 20s to Shelly he had two sons. He divorced and remarried Samantha, but his marriage was short-lived.
Loyalty, integrity and trust were some of the unshakable values of the Navy Seals code and Chris always believed that if he revealed that he was transsexual would be considered a traitor to those values.
In 2011 he retired and that's when he revealed who he really was. But what irony! The revelation came as a US appeals court ordered the lifting of a ban on gay men and women serving in the US military. Barack Obama signed a law ending the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
In 2013 Kristin -now- started hormone therapy, preparing herself for gender reassignment surgery.
The reveal with the LinkedIn photo change had a positive response from her special forces brothers, dispelling her fears and inhibitions. "Many have said to me, 'You have been on the battlefield for 20 years and you have done a very good job. I can't understand in the slightest what you're going through, but I support you 100%,'' she said.
As Chris he had seen much death, much blackness, fought the demons of loss on the battlefields. As he had said he was trying to overcome it with "beers, machines and more beers". She revealed that being a woman made her feel much better, and her post-traumatic stress symptoms improved. "I'm not so angry anymore, I sleep better because I'm happy. So many people said to me 'Kris for the first time in my life I see you smile'".
In 2013, Kristin's life was turned into a book. Psychologist Anne Speckhard, of Georgetown University School of Medicine, was doing a study on the mechanisms that special forces members used to cope with the intense demands of the job, and Kristin agreed to help her. They met at a bar with Chris waiting for Speckhard to appear in front of her as Kristin. A few hours of conversation were enough to convince the psychologist that Kristin's story was worth making a book.
Written in the third person, "Warrior Princess" (original title: Warrior Princess: A US Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender) received rave reviews for the truth it conveyed.
"I don't believe the soul has a gender, but the new path makes my soul whole and happy... I hope my journey sheds some light on the human experience and much more helps heal the socio-religious dogma of a purely binary gender" Kristin said in the book.
In 2015 the book was followed by the CNN documentary "Lady Valor".
Kristin is fighting against the executive order signed by current US President Donald Trump barring transgender people from military service.
As he had characteristically said in the past: "The army must overcome gender, look at people as individuals, not as male and female and understand that I can do my job well. […] Nobody is perfect. I'm not Conan the Barbarian, and I'm not Barbie. We are all different."