"My earliest images did not involve gender at all as much as they involved emotion. I felt not as a boy feels, but as I believe a girl thinks and feels. Snails and puppy dog tails held little fascination for me. I much preferred sugar and spice and everything nice. Why couldn't people see that?" Zenker reads from her recently published book "TransMontana."

Zenker says her journey as a transgender was a physical and spiritual one.

"That's been my experience. Here in Helena, moving from my job, giving up my job, my home, my family, my marriage and starting all over here much like a little girl in the world, all over," Zenker says.

She hopes her story will inspire others.

"There are some people who perhaps have not realized that they likely have somebody from the LGBT [lesbian,gay,bi-sexual & transgender] community who are in their life, who are in their world, their circle of friends, their family," Zenker says. "They just don't know what that person is going through. I want to impart on them a sense of humanity."

She says everybody matters and that's the message of her book.

You can purchase the electronic version of Roberta Zenker's book on Amazon.com.