Video by Gillian Laub, text by Eugene Reznick

Nikki was born Niko. A biological boy at birth, she began at the age of 10 the complicated transition to becoming girl. With the utmost support of her family and friends, two years later, she is living happily as the person she always knew herself to be — singing, acting and dancing, often draped in pink.

“It’s always an honor when someone is open and wants to share their life in such an intimate way under the gaze of a camera,” Laub tells TIME, “so the minute the editor told me about Nikki, I said of course I would love to do it.”

“Nikki told me she spent the first ten years of her life feeling like she was in the wrong body, almost betrayed by it,” she says. “After the transition, she finally felt happy, safe and proud in her body. I wanted to convey the new feeling of freedom and liberation.”

“Although this story ultimately is a very happy ending,” Laub says, “the family went through years of heartache and stress. They lived with a secret that they all struggled with for very long. The reason they were sharing their story publicly is because they wished they had known sooner that this was actually something many families deal with; they wouldn’t have had so many years of worry and confusion.”

See the full article by Eugene Reznick here