Being Transparent

Introduction

This is a personal story – my story about being the parent of a trans woman. My intention is to share a very real story about the evolution of acceptance. My hope is to impact others by humanizing a topic that headlines would tell us is controversial. This is not the first iteration of this story. Because I am new to this topic, my first draft was not nearly as compassionate as I had wanted it to be. Message sent is not always message received and I was humbled by my kids’ response to the first draft. I have rewritten this to reflect a more concise depiction of this journey we are on. Personal growth is very important to me, so I take pride in being open-minded and willing to hear all sides.

Why Writing This Story Matters to Me

For most of my adult life, I have actively worked to better myself as a human. Refusing to be a victim of circumstance or a victim of my past, I do my best to allow room for other perspectives. Curiosity is something I value tremendously. When something seems to challenge my ideals, I take time to reflect and be introspective. To avoid blame, the focus is taken inward. When something happens to shake up my strongly held ideas of what is real to me, it can be challenging to hold steady, remain grounded, and simply get curious. This is a story about being faced with that very challenge and ultimately coming to a place of unconditional love and compassion.

I have always had a very strong belief that everything unfolds in our lives for our highest good. If we can find growth in our own adversity, we help everyone around us to grow. Parents have the tough job of modeling this for their children; the job of staying grounded, allowing room for other perspectives, and getting curious even if they feel their world has been turned upside down. Even if they realize they were attached to an outcome that ceased to exist.

Understanding vs. Compassion

As a parent, when your child is faced with issues that feel insurmountable to them, we are supposed to deliver messages of comfort. Messages that say, “I understand”. When our youngest child came out as trans, I could not use those words of comfort; it would have been disingenuous – I did not understand what it meant to be trans. That may sound harsh, but it is true. I can never truly understand being trans because I have not lived it myself. However, I may not understand it exactly, but compassion for my child as a person – as a soul, that compassion was something I understood perfectly. No one wants their child to suffer or feel misunderstood. I changed my words to “I see you; I love you and I accept you.”

Perspectives Take Time to Shift

Complete acceptance did not happen overnight; this was a journey. She did not come out and magically everything was just ok. I did not feel ok. Despite raising our kids to know we accept them no matter what, this seemed to fall out of the clear blue sky. Admittedly, the hardest part of acceptance was that I never saw any suffering. On the contrary, as we were raising them, I only saw well-adjusted kids who were funny and seemed to have a good understanding of themselves in the world. When it came our youngest specifically, I saw a happy young adult who was newly married only a few years out of high school to their high school sweetheart. About a year before coming out as trans, they became parents.

From our perspective, we had no idea of the turmoil that was happening beneath the surface. As far as we could tell, they were the perfect couple who were starting their lives together. My husband officiated the wedding and you could see it in their eyes, they had so much love for each other. Back then, she was a welder and working to get into machining. She would have been considered “a man’s man” who loved metal work, the history of guns, competitive shooting and making projectile weapons just for fun. There was not even the slightest hint of any struggling until it was all in hindsight.

How Her Truth Emerged

Her desire to transition was revealed to us as a trickle which made it easy to be in denial or just ignore it and hope everything would just return to “normal”. Now, it is hard not to look back and feel shame for wanting that. The first inkling of her pain and her desire to change that pain was a deep and very private conversation we had late on a Halloween night. My husband had gone to bed, and I stayed up late with the newlyweds; they had been married just over two years at this point and our grandson was 18 months old. Truths began to emerge that I was not sure how to reconcile. From what I could gather, they were each heading in different directions but fully supportive of one another. At the time, this new information devastated me. In retrospect, I realize I was devastated because I truly thought they would be together forever. I did not want anything to interrupt their growing family. There was an outcome, a future for them, that I had in mind, and it became very clear that night, that the future I was attached to was not going to happen.

Time passed and as details began to unfurl, it became clear that they were each helping one another to peel away layers of conditioning to discover who they really were underneath. This was a mutual effort. Later time would reveal that there were no victims in this; ultimately, they helped each other to learn and to grow. It was not an easy road for anyone involved but it was their truth, and they were living it. It was brave – it is brave. Ultimately, I was glad they had each other to work through this but back then, it still felt like a loss.

Mourning, Guilt and Worry

For a while, I longed for things to be “normal”. I mourned the loss of a son – I mourned the loss of what could have been for them as family and the loss of a daughter-in-law. To make it all worse, I had so much guilt for mourning at all! My thoughts at the time were, “if I am mourning the loss of a son, then am I not truly accepting my new daughter? “ I knew I had to work through all of these thoughts and try to make sense of my feelings. My husband and I both had to work through it together. We have always kept the lines of communication open with her and with each other, but that didn’t help mitigate my fears. This was not going to be an easy road for her – I feared for her safety and, honestly, how she would be received by the world. All we want for our kids is for them to feel safe and to thrive. Her transition ignited so much fear inside of me that I had to try every day not to let it blaze out of control.

Your first duty as a mother is to protect your kids. From my point of view, my new daughter was going to be vulnerable to the ignorant people of the world who have no idea what a beautiful soul she truly is. They will not be able to see beyond the exterior. They will not have the privilege of knowing her and her heart. Intuitively, I know that worrying is an unproductive use of my time and energy; however, that is still the hardest part. You never, ever want your kids to be seen as anything other than who they truly are so I would feel on edge and protective around strangers. I still get nervous that people will not be kind to her and my instinct is to protect her. After all, people tend to fear that which they cannot understand and, although, her gender and choices have nothing to do with strangers, some of them will lash out. Those thoughts can render me helpless since all I want is for her to be safe.

Working Through Worry

My mother told me a long time ago that worrying never ends as a mom. Being the mother of a trans-woman adds to the complexities of this topic. Add to the mix everyone who has ever known her. Since everyone involved is on their own timeline of acceptance, it can feel sticky at times. When she is meeting people from her past for the first time as herself, I can sense her discomfort, and I want to protect her. People usually surprise me and for the most part they can be compassionate and kind. They usually see the same kind-hearted, funny person she has always been. This experience has been enlightening and, in some cases, it has restored my faith in people. Being aware of when my worrying is hindering our growth as a family has been instrumental in how far we have come.

Seeing Things in a New Light

My daughter and I recently had a conversation about how I never saw her struggle until she came out as trans, and I believe that was where I got hung up. It was difficult to accept an outcome for her that involved so much of (what seemed like) an uphill battle. Coming to this conclusion has helped her and I work things out in an entirely new light. She has told me that she would not trade this for the world. She has assured me that her struggles are universal not just because she is trans. She told me just today that, although her life is difficult now, coming out has expanded her opportunities for happiness. I respect that and I admit that it is refreshing to hear these words from her. For her to be happy as herself makes everyone who knows her happy as well.  

Where we are Now

It has been almost four years since she came out as trans. We are learning about each other as her transition unfolds. As parents, we are getting to know our new daughter as she is getting to know herself. Each day gets easier and, as she builds community, we worry less. I attribute our progress to open communication and our commitment to grow from this. It also helps to have a grandchild who reminds all of us of the pure innocence we are born with before anything is imprinted upon us. Before anything is judged as “controversial” – as a kid, he just knows he loves his mama. With all the emotions we have felt along the way, the easiest one to reconcile is love. We have so much love in our hearts for her and that transcends everything else.

What I have learned from all of this is that if everything is viewed through the lens of compassion and love, it is easy to accept what we do not truly understand. We do not need to understand. We just need to see each other as the beautiful souls that we are. No one should have to hide in the shadows in pain when there is so much more they can offer the world when allowed to shine their light and live in their truth.