So another article hit the spotlight recently , and I commented with my own story on it from a different perspective. LADreamin commented about their own feelings and it made me think that maybe it would be worth reposting my comment as a larger article. So here is a slightly edited copy of that comment...
I am the child of a transgender parent. My father came out when I was 14, and transitioned when I was about 16. I currently have a good relationship with my father. Initially, I did not. In fact, I spent a solid 2 years with almost no contact at all.
You have every right to insist on being treated as your corrected gender by the people outside your life and family, using the name and pronouns appropriate to that gender. But inside your family, things get complicated. It took me those two years to come to terms with the change. Some parts of that relationship are forever damaged. My father transitioned at a really uncomfortable time in my life (puberty), and that left some permanent scars. It also made me really think about what gender and identity were. That last part has made me, I think, a better and more mature person. She was disappointed in how long it took, but was also patient. Eventually we started talking again, and there were ups and downs. There was a lot of talking about how our relationship had changed, and what it would like like now. We even talked about the title. Father.
At first she wanted to be called Mother. I already had a mother. And that term comes with a lot of connotations and emotions and other stuff all tied up together. I didn’t want to call her that. She suggest Aunt, but that felt to distant. I told her why I resisted these, and we talked about what being a Father means, and decided that it hadn’t really changed. So we stuck with that. It came up again when my sister, then I had children. What do we call her? We settled on Yaya. So my child has a Meemaw, a Lala, and a Yaya. For those not familiar with the term, in greek culture its a pretty common term for “Grandmother”. We are not Greek, so there really isn’t another person who would lay claim to that title, but its still appropriate. Plus, as my fiance says: “The Y makes sense. Shes still the one who gave you your Y”. And my son’s Y.
The take away from all this is that it takes time for people to cope with all this. My dad tried to push all this into our faces when he first came out, and it only pushed us away. And I pushed her away too because I couldn’t figure out how to cope with all this. Give it the time it needs, and stay open to patching things up. Me or my father could have closed down and shut the other out because of what we did, because we did hurt each other.
Give it time, and leave the door open to repair the relationship.
I sent the previous comment to Yaya, and am going to send this to her too. I hope she comments on it so others can learn from what we have been through. Not just my side, but hers too.