It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on this blog, and I have had this nagging feeling I need to write about the experience that I’ve been going through. Last December, my oldest child (10 years old at the time) came out to me as non-binary, and then a few months later as transgender. Since I have a brother who is gay, I had planned out the speech I would give if any of my children were to come out to me: “I love you no matter what.” I was prepared for the possibility that one of my kids could be gay, but I hadn’t considered one of them could be non-binary or transgender. It hadn’t crossed my mind, to be honest. I don’t know anyone close to me who is openly non-binary or transgender. The only person I know who is transgender I haven’t seen in twenty years, and she came out within the last five years. So I was initially surprised because I hadn’t even considered the possibility. Lucky for me, my speech for a potential gay child still fits, because I love my child no matter what.

I spoke with my child a lot about his experience and started to see all the signs that were there that I hadn’t recognized as signs until he came out. I researched as much as I could because, like most cisgender males who grew up in a bubble in Utah, I knew basically nothing about non-binary and transgender people. As time went on, he wanted to start using masculine pronouns at home and at school. I slipped up a lot more in the beginning but I corrected myself until it became a habit.

I struggled in the beginning to accept it, even though I’ve long supported LGBTQ+ causes, attended Pride events, donated to causes, flown a pride flag in front of my house, etc. I struggled not because I felt differently about my child or because I have transphobia, but because I was blindsided and I was worried about how the world would treat my child. I had read the headlines and fearmongering and seen the political posturing around the topic, and my fears for my child’s safety didn’t take long to be founded concerns. As he started having his friends at school use masculine pronouns, the word started to get out to classmates that my child, who was assigned female at birth, was now asking for different pronouns to be used. The harassment started. At first, it was just comments like, “But you know you’re a girl, right?” but soon escalated to anonymous letters from classmates telling him he’s a horrible person, to a letter threatening others not to be friends or associate with my child anymore “before it gets violent”.

Thankfully, the principal in the school refused to tolerate threats of violence and sexual harassment, and called kids to his office and called parents and reported it to the school district, which then got involved. I pulled him out of school and met with the principal and said I wouldn’t bring my child back until he assured me the school was a safe place for him. I’m grateful to the other teachers in the grade who were brought into the conversation so they could watch for any continuing bullying and harassment. At that point, the cat was out of the bag and the harassment stopped. My child was living authentically at home and at school, but the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (with a few exceptions) were still in the dark.

From the beginning, I told my child that it was up to him how and when he wanted to come out to the family. I said if he wanted help coming out to others I would help him or do it for him, but only with his permission. I wanted to respect his autonomy as an individual to make that decision. The number one rule when discussing sexuality is it’s never okay to out somebody without their permission. I wanted to respect that. At first, he wasn’t ready for his extended family to know, so my wife and I tried our best to respect that. It’s hard after you’ve switched your vocabulary in how you refer to someone with different pronouns and you’ve finally gotten into the habit and then find yourself speaking to people who don’t know he’s socially transitioned. It gets messy.

After school got out and I didn’t have to worry about how other kids treated my child, there was a brief period of comfort. At home, I knew my child was supported, safe, and free to live authentically. But as time went on it became clearer and clearer that the extended family needed to know what we had known for six months, and my child became more aware of that inevitability as well. It was time for everyone else to know. I asked him how he wanted to come out to everyone else, and he said he felt more comfortable if my wife and I came out for him. I’m glad that we did because we were able to protect him from a lot of pain and heartache.

From where I am now, that period when just our little family knew (and with my child’s permission, a few safe family members we knew would be supportive) was a really happy and calm time. I was working on myself and coming to terms with everything, including mourning the loss of my expectations, learning how to best support my child, learning from podcasts and peer-reviewed articles what to do and not do, connecting with community resources like the Pride Center, volunteering with LGBTQ+ groups and attending marches and rallies with my child, etc. It really brought our little family closer together as we rallied behind him and showed him that he has our unconditional love and support. For me, that was a time of hope, because as I saw my child thriving with self-acceptance and self-love, I felt like when the time came for everyone else to know, they’d easily see how well he was doing and be able to put aside any biases or conditioned responses they might initially have. I thought, if they could just see him the way we see him, they’ll love and accept him the way we love him. Yes, in the back of my mind, I knew we would be met with some level of resistance from some family members, but I was very encouraged by how he blossomed.

How do you prepare to be traumatized? I don’t know if there is a good way to prepare for that. Coming from large Mormon families, my wife and I had a lot of people to tell. Everyone in our families is grown and mostly married with children of their own, so I spent countless hours thinking and writing out my thoughts and trying to figure out the best way to scale this enormous mountain. Ultimately, I decided I would write an email. I know, it seems like a bit of a cop-out. But my reasons were pretty straightforward. There were just too many people to tell. Not everyone in the family lives in Utah, and I wanted everyone to know at the same time so that the news came from us and not someone else. I didn’t want to spend days on the phone or in person arguing with family about why my child still deserves love and respect. We could rip the band-aid off all at once and then give extra time and care to those who would need us to hold their hand through this paradigm-shattering news.

I took several days drafting an email, re-writing it, re-writing it, and re-writing it. I wanted to balance it with information we had learned while encouraging family members to do the right thing without being too preachy or soapboxy. I also compiled into a large PDF file a lot of resources that I had found helpful when learning about transgender people to help normalize their existence and to show that just by knowing my child is a little different than they had previously thought didn’t change anything about their relationship with him. I stressed some truly alarming statistics as well, the main one being that a recent study found that 9/10 trans youth will attempt suicide before the age of 18 if they do not have supportive family. I made my plea to help us keep him safe from becoming a statistic. From one parent to another, how far would you go to protect your child from feeling that suicide is the only option to end their pain?

The only thing that we were asking our families in conjunction with this announcement was simple: please change three words in your vocabulary when speaking about him. Those words are he, him, and to call him by a nickname that we’d called him for years that he wanted to be called instead of his birth name. After finally settling on a final draft, we held our breaths and sent it out to both sides of the family.

My parents were really confused and didn’t quite understand what transgender meant and had a lot of questions. My brothers and sisters (except one, his wife spoke on his behalf) reached out, and though most of them didn’t fully understand, they said they love our family and would support us and use masculine pronouns. I was floored. I didn’t expect as much support as I received from them. I’m so grateful for their willingness to put aside whatever personal beliefs and ideas they have for the sake of maintaining a good relationship with us. After a long, emotional conversation with my parents, they said they weren’t sure if they could make the jump to masculine pronouns right away, but that they were willing to try and they would use the nickname rather than his birth name. It wasn’t an easy conversation, but ultimately a good one. They have been trying as best they know how, and that’s all I could have hoped for. We’ve only had good, safe interactions with them since.

My in-laws have been a different story. My wife’s parents were scared and angry because Tucker Carlson warned them all about transgender people. And how could we let our kids be on social media where they could be brainwashed by the gay agenda? As if that’s how it works.

I’ll preface the following description of our interactions with this some context. My wife and I have been married for five years, and although we don’t have any children together, we have children from our previous marriages. I can’t help but wonder if I’d been in the family longer, or if we had a child together who was transgender if that would make a difference to how we’ve been treated by some of her family since my child’s coming out. In the time I’ve been in the family, we’ve gone on many camping trips and vacations with my wife’s parents, siblings, and their families. For the most part, I have good relationships with them. There is somewhat of a sense of being a second-class member of the family since we don’t go to church, but otherwise, it’s been good and they’ve liked me well enough (with one clear exception).

My brother-in-law fired back a very lengthy reply-all email. The gist of it was our family was dead to him and if he never saw us again it would be too soon. He also ranted about how we’re bad parents, we’re stupid liberal sheep, and my child would be cisgender if we attended church (he would never use the word ‘cisgender’, but that was his point). Of all the family, we figured he’d be the least supportive, but we never imagined he’d go as far as he did in insulting and berating us. In the following months we have not heard from or made any attempts to communicate with him; we didn’t even dignify his email with a response.

The ironic thing is that the person who took the strongest position against us knows us the least. He and his family live in another state, and visit Utah very infrequently. When they do visit, he hardly ever spoke to me anyway. I could probably count on one hand how many times we’ve actually spoken together. Even when my wife was married to her former husband she didn’t see him much, so most of her adulthood she hasn’t had much of a relationship with him. After I married his sister, we were briefly friends on social media for about two weeks and then he deleted me because I’m a brainwashed liberal apostate moron and he’s an enlightened racist homophobic piece of shit who cheats on his wife, so he’s clearly qualified to call us to repentance for not going to the same church as he does. Unfortunately, he’s the favorite child in the family, his parents put him up on a pedestal and everything he touches turns to gold (in their minds). He is also very vocal and has a lot of influence over both his parents and his siblings. To make matters worse, he’s moving back to Utah in the new year for the first time in over a decade. He will soon be living within a mile of our house which means he will be close to his parent’s house. He will be around the family way more than he has been for a decade, which means we will be around the family even less than we are now. And with being here, he will have even more influence over his parents and siblings to spread his bullshit conspiracy theories, doomsday-prepping nonsense, fascistic political views, and hateful homophobic and transphobic ideologies. Fuck that guy.

My mother and father-in-law responded saying the email was very concerning and they wanted to invite us over for the first of several heated and frustrating conversations with them. I’m not sure if they have ever asked us any questions about my child or even about us during these conversations. Each conversation has been about them drawing lines in the sand and making sure we understand that we do not have their support: they will not use masculine pronouns because it’s against their religion (despite my parents being of the same religion and being supportive). They even read the Proclamation to the World on Families at us as if we didn’t already know what it said. My wife shocked them by referring to that proclamation as a “hate document”. But she’s right, it is. It was written in large part by a homophobic law professor at BYU and submitted by the Mormon church as an amicus brief in a hearing to determine whether or not gay people could marry each other in the state of Hawaii in the 1990’s. Then it was retroactively deemed as revelation to the prophet and plastered on every Mormon’s living room wall. But I digress.

To make things worse during the fallout, my mother-in-law invited my niece over for a one-on-one chat. Her mom found out and asked my mother-in-law (MIL) what it was she was going to be talking about? My MIL said that she wanted to meet with all of the grandkids individually to warn them about “the gay agenda”, and to make it clear that they do not support LGBTQ+ or their allies who support them, refuse to change people’s pronouns from how “God made them”, and to reinforce the belief that LGBTQ+ people and allies are lead by Satan. So my wife and I went over and stated that we’re out of the family if they do that. That would alienate my child from his cousins who were largely unphased by the revelation of him being transgender. My MIL said no it doesn’t alienate him, it just makes it clear to the grandkids that their grandparents are following the prophet. We responded that if they tell the grandkids they’re against LGBTQ+ people, it sends the message that they too should be against them. And their little minds will not have to search far for the only LGBTQ+ people in their lives: their uncle and my child. If grandma says they’re bad, they need to exercise caution whenever they’re around them. I demanded to know if my MIL really thinks her daughter and I are evil people? Does she really think my child is evil? Does she really think her bisexual son is evil? By the end of the conversation, she said she wouldn’t meet with the grandkids after all, but would hold to her beliefs. I told her I don’t care if she thinks transgenderism is made up, or is mental illness, deceit from Satan, or anything else. If she wants to believe that, that’s fine. But keep it to herself: don’t poison others against us. Let them make up their own minds if we’re “evil” or not.

Needless to say, we left those conversations feeling completely rejected by them and traumatized by their reactions to us coming out on behalf of my child. As an adult and a parent, I have shielded him from those conversations. He hasn’t been present, doesn’t know the extent of the conversations, and hasn’t felt the sting of their hateful words. All he knows is that grandma and grandpa are doing the best they can but they’re struggling. My wife and I have made a conscious effort to distance ourselves more than ever before which is hard because they live less than half a mile away from us (and they’re our landlords, we rent a house from them). We used to go over once or twice a week to visit and hang out with my wife’s siblings, or her parents would swing by our house for a visit or to take the kids to 7 Eleven for a Slurpee. Since the first painful conversation, there have been weeks that go by that we do not visit, and they’re finally starting to notice we don’t come around as much. And often times when we do, my trans child doesn’t come with us. Usually of his own choice, he’s in middle school now and has friends and other things more exciting going on, but I definitely don’t tell him he has to go over with us. And if you’re wondering how middle school is going for him, so far it’s been far better than I could have ever hoped for. He has lots of really supportive and understanding friends, most of his teachers call him by the name he wants to be called by, he’s happy and confident and doing well socially, academically, and emotionally, and every day he’s more and more unapologetically himself. I couldn’t be more proud of him.

I’m not doing so good, though. After one particularly difficult conversation with my in-laws, we left their house and I immediately had a full-on panic attack. I’ve only ever had a panic attack twice before this, and they paled in comparison. The first panic attack I ever had was almost 15 years ago. I was newly married to my first wife, in college, completely broke. Her mom was pressuring her to start popping out the grandkids telling her shit like, “The prophet says not to wait to have children,” “The Lord will bless you for keeping his commandments,” “There is never a convenient time to have children,” that only served her interest in having more grandkids. My ex-wife felt the pressure and started pressuring me. It came to a head one night when she was angry that I didn’t want to start having kids, and I had a panic attack. We could barely afford rent, had no health insurance, no savings, and I had years ahead of me of college that I didn’t know how I was going to pay for. Throwing a child into the mix seemed like a death wish. The second time I had a panic attack was just a few short years later when my ex-wife confessed some of her secret activities to me. That’s when I realized what I was experiencing was a panic attack, and that I’d had a milder one before.

Fast forward ten years, and I was hyperventilating and screaming uncontrollably in the car, gripping the dashboard with one hand and the “oh shit handle” with my other. My sympathetic wife helpless in the driver’s seat asking me, “What’s going on? What’s happening? Are you okay? WHAT IS HAPPENING?” For those lucky ones out there who have never experienced an intense panic attack, I don’t know quite how to describe it. It’s like having an emotional heart attack? My in-laws were being particularly difficult that day and I broke down and sobbed in front of them. They just weren’t hearing us at all, not even trying to understand us. I was heartbroken that such devoted so-called Christians could take such a narrow-minded view of life and how to treat others. I was embarrassed and trying to regain my composure when we said goodbye, and when we walked to our car to leave my heart was heavy with the rejection I was feeling from not being heard, anger from being preached at, fear that they would kick us out of the house we rent from them and force us to move away from my child’s amazingly supportive friends. You can only hold in so much despair before it erupts violently like a volcano from deep inside your chest.

Realizing it’s a panic attack immediately turns the volume down on the symptoms. At first I thought I was going to die. I’d lost control of myself, why couldn’t I stop screaming? Why couldn’t I get enough air? My vision was getting blurry and narrowing into a tunnel. Between gasping breaths and uncontrollable full-throated spasming screams, I somehow gained the presence of mind that this was a panic attack. Bigger than I’d ever experienced, but it was only a panic attack. I somehow gasped out a reassurance to my wife that this was a panic attack and it would pass eventually, please get me home.

In the months following telling our families, my depression symptoms have gotten really bad again. Not quite as bad as I’ve experienced during other difficult times in my life, but bad enough that it affects me at home and at work. Sometimes I feel like I have to drag myself to work or to the sink to do dishes. Everything around me is messy and I seem incapable of cleaning it up. My sleep cycles are inconsistent and I wake several times during the night with difficulty falling back asleep. My diet sucks. I went back on Prozac but it wasn’t enough, then I stopped taking it because of the symptoms. I need therapy but money has been tight. I’ve been focusing on my spiritual practice and meditation which definitely helps but isn’t a cure-all.

So what the hell does any of this have to do with acceptance? I had a realization today while listening to one of my favorite Western Buddhists, Jack Kornfield. There are a few Buddhist concepts that he spoke about that really resonated with me. One is the concept of clinging or grasping. What is meant by that, is when you are resistant to change you hold tight to a desire or belief or idea. Clinging or grasping causes discomfort, suffering, or unpleasantness. To free yourself from that suffering you have to let go. It’s as if life is a rope being pulled in one direction, and you say “I don’t want things to change from how they are, I’m comfortable here,” and you grab onto the rope and dig in your heels. When you grab the rope and try and stay in the same spot, maybe you stay in place for a while but inevitably you get rope burn. The only constant in life is change.

In Buddhism and Taoism they teach that things are always in motion and nothing is permanent. You never stand in the same river twice because the water that touches your leg moves on down the hill. You never meet the same person twice because the experiences we have in between are shaping us into the person we’re becoming. What I realized today is that I’ve been clinging onto or grasping for things. I grasp for that calm, happy time when just my little family knew my child is transgender: when there was more harmony in our extended families, when I felt calm and at peace most of the time.

What I realized today is that it’s the clinging, grasping, and resisting that is causing my distress and adding fuel to my depression. I can’t control how my in-laws react or behave; wishing they behaved differently is clinging to a desire. I can’t prevent my asshole brother-in-law from moving here; wishing he wasn’t is clinging to a desire. That happy peaceful time we enjoyed together may never return; wishing it would is clinging to a desire. We may have to relocate to get the distance we desperately need; wishing there was an easier or quicker solution is clinging to a desire. What I need to do is arrive at acceptance for the things that I cannot control and let go of my desire for how I wish they were. I can see that the reason my in-laws are struggling is because they too cling to desires: that we went to church, that my child was cisgender, etc. It’s the clinging to the desire or wishing things were different that causes the suffering.

All anyone can do is change themself. Act on the things you can control, and accept the things you can’t. It’s easier said than done, but resisting the way things are will always cause you rope burn. The sturdy oak breaks by resisting the pounding wind, but the willow bends easily until the wind subsides. As the Borg from Star Trek say, “Resistance is futile.”