Transitioning With My Parent

Names have been changed.

When I was little, my family would call me my mother’s daughter. I would request to match outfits any time I could, and often followed my parent around the house in their much-too-big-for-me clothes that I snuck out of their closet. We frequently went on “girls’ dates” and shared a love of dance. When I was 4, I asked them to sign me up for ballet classes because I wanted to be a dancer, just like them. Even as a small child, they were my role model.

We lived with my dad and younger brother in the quiet suburb of Mendham, New Jersey, where it seemed there was not one anomaly among the straight, White, upper-middle-class families and large, upscale homes.

That is, until I was 7, and suddenly my community housed an outsider: my parent.

“Do you know what transgender means?” they asked me in the car on the way to gymnastics practice. 

I shook my head.

“It means that even though I was born female, I don’t feel like a female. So I’m going to transition to the gender that matches how I really feel inside.” 

“You want to be a boy? Why would you want to be a boy?”

My parent laughed. “Not exactly a boy, but trans-masculine. So, I guess a little bit like a boy.”

I don’t remember having a big reaction when my parent came out. Maybe I was still too young to fully understand that this news marked a big change in my life. Before then, I hadn’t ever met an LGBTQIA+ person. 

Still, I tried my best to understand my parent, who I still called “mom” at this point. The adjustment from “she” to “they” wasn’t too hard.

Feeling Anomalous

I inspected my cookie-cutter town, searching for another “anomaly” like my parent. To my dismay, I couldn’t find one.

One day in the 3rd grade, when my parent arrived to pick me up, my classmate Andrew sneered from behind me, “Your mom looks like a boy!”

“Shut up, Andrew,” I snapped. I looked at my parent walking closer to me, yet still out of earshot. I observed their short haircut, gray button-down shirt, and navy slacks, and realized that people could see what I saw. They are starting to look different, aren’t they? I thought. I didn’t see anything wrong with their new look, but it suddenly became apparent that other people did. 

Sometimes the curious, confused, and judgmental looks got to me. I didn’t want to be different. Living among so many seemingly perfect families, I wanted a perfect family too. 

I even suppressed the ways that I felt different. I didn’t tell anyone about playing “family” with my friend Kat, or how much I enjoyed kissing her, or that I never limited my crushes on Disney Channel stars to just the male actors.

No Longer a ‘Mother’s Daughter’

At 8 years old, the word “mom” disappeared from my vocabulary.

We had just gotten home from a long day of back-to-school shopping. My parent was especially cranky; I knew something was bothering them.

As they set the shopping bags down, I opened my mouth to ask if they were OK, but they quickly said, “Please don’t call me ‘mom’ anymore, it makes me uncomfortable. Call me Jordan.”

I stared at them and nodded. “OK. Jordan.”

“Fine,” my brother said without looking up from his phone.

That part was a bit harder for me to adjust to. At school, when my friends yelled out for their moms, it briefly stung. “Mom” became a ringing in my ears, a reminder of what my family once was.

I understood Jordan’s desire to feel comfortable, but I also started to understand that I would no longer have someone to teach me how to do makeup after we stopped going on “girls’ dates” to the nail salon. Thankfully, we still had dance. 

My dad tried to be as supportive as he could throughout my parent’s transition. It was difficult for him, though. As an immigrant from Russia, this was not how he expected his American Dream to unfold.

When I was 9, my parents’ divorce somehow caught me by surprise, even though they had been sleeping in different rooms for months and having many hushed conversations after bedtime. 

I didn’t know how to act or what the protocol was when one day your mother becomes not your mother anymore.

My younger brother’s and my sobs were drowned out with condolences like, “It’s not your fault,” and, “We both love you very much,” but it still felt like my family was splitting apart. I had trouble opening up to Jordan about how these big changes made me feel. We all probably could have benefitted from family therapy through this transition.

For the next two years, my parents took turns living in the house with us. My dad traveled every other week or so for work, and Jordan rented an apartment closer to New York City, where they were studying to get their PhD. Jordan and I started to drift apart, as I only saw them half the time.

When I was 11, Jordan started to give me their old, feminine clothes. As happy as I was to receive and be (almost) big enough to wear them, part of me felt sad. 

These hand-me-downs represented their past life, the life in which they were my mother. I remember one short-sleeved dress with navy and white stripes. I used to have one just like it when I was 5. It was one of our matching outfits, my own token of attachment to their past, feminine-presenting self.

Jordan continued to transition, and I tried to be a supportive daughter. I didn’t know how to act or what the protocol was when one day your mother becomes not your mother anymore, or how to respond when people begin to assume that they are your brother or uncle (my parent looks young for their age). But I knew how to be kind and supportive.

New York City Pride

In the spring of 5th grade, my parents decided that Jordan, my brother, and I would move to New York City in the fall of that year. My dad would stay in New Jersey, as their system of sharing the house had to end at some point. I was excited to move to the big city and naively thought that my dad and I would have the same relationship that we have always had.

In June, two months before our move, Jordan took my brother and me to our first New York City pride parade. In our small town there were no pride celebrations, not even any LGBTQIA+ flags.  But in Manhattan the streets were an explosion of color, celebration, chaos, and pride. We watched people pass by in floats, politicians riding in cars, drag queens and kings, and people carrying a variety of multicolored flags, each with their own colors and patterns. It was a rare day where we were all in a good mood.

Jordan’s sky-blue eyes danced with intrigue and excitement, reflecting the rainbow streets. They had been searching our town as well, longing for their community, and they’d found it in New York City.

“What’s that one mean?” I asked my parent, pointing to a pink, yellow, and cyan flag.

“That one is the pansexual flag. It means you can be attracted to anyone, regardless of their gender,” they explained.

I nodded, taking a mental note. Pansexual. It was the first time I had heard this word. I liked how it sounded and what it meant; I was drawn to it. “Pansexual” offered me a freedom that the “L” and the “B” in LGBTQIA+ could not. 

Though Mendham never had an annual Pride event when I lived there, they do now. To me it still feels like a narrow-minded community. In New York City, having the freedom of pansexuality means I feel free to be and love whoever I want.

Processing Another Transition

In August, we packed up and left Mendham.

For the first couple of months after we moved, I would stay with my dad in New Jersey every weekend. But I still missed him so much that, on top of not having a mom, I felt like I didn’t have a dad either, which tore me apart. I reflected back on these huge changes that were out of my control, including Jordan asking me not to call them “mom” anymore, and I felt angry at both of my parents.

Around this time, after returning from visiting my dad, I got into a heated argument with Jordan. I shouted something along the lines of, “The divorce was all because of you, you being trans! You’re the reason I don’t get to live with Dad anymore!” This was the first time that my anger had come out in this way.

“Alright, I’m done. We’re not having this discussion,” Jordan said through a fake smile betrayed by wrathful eyes. That smile told me that since I had said something disrespectful, I wasn’t allowed to say anything else.

It was a horrible thing to say, and I didn’t mean it. I think I only said it because I missed my dad. I loved living in the city and knew that my parents’ divorce wasn’t Jordan’s fault.

Later, we simply apologized to each other, but this wasn’t the last of our arguments—we fought a lot in the first few months of living apart from my dad.

I never rejected my parent for who they are. But I wouldn’t say I’ve always fully accepted them. When I was at my lowest, the angriest and most resentful of my new family dynamic, I would take out the photographs I kept hidden in my desk. They were photographs of four-year-old me, looking joyful and clueless, sitting next to my mother and father, happily married. I would look at these photographs and cry, my tears dropping inches away from the shiny film. I wished that I could go back to this time, when my parents were together and fulfilling traditional roles as mother and father, when everything was simpler. 

I became more secretive as a teenager and often processed my emotions quietly in my journal, partly to spite Jordan, and partly because I was afraid that their stubbornness mixed with my anger would cause yet another argument. Journaling my feelings helped me to keep them from clouding my love and admiration for my parent. It also allowed me to (occasionally) approach them calmly and have (rare) successful, productive conversations about my emotions.

The process wasn’t perfect, but we stepped closer to learning how to cut each other slack and respect each other’s feelings throughout this transition.

New Community

It’s hard to express the euphoria my parent felt moving to New York. For the first time ever, they were able to live and express themselves fully. They met people of their gender identity, friends who understood and shared their experiences, and a welcoming community that embraced them for their authentic self.

I also experienced the culture and diversity shift from Mendham to New York City. On a 6th grade field trip to the Whitney Museum, a boy in my class had his two moms come to chaperone our class. Nobody thought it was odd or asked him why he had two moms. He didn’t view his family as “different” or an “anomaly.” I realized that I wasn’t different or alone and neither was my parent.

I also made my first new friends: Jessie and Luca. They both had a unique, edgy sense of style and were the first kids I had ever met that identified as LGBTQIA+. With them, I felt able to open up and tell them things that I’d never dreamt of telling my friends in New Jersey, like, “I know I’m not straight.”

The clean slate of New York gave me the opportunity to let go of my bitter pining to have my family back the way it once was. I embraced being free of Mendham and the rigid expectations it held for Jordan and me, which helped me accept my parent completely, and the new shape of our family.

Jordan and my fights became few and far between. As our relationship improved, I gave up my secretive act around them. They returned to being the first person I wanted to tell news to. I may no longer be a mother’s daughter, but we’ve regained our close relationship.

I haven’t been able to get closer with my dad (I haven’t been to his house in New Jersey in months), but I still cherish the hour we share together every other week at one of our go-to restaurants. There’s now a looming possibility of him moving to Europe once I start college, so a timer has been placed on our father-daughter time.

Coming Out to Jordan

One day in 8th grade, seven years after my parent had come out to me, I approached them with full confidence and ease.

“Jordan, I have something to tell you,” I told them casually. We were both standing in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner.

“What’s up?” They asked, looking up at me from their position at the sink. 

“I’m pansexual,” I told them in my best “this is no big deal” voice. 

“Wow! That’s so great, thank you for sharing that with me!” they said excitedly as their arms wrapped around me in a hug.

I was almost sure they didn’t remember that moment, three years ago, when they explained to me what pansexual means.

But I remembered, so I said, “Of course. And thank you.”