Transgender.

I have not said a lot about our situation with having a Transgender child other than the one post. I now regret the title I gave it: "My child is gay/ transgender I am going to talk about it so you don't have to." What I meant by the title was that I am going to talk about it so you don't have to wonder any more. I am more than happy to talk about it with you. I will not have all the answers. I will not judge you if we disagree. I just hope that others love us enough to respect our decisions even if they would have gone a different way.

I had an eye opening experience yesterday and I hope that it will help some of you who may be struggling with this. Especially those who love us personally. A long story boils down to this... we had a crash in the bathroom with the shelf that holds all of Chandler's beauty supplies. Chandler couldn't immediately get into the bathroom to see what happened and was very upset. In the aftermath, what she said in her sobs nearly broke my heart as a mother. "Without that stuff (meaning make up and other beauty supplies) the world will see me as a boy again." The shear terror in her voice about being viewed as male was what threw me off. I obviously was aware she felt female and wanted others to see her that way but I didn't fully understand how much it bothered her to be viewed as male. Before going anywhere she does her hair and makeup and is getting so much more mature with her appearance. Yes Chandler has always enjoyed dressing up in costume and having some shock value in her appearance but being female is not about shock value; it is about being true to the person she is inside. Chandler has been much happier since fully presenting as female. Many of the emotional issues lessened or disappeared.

Here is what I want everyone to think about. When someone calls your baby a boy when it is a girl or vice versa most parents get offended to varying degrees. As a teenager can you imagine what you would have felt like if someone at school or a teacher or even a sales clerk refereed to you as the opposite gender. Very few of us would have emotionally been able to deal with that well. This is her life. All she wants is to be seen as she feels. This is who she is and how she has always felt.

I asked her a while back if she always knew she was female and with great insight and wisdom the answer was, "No, I have always felt the way I feel now. I always knew I was different. I didn't realize that why I was different was because I felt like a girl until I realized what that meant. The way I feel inside has not changed."

I hear others' concerns for Chandler on a daily basis. Believe me when I tell you that we have already thought about those and more. What I am learning and I hope others will understand is that the biggest fear among us as parents of a transgender child is not what will happen to them in the outside world but what they will do to themselves if they do not feel loved and accepted by those closest to them. Many transgender teens attempt suicide and many succeed. Many others become homeless because family's won't accept them. As far as I can tell most transgender teens do suffer from depression in varying degrees, and who wouldn't dealing with what they do.

There is still so much we don't understand about being transgender. All I can say for me is that from the time my kids were born I felt so strongly to love and encourage them no matter what they were interested in or wanted to be like. I am grateful now that I never tried to put them in a box. I can only imagine the heartbreak our family would be suffering from if Chandler had not felt accepted and loved at home.