Lori Zink

Guest columnist

My transgender son started coming out at the age of 18. That is to say, he began revealing his core identity as male despite having been raised as female. Blindsided, his dad and I suspected this was just another stage in his ongoing search for identity.

We told him: “We will always love you. What we want for you, more than anything in the world, is to be happy living as your authentic self.” Our hearts were in the right place. Our minds needed more time to catch up.

Our next shock came in discovering that we didn’t have time. His ship had already set sail. We could either stand on shore waving goodbye or swim out and climb aboard.

We plunged into grief over what we assumed was his abrupt burial of all our mother-daughter and father-daughter memories. (We were wrong about that.) We agonized: Would the child we’d raised as our daughter be safe as a young adult in the world of men? Would he find places to live, work and travel where he'd be accepted and respected? Would he have someone to love who'd love him back? Could he handle all the unknowns ahead? Could we?

We were discovering all over again that parenting isn't about knowing the answers. It's about living the questions — even ones we’d never imagined asking.

Online research opened our eyes to the hazards faced by transgender people whose identity isn’t recognized and respected. Depression. Anxiety. Eating disorders. Self-harm. Suicidal thoughts and acts. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that these risks are much higher when young people lack family and community support for being transgender.

For months until he felt safe coming out to everyone, we did the gender-bending dance of addressing our son by his new name and pronouns, while switching to his original name and pronouns with family and friends. We came close to accidentally outing him more times than he’ll ever know.

I found refuge in a support group with other parents of transgender children, from all walks of life. Newcomers bring their skepticism, confusion or fear, along with whatever else is keeping them awake at night. Long-timers bring their candor, along with whatever they're struggling with or celebrating. We're free to feel anything and to say (or not say) anything, without having to explain anything.

Thanks in part to them, I've gained a wide-angle perspective on how to support our son's growth while taking care of myself. He's got his journey; I've got mine.

With his newfound strength of self, our son is more at ease than he has been in 15 years. He has been buoyed by family, friends, neighbors, church members, mentors, teachers, healthcare providers, landlords and employers. Very few transgender people have so many allies.

It takes a blind leap of faith to accept what we don’t yet understand. Many families must leap across a much wider chasm than ours. Yet someone must be the first to stand alongside the person most in need. It makes all the difference when it’s someone who has been loving them since way-back-when.

Nowadays when our son catches us by surprise, it's not with an earth-shaking announcement. Often it's with words or deeds of gratitude for the people in his life. This year he celebrated his 21st year of being human, and his third year of becoming himself. He's leaning in to whatever is ahead. So are we.

More information

Information and resources can be found at genderspectrum.org, which also hosts online discussion groups for parents and guardians, just dads, Spanish-speaking parents, youth, youth of color, grandparents and people of faith.

Lori Zink grew up mostly in Marshalltown, where she began learning about the world as an avid reader of The Des Moines Register from the age of 9. She currently lives on the west coast and has been an outside-the-classroom educator for the past three decades. Contact: lorizink2018@gmail.com