Almost two years after that initial conversation with his daughter, Erik posted something like a much-belated baby announcement on Facebook last spring.

“We now have to retract that we had a boy 17 years ago and very proudly announce that we have a 17-year-old girl named Alison. So welcome to the world our Alison!”

Alison, now 18, attends a Boulder Valley high school where acceptance and anti-bullying are infused in the curriculum. She’s no longer “failing every other class,” and she spends less time playing video games with Kevin because she no longer needs the mind-numbing escape.

She grew her straight, brown hair long and buys her clothes mostly from Amazon because she’s too shy to shop for them in person. She wears one of her favorite tops — a teal, Indian-inspired blouse with velvet cuffs — with loose-fitting jeans and her black sneakers. But in public, she sometimes hides under a hooded sweatshirt. She marvels how, because of the female hormones, her skin is sensitive enough that she had to place a blanket over a scratchy chair in her room that never bothered her before.

Alison spends far less time alone. On family film nights, she critiques movies to the point of her family’s annoyance, and she laughs. She philosophizes about religion, debates God’s existence with her family, and says her only obligation is to “good.” She figures society won’t accept trans people until a “critical mass” of the population knows someone who is trans.

“Before, I was a little bit like an iceberg where there was only 1 percent of me visible, maybe 10 percent at most,” she said. “Now I’m passionate about things. I could have never talked like this before. I barely talked at all.”

Alison said her relationship with her parents is more genuine than it was two years ago, although she trusted even then that they wouldn’t kick her out or send her to a “conversion camp.”

Erik and Vicki have become trans advocates, at their churches and beyond. Erik testified this year at the state Capitol in favor of a bill that would have made it easier for trans people to change the gender on their birth certificates. He is on the advisory board for Trans-Youth Education & Support, based in Boulder County, volunteers for PFLAG Boulder, and wrote a six-page letter to the theology headquarters of the Lutheran Church urging it to eliminate inflammatory words such as “mutilate God’s body” from its gender-identity guidelines. He wishes he could apologize to the gay community for “being a jerk.”

Kevin, who used to think transgender people came from “other” families until it “slapped” him in the face, is Alison’s best friend.

“I have all these memories of times with my little brother, and the relationship we had,” he said. “Now, I have a sister. Sometimes I miss that, but she is so much better of a person, in every conceivable way.”