Laurie Easterlin
Nov 5 · 3 min read

This is a lovely piece. I too was completely astounded. Absolutely no idea it was coming. Did all the same things, but fortunately found well-written books and did as much homework as possible. My child gave me such grace…said, “You’ll mess up pronouns and names, likely for a year. But I need you to get up every day and say my new name and gender over and over while you get dressed. Because after a year, I need you on board with me.” It took much less than a year and now, just three years later, I cannot remember that there was a “before” set of pronouns.

I’ve recently read pieces that say we shouldn’t grieve, shouldn’t have to be counseled, but I know on that day, I TOO became a different person. I’d raised three girls. I now had two girls and a boy. I grieved all the time we could have had as a mother and son. I grieved not noticing. It’s the job I wanted most and loved best of all and I suddenly was informed that maybe I hadn’t been as great at my job as I thought. Could I have listened more closely? Watched with a more open mind? But my child assured me, no…it was his journey and he too had not understood gender in our playroom full of dolls and trains, microscopes and architectural blocks. He didn’t know gender meant something until his body became something the world responded to.

In our house, we walk in a world of honesty. After my son’s announcement, my husband and I took a day and processed, just be ourselves. We cried, not because of what we’d lost, but because of what we’d missed. But then we focused on the joy of our child living a true life and talked about what we could do to allow every one of our children to live honestly. I don’t think that smiling through it and never saying it’s hard and a little unclear is the right thing to do either. No, my transgender child is not responsible for my wellness, but my child needs to know that sometimes it’s confusing and new and a territory none of us have walked before and it feels unfamiliar. But that isn’t a bad thing. We’re a tribe. We do new. We do hard. We do unfamiliar and we hold hands and allow each other to say, “This is hard today and I’m not sure what to do.” I think it is good for my children to know I sometimes falter, and I need hands too. It’s ok to reach out. It’s ok to ask for reassurance.

My child and I spoke long and hard about how this would be translated into our communities so we COULD reach out to friends. I’m very active in my world and the life of my family is part of my social media presence. We decided that on high school graduation day, we would release a letter on facebook, telling our friends who we’d become and what it meant. My husband stated that this was our child’s journey, not ours. It was not our job to understand it, it was our job to support it, to be there, and to walk next to. We waited for the response and were so pleased that nothing but love came back to us.

So far, we’re doing it alright. Maybe we could have done it better, but we are doing it as well as we can from the point of today. I wanted children since I could breathe. They are all my life breath. They make me who I am. And every one of them has changed the trajectory of my belief of “how it all would go”. It will go NOTHING like what you believe. And that’s ok.

A friend of mine said something to me so very important that I repeat it on difficult days in life. She said, “You have done harder things.” Yes. Yes. This? This is cake. We got this. It is my privilege to walk this journey and I hope to do it as best I can. What a holy and special thing I have been given….a chance to birth the same child twice. Welcome to the new world, my precious child. Always know you are LOVED.

    Laurie Easterlin

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