My Transgender Daughter

I’ll never forget the evening my son Charlie told me she was really my daughter.

She had told me she was going for a run and sat down to put trainers on. I was watching Netflix, not really paying attention. 5 minutes later I looked up and she was still sitting there. When I asked why, she told me that she was really a girl not a boy. She was very nervous and looking back I realise how much courage that took. I was deeply shocked. I knew nothing about transgender people, so little that I had no idea what questions to ask. Somehow I managed to say we’d always love her and wanted her to be happy. It was when I hugged her that I felt the many new raised but healed scars on her arms. I had no idea that she had started to cut herself again, I thought that had stopped after school, But Charlie is good at hiding things and since being away at university that had been easier for her. She had had a tough time but had worked through it with the support of friends and was now accepting of herself. I had been oblivious and for me the journey was just beginning,

Now it’s more than 2 years later and I am on the way to accepting too. Charlie is taking medication prescribed privately and is finally having her first appointment at the NHS Gender Identity Clinic. I have had ups and downs, lots of tears which I didn’t let Charlie see as I didn’t want to add to her worries. In fact my questions to her were limited especially in the early days because I couldn’t ask anything without becoming very emotional. I didn’t want Charlie to feel guilty about causing me pain.

Meeting other parents who have transgender children has really helped me. At first I thought it was only possible to truly understand the pain and confusion of having a transgender child if you actually experienced it. I needed to talk to others who ‘got it’. To some extent I still feel this, there are many issues that only apply to trans people, and ignorance and prejudice is certainly more common than for other groups. In the early days, seeing other parents who clearly loved their children as much as I love Charlie, and who seemed to be at peace with who their children were gave me hope that one day I could be too.

As well as talking to others, a combination of the passage of time, getting on with life, and avoiding overthinking, has helped me to come to terms with the fact that I have a daughter instead of a son.

As family gatherings have come and gone, and we have spent time with a daughter instead of a son, I see that Charlie is still the same person. Her gender has become less important than the person she is and what she’s doing. I have stopped trying to understand and look for an explanation, because I know I never will never find it. She still hides things from me, probably always will, but I think she’s in a better place and I’m happy about that. Life may not be easy for her but I think (and have to believe, because that’s what she tells me) that it was not possible for her to go on as a man. The risk of not having Charlie was very real if she had not been able to live as the young woman she is.