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Will You Regret Not Supporting Your Trans Child?
The conversation about regret that we don’t hear enough about
I woke up this morning to a text that made my heart pound with a dangerous kind of hope. A close friend of mine sent me a photo of the front page of a newspaper that sat on the doorway of my parent’s home nearly every morning of my childhood.
The News&Observer is a mainstream newspaper local to North Carolina, in the increasingly anti-transgender South of the United States. My parents read it every morning as part of their daily ritual.
The my friend sent me was the story of a trans man’s mother and the regret she felt for struggling to support her son after he came out to her. I deeply appreciated this mother’s vulnerability. It’s a valuable kind of allyship to acknowledge her own growth journey, allowing others to learn from the decision she regrets.
Most mainstream conversations about trans people and regret center the possibility of a trans person regretting their transition and detransitioning. It’s too rare to see the conversation center a parent’s regret for not supporting their child on a journey of self-discovery.
