I am the proud and loving father of a trans-woman.

My daughter Lucy began life as Luke and was a delightful and charming little boy! She is now a most delightful and charming young women, and is making a great life for herself as a circus arts performer. She does juggling, balancing, unicycle (non-binary cycle, she calls the single-wheel and triple-stack versions) and a variety of astoundingly beautiful feminine stage characters with an entertaining banter featuring nuanced humor and commentary.

As a 70-yr-old, straight white southern man who grew up in a time and place when there was little to no public discussion of anything anything outside the cis-gender, binary world, it has been challenging for me to understand and truly relate to the whole process, and as a parent it has been emotionally difficult to accept that we perhaps didn’t really understand what was going on with our child for many years. But we have been living with this reality for about a year now, and things are truly fine.

To put all this in context, we live in a small rural town in south Georgia where the churches are the dominant social institution and all the “red-state” values are strong. (Redneck is no longer politically correct, but it was born here!) Yet, in this small town of just over 10,000 people, we have known four young people personally who have transitioned in the last few years, most of whom I taught in middle school or high school. One of them was very good friends with Lucy in high school, and we were very close to her during the transition. In fact, my wife could probably be credited with saving her life at one point.

Most of these people no longer live in our town, some of them don’t feel comfortable coming to visit. A brave and resourceful few are still trying to live and work here. It’s not easy. That too, is another story.

Without my wife, whose New York Italian background gave her a little more perspective and equanimity about it all, I’m not sure how well I would have done at getting through all this. Knowing and talking with the other young people who have transitioned has been really helpful as well.

We have all had lots of help, and I am particularly grateful also to the writer Allison Washington, a woman who transitioned a long time ago. She writes in a variety of venues with great clarity and openness about her own transition, as it has helped me understand some of the depths and subtleties of the process that I was probably too ignorant and shy to ask about.  (Her Patreon site is a good place to delve into her writing. She’s also on Medium and has been published recently in a variety of national print mags, so probably an easy google…)

I have wrestled for some time with what to say about all this, how to explain our feelings and responses, how to account for this seemingly astounding incidence of children who don’t fit the category assigned them at birth or the gender roles those assignments required of them socially. If you check the stats, however you’ll find that there are probably something like 60 transitioned people living in our town, with somewhere between half and one-quarter of them young people. So it’s just that we’ve been pretty oblivious for a long time.

If you need more knowledge and understanding of this subject, there is lots on the inter-webs, and there is notably a National Geographic issue devoted to the topic. I’m just relating my personal experience, which some people seem to feel is relevant.

At this point, though we are all still working to come to better understanding of it all, I am happy to say that our family is still intact and we have responded gracefully, lovingly to our children as they become who they really are. In the early stages, it was hard, and the feeling of loss was sometimes strong. Gradually, we were able to see that Lucy’s heart is the same, despite the differences in surface appearance, and that it’s that person we love, not the trappings.

Her assurances that we did not fail her in those early years have helped a lot. She says she was very good at concealing what she was going through. As apparently are many.

Most wonderfully, we realize more deeply week by week that Lucy is so much happier, more fulfilled, more expansive and whole that none of those early concerns – how did we fail her? how will she make it? what will she do? what will people think? etc. – are even part of our thoughts anymore.

Lucy is happy and whole and we love her! That’s the important thing.