In a Shell

"When the egg breaks there is no going back; there is your life before and your life after. I was living in this shell when my daughter came out to me."

I remember the feeling of shock, like I could not breathe. I asked her if she was sure and she said that being transgender is not something anyone would choose. It could not be denied. She was a girl. Not I feel like a girl, or I want to be a girl, but I am a girl. She was sixteen years old, and somehow I had not seen that she was a girl. How was this possible?

I told her it would be OK, and asked her for time to process what she was saying. I was afraid of saying something wrong, something that would hurt her. I have a few specific memories, but most of that time is unclear. I see now that I was in shock. It would be months before I could breathe again.

The cliche is everyone lives in their own bubble, but I think of us as hatchlings in a shell, unaware of the world outside until something impacts that shell and exposes us to realities we could not or would not see. When the egg breaks there is no going back; there is your life before and your life after. I was living in this shell when my daughter came out to me.

I didn’t know anyone who was transgender and I had no concept of what it meant. I knew it was big. It was important, and how I reacted was important.

My first fear was telling my husband. I worried what this would do to our marriage. I was a basket-case, awake most of the night until I finally woke my husband up and told him. Compared to me he was a rock. He just said it would be OK. It was her life and he would support whatever she wanted, and then he proceeded to be supportive, which blew my mind.

I threw myself into research. I read and watched and listened to everything I could find to help me understand and become comfortable in my daughter’s world. But understanding also led to guilt; guilt that I had been living in my shell and not seen the pain my child was in. I had somehow not seen that she was a girl, and because I had not seen it, I had used words that hurt her every day, emphasizing the masculine and erasing the feminine. I had never really seen the child I’d been raising all these years.

And by not seeing her, I was denying her existence, which was doing her harm, and I don’t wish that on any other parent or child. At least 1 in 100 people are transgender, so I beg your openness and sensitivity. You could be in the same kind of shell I was in, and not know it until it cracks.

My next fear, the fear that persists and the one that motivates all my future planning, was fear for my child’s safety in this cruel world. I had never really known this kind of anxiety. I had breast cancer and it never instilled a fear in me like this. The doctors said they caught it early and I had very good odds, so I just didn’t worry. I had always been more of a type B personality. Nothing kept me up at night. If I had a problem I would make a plan and then work the plan until I got through, but this was different.

This was all-consuming. I knew my daughter would be a target every time she left our house. Some men would not like that she threw away her male privilege. Some women wouldn’t want to share their spaces with her. This past year’s 400 plus anti-trans laws across the nation and the election have exacerbated the danger she is in. Before we travel we have to check the trans risk assessment map to see what laws she might be breaking by existing in each U.S. state.

Under one of Trump's executive orders, the State Department has ceased issuing or renewing passports with “X” gender markers. What does this mean for people who already have an “X” marker or have already made a change? They have not made that clear. The process is complicated because a passport is based on your birth certificate, and the 50 states each has its own laws regulating what changes can be made to it.

It is unlikely that my daughter will ever go to South Carolina to visit her grandparents again. She wants to leave the country, but could she ever come back? That is not clear even to the lawyers we have consulted, and with the slew of Executive Orders coming every day, do we risk something changing while we are out of the country?

We are in limbo.

I am talking about American citizens who cannot safely travel because they risk becoming stateless. American citizens whose existence is being denied. What is the value of that little blue book?

There is no denying these dystopian States of America.

Photos by J W, Annie Spratt and shraga kopstein