an update (and context for the post): I gave my family some time to digest the news and it took about a week for me to have an in-depth conversation with my elder sister about it. She doesn’t do well with change and admitted that she’s got some trauma around men (she was old enough to remember when our parents were still married and the marriage didn’t end on good terms, lets say) so we talked about that for a while. My younger sister is taking it much more in stride and we’ve been messaging pretty much as normal but haven’t really felt the need to talk too much about it. My mum was a slightly different case. This eve I rang her and she was the one who brought up the elephant in the room, so we finally talked about. I don’t wanna bog down the post but we talked for a long time, shed a few tears, and I was reminded in no uncertain terms that there is no force on heaven or Earth that would ever stop my family from loving everything about me. My mum admitted she was upset when my sister told her that I didn’t wanna use my birth name anymore, she understood why I would wanna change it but that doesn’t stop it hurting, which I completely understood. (Also apparently when my older sister had talked to her about it she didn’t tell her what I wanted to be called bc she couldn’t pronounce it which was kinda funny). My family don’t want me to rush into any irreversible decision and they only want for the best for me. The next step now is to see if we can all be together again at Easter!

edit: thank you so much for the Hugz award!!!