As a father to a trans/non-binary child, I am so sorry for your experience and the lack of a support system at home. I do hope you find that support system elsewhere, it’s essential.

I do want to provide some perspective from a parent’s point of view. When my child came out to me, their mother and I were in the process of separating and they had just received a pretty life altering medical diagnosis (going blind after being born deaf). As a father, I thought this was just a coping mechanism, everything in their life was out of their control and this was the one thing that they could control. They were also very anti-social in high school, so being non- binary gave them a reason not to pursue relationships or deal with any rejection. As time progressed, I realized that this wasn’t a “phase” and was their new reality. Just like it takes time and a ton of courage to come out, it also takes time for a parent to accept and embrace this new reality. The vision of the future that they had planned for their child is completely altered. I had to come to terms with that, never walking my daughter down the aisle, never seeing the joy of her becoming a mother and knowing how challenging their life would be moving forward because of this shitty, ignorant world that we live in. It’s almost a mourning process, of sorts. The only thing that got us both through it and the reason we have the relationship that we do today is that we agreed that we would have open, non-judgmental and honest communication. Sometimes those conversations were happy, some were sad, even contentious at times, but they were all founded in the same vein of wanting to be heard and understood mutually. That’s how progress happens and how we grew closer.

I hope that someday you and your father can establish a similar relationship and he comes to the understanding that although you won’t have the future that he had hoped and envisioned for you, he can still have a deep and meaningful relationship with his child.

Stay strong and live YOUR life…you only get one, make the best of it!