The morning my nineteen-year-old son came out as transgender, I spent hours at my computer searching all the combinations of terms I could think of to try to learn more about what that meant for him. I stared at my screen until my eyes were dry, and my body buzzed with anxiety over statistics just hours before I had the privilege of being unaware of.
I read articles about terms I didn't understand, such as gender dysphoria and gender modalities, and learned that there is a difference between sexual identity and gender. The more I read, the more overwhelmed I felt.
Still, I kept reading because I needed to understand this new information about my child, and being transgender was something I had zero knowledge about or experience with.
How was I supposed to support my son if I didn't even understand at that moment that I had always had a son and what it meant for him to be transgender and for me to be the parent of a transgender child?
While Google is helpful in learning about things such as gender identity and the types of gender transitions or the best practices for medical care for transgender youth, it can't tell you what it looks like for your specific child to be transgender because that looks different for every person.
Google can't tell you about the joy your child will experience the first time they hear someone call them by their chosen name or refer to them by the correct pronouns when they are out in public. How their face will light up when someone says, "Thank you, sir," or "Your daughter has a beautiful smile," and not because you told them your child's gender ahead of time.
No search results list how the sparkle will return to your child's eye once they feel comfortable in their own body - how their smile will return, and for many teens, young adults, and older adults, their mental health will improve once they aren't hiding their true selves from the world any longer.
Additionally, Google cannot prepare you for the pride and joy you will feel as you watch your child navigate their next steps, figuring out what it means for them to be the best version of themselves and advocating for their care and fundamental rights.
Those first few days after your child comes out as transgender can leave you feeling like your whole world has flipped upside down, and what Google can give you is a firm foundation of knowledge to stand on while you figure out how to move forward. Living each day with your child and watching what it means for them to live into the most whole and magnificent expression of their gender is something that you can only experience in real time. And that is worth far more than all the search results Google could ever give you.
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