Love is Love ~~ Alex Beecroft

Coming Out

It was in May 2012 that my daughter stopped me in the kitchen and told me in so many words “I don't want to be a girl.”It's not as if it came as much of a surprise. As soon as she had been able to express a preference she had refused to wear girls' clothes. My husband vividly remembers her coming home from playschool one day, puzzled, to ask him “daddy, I am a boy, aren't I?” After that she'd passed as a boy pretty much until puberty. So I'd been half expecting it.

I hugged her and told her we'd find a way to make it right, and that was the point at which we began – with the aid of our local doctor – the process of getting her appointments with the people who can eventually help her to transition.

This is a shockingly long process – her first appointment with the specialist gender clinic is next week – and the waiting has been hard on us all. Not that this is something you want to rush into. What has surprised me is that when she finally told me, I reacted with grief. I went into a period of mourning for my little girl. I felt that my daughter was dying, and although I tried not to show her this, it's possible she knew.

Don't get me wrong. I love my child with a fierce love, and nothing will change that. It just took me a little while to let go of the daughter I thought I had so that I could learn to feel glad that I had a son. I'd had all his life to prepare for this, and yet I was still unprepared.

I like to think I'm getting there now. My son has told me the name he's chosen for himself, and I am beginning to call him by it. Sometimes I slip, but it's early days and I'm sure it will get more natural with time. I'm beginning to think to myself how lucky I am to have such a clever, stubborn, strong, gentle, creative boy for a son, and though I admit to being afraid for him because society will still not give him an easy ride, I am incredibly thankful that things have improved beyond measure since I was his age.

It's hard to come out and say to your parents “I am not what you thought I was.” It's hard for your parents too –they will have to abandon their half formed dreams of the future, face the fact that their child's life is not going to be as easy as they would like, and they cannot protect them against that, and redefine what they think they know about you. But give them time and they'll come round, because although parents are weak and wobbly like all other human beings, a parent's love for their child is one of the strongest things in all creation. It may, like the Avengers, take a little while to get some traction, but it should get there in the end if you can only wait it out.

~

Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and Philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years.Now a stay-at-home mum and full time author, Alex lives with her husband and two daughters in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world.She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800 year old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

Alex writes mostly m/m romance in the historical and fantasy genres. Her latest novel is Under the Hill, a fantasy in which a sleepy Northern English town is invaded by angry elves, and her latest novella is Blessed Isle, an Age of Sail tale of mutiny and shipwreck on the high seas.

To find out more, visit her website on http://alexbeecroft.com