Family. What does it mean to you?

I share a lot about my story, largely because I am well-known in my community, and I believe being visible as a transgender woman helps show the public that we’re normal people and not the freaks, perverts and misfits some people still think we are. I also tell my story because I’ve learned it has helped give others the courage to come out. They see I haven’t been run out of town, or laughed out of town, and they realize that they can also live their authentic lives. I’m profoundly grateful and humbled by this.

For the most part, my messages are positive, though I haven’t told everything, in part because I like to focus on the many, many good things that have happened to me and in part I’m saving some stuff for my memoirs. *wink.*

One thing I haven’t talked about too much is family. People know I’m really close to my niece and my remaining aunt (my parents and sister died a long time ago). They also know that I’m divorced and was the father of two stepchildren.

The cast of the TV show Pose. When LGBTQ people were rejected by their birth families they had to form their own family.

Any party to a failed marriage will have their own version of why the coupling didn’t work. In my case, I don’t think it was a single, cataclysmic event. I believe the first half of the marriage was happy, then we spent the second half gradually growing apart. As each day passed, it seemed our interests, values and priorities were diverging more and more.

I know I told my ex early in the relationship that I thought I was transgender. I remember this conversation as happening before the wedding; she insists it came not long after. I told her I loved her, I loved the children, and thought I could make it work.

She moved out in October 2016. When she told me she was filing for divorce a year later, she urged me to explore this aspect of myself and said it would be sad to reach the end of my life without doing this. I thought that was an exceptionally generous sentiment, and it did help speed me along the path I was already exploring.

In June 2018, I announced myself to the world as Claire. Not long after, my ex ended all contact with me, but through others, I’ve learned that she now believes the entire relationship was a sham and that I deceived her.

If I deceived her, I also deceived myself.

My two former stepchildren have also excluded me from their lives. One did it without a word; the other with an angry Facebook post that began: “For those of you associating me with my ex-“stepfather,” please stop. I want nothing to do with him and his fucking nonsense.” Did this hurt? Yeah. Does it still hurt? Yeah.

RuPaul says when you are gay, you get to choose your family. The same thing’s true when you’re transgender.

For almost all my life I have been blessed with wonderful, loving, supportive friends. In the ten months since my pubic gender transition, that circle has exploded outward exponentially, taking in hundreds of people I didn’t know in my prior life. Many of them are transgender themselves; some consider themselves allies; some admit their ignorance on the subject but show an honest desire to learn.

So, I have lost family; but I’ve also gained family, a large, new, beautiful family.

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Tags: family, featured, Identity, partners

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion