Wow, I now have TWO daughters!

My middle child came out to me as transgender tonight. (I told her I wanted to write about this on my blog and had her permission to do so, so I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t outing her.)

I have to say that in retrospect, it’s all really clear and I don’t know how I could have missed the signs. It’s still challenging to adapt to the new pronouns, since it’s all still very new, so please bear with me.

She’s known for a long time. She got a settlement from a car accident she was in at age 14 and her first thought was apparently that the money she won could go a long way toward covering her transition costs.

She’s always preferred to wear her hair long and very often gets misgendered as it is. It’s not uncommon for people to refer to the two of us as “ladies” when we go out together.

She also has very feminine features, including very feminine hands. She has been really bothered by the shadow of hair on her upper lip, which I thought was odd. Tonight, she asked me for makeup tips to camouflage it and I finally came out and asked her if she was trans and she said yes.

Everything makes so much more sense now. She has been sullen and secretive for the past few years and I assumed the worst. But now I understand why. It even makes sense why she’s been dragging her feet about getting a job. What are the odds that I’d go through this twice, though?

She’s pretty afraid of being viewed as a copycat because her oldest sibling is also trans but in general she has a much better attitude about it than my oldest daughter did.

My oldest swore me to secrecy for SEVEN YEARS before she officially came out to the world. And she’s never been interested in doing traditional mother-daughter things with me.

By contrast, my middle child is wanting to make it official as soon as possible, now that she’s told me. And she’s very interested in doing typical mother-daughter things like shopping for clothes and playing with makeup.

But like my oldest daughter, she solicited my input regarding her new name and it’s one we would’ve chosen for her. She’s tentatively decided on Autumn Riley, just a slight change from her birth name of Adam Riley. She likes the fact that she can keep the same initials and honestly, we both think the name Autumn suits her well. I’m so honored to be included in their naming processes.

I’m still just kind of in shock though. I went from three straight boys to two girls and a bisexual male. If you think I was a diehard LGBTQ advocate before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.