The (trans) kids are all right: What gender-affirming health care really means

“…Being trans is neither an illness nor a burden, but rather one of the infinite variations of human expression that make our society so richly diverse.”

By Kai Cheng Thom
Source: The Globe and Mail

I will never forget the look on my parents’ faces when they came to meet me in the psychiatric ER of BC Children’s Hospital after my attempted suicide. I was 16 years old, and I had just come out as transgender – news that shocked and dismayed them. Terrified that I had lost their love, I tried to take the only way out I could think of at the time.

What did we do wrong? They asked me on that day, their faces haggard with anxiety and shame. How did it get to this? That look in their eyes pierced me to my core. Determined never to hurt my parents again, I promptly went “back into the closet,” pretended that my trans identity had been a passing delusion brought on by adolescent angst, and did not mention it again to anyone for five years.