Honoring Trans Parents and Families

Trans Parent Day - Sunday, November 3, 2024

Transgender Day or Rememberance - Wednesday, November 20, 2024

In November we honor trans parents, families, and the important trans people in our communities. Trans Parent Day, celebrated on the first Sunday of the month is an annual event established in 2009 that honors both transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming parents and parents who have trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming children. We just celebrated this past Sunday. Additionally on November 20 we observe Transgender Day of Rememberance where we honor the memory of transgender individuals whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. Those we lost were part of families and communities and are deeply missed. According to a recent study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law (2020), an estimated 19% of transgender adults in the U.S. are parents, though all transgender people are somebody's children. To trans parents and trans children everywhere, we see you, and we are here for you. To showcase the resiliency of transgender community and celebrate trans parents everywhere, More Than Sex-Ed is sharing the story of one of our supporters.

Mylo Way

Not being a parent made me trans, which allowed me to be a better parent than I ever thought I could be. Let me explain.

When I was a child, I had two powerful wishes for my future self. The two things I knew would heal my aching, broken, spirit. I would be a mother and I would have a beard. A truth about myself that I knew to be in conflict with that dream was that, because I was a woman, I could never have a beard. So I would never be fully healed. But, maybe, I could parent and love a baby in the ways I desperately needed to have been parented and loved and heal myself, that way. No beard needed. No pressure, future baby (and future me) everything has to just be so perfect that not only does the baby have an amazing life - it retroactively fixes mine. 

As time continued to pass, and I kept finding myself further and further from the possibility of motherhood, I had a period of deep grief. Mourning the life I thought I would lead, the person I thought I would be, and my place in the world. Auntie was a sacred role I was honored to fill, and still I was adrift. 

I was faced with a reckoning. The person I thought I was, I thought I would become, was not going to manifest. Who was the person I would now grow into? How would I navigate this world? In being forced to undo and unlearn the things I believed to be Truths about myself and my future, I stumbled into a world of possibility. I began to explore and question my identity and who I really am. Without my pre-determined labels, I was able to find what fit me. 

I lived into and embraced my very trans and nonbinary self. 

I fell in love with a justice-making, world-building radical who encouraged me to be fully me. When presented with my “I really wish I could grow a beard, but that would take testosterone and I can’t have that because I’m not a man” grumblings, they came back with the simple “why not?” WHY NOT?! These rules I’d held myself to for so long were completely arbitrary. If my gender presentation is most authentically me with a beard, why not grow a beard? So I did! I was loved and supported into loving and supporting myself. And as we grew more committed to a life we were building together, and we began exploring the idea of parenting, it was so clear I needed to do the work on myself - not through my child, but for my child.

I committed to therapy, I committed to doing the work of unpacking traumas and understanding myself. I committed to living so deeply and authentically into myself, that I was able to begin to mend my relationship with my inner child. I was able to offer them love and tenderness. I was able to parent myself in ways I’d always needed and stopped believing I deserved. 

Through that, I was able to be more and more authentically myself. My whole, trans, queer, tired old man, gal pal of the world. Imperfect. Still struggling. Still unpacking a lifetime of baggage. Holding old and new traumas every day. But me. 

Mylo with baby's hand in his beard

And my spouse and I became parents. I wasn’t meant to be a mother. I was meant to be a Bo. The term of endearment I’d given my mother is the parental name I’m offering to my child. To you, my sweetest baby, I am your Bo. I love you so deeply. It is my work, not yours, to heal and care for myself. And for you, my beloved child, I will do everything I can. 

Allowing myself to be hurt and grow and find Mylo in all of this, allowed me to find Bo. And to be the terribly imperfect parent who is committed to letting this baby know they are not responsible for saving the world, and they are responsible to the world. We carry each other. We hurt together, we heal together, and we live into our truths. 

A year ago, as I sat on the comfy chair holding my most perfect child, I was hit by how different my life was than I would have ever imagined as a child. I didn’t have a model for this. And as I felt the tiniest hand reach up and hold on to my beard, I started sobbing because it had, somehow, come true. My baby’s hand was in my beard and I was slowly working towards healing. My most perfect sweet child did help me see and know and recognize the deep and knowing wisdom of baby me. And, without the unreasonable pressures of perfection and magic, gave me the gift of a touch of healing. And I pray that our commitment to love each other, to love the world, to love this baby is enough. And I know it is possible because we dare to love our selves into being.