THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE

I was giving Danielle* a bath when she told me, ‘Mom, I feel like a girl.’

She was 5 years old, and she had a boy’s body. Later, I found out she’d said the same thing to my mother on a different occasion.

She’d always gravitated towards girls’ toys, and loved to play with girls, not boys.

Her father – who lived separately and with whom I shared custody – thought it was unhealthy and asked me to stop allowing her to play with Barbie dolls. I ignored him, of course – what was the harm?

Over time, I thought perhaps she might grow up to be gay; I didn’t think much beyond that. But things began to change around puberty. She began to behave strangely, even for a teenager. She covered up her body, wore baggy clothes and took down all the mirrors in the house. For a time, she put on weight. She withdrew.

When she was 16, a friend of hers told me she’d been cutting herself, which is when I decided we needed to see a therapist. My precious child. I could see she was so unhappy but I couldn’t understand what was causing it.

She went to therapy for roughly a year, and shortly after her 17th birthday, she sat me down and said, ‘Mom, I need to tell you something: I’m transgender.’

‘Okay,’ I said, completely shocked. ‘Give me a few days to think about this.’

I was terrified. I knew nothing about being transgender. Absolutely nothing.

Unbeknownst to me, Danielle had become friends with another transgender child in her father’s neighbourhood, and gave me her mother’s number. She invited me to join a support group for parents of transgender children.

I had so much to learn, but Danielle had done a lot of research. She wanted to be sure she was what