Robyn has been living as a girl for 3 years now and for a long time I have rarely thought about her being anatomically male, it crops up now and then and surprises me. She is about to finish primary school and start high school, this is what worries me most. I worry about her adjusting to high school but more than that I worry about how she will be treated because she is transgender. So now I am spending more and more time thinking and worrying. I wish I could switch off the part of my brain that overthinks everything, to be able to just let life happen and deal with it as I go. Unfortunately I have the type of brain that worries and tries to plan for every scenario that I can think of.

I want to protect her from every possible problem that may happen, being transgender is not the easiest life to live, I wish it was but society has still not come to easily accept that people can be born transgender. She is consistently open, honest and brave about who she is and that makes me proud every day. The challenges she is facing without even considering her being transgender, her speech problems, her eye problems, her learning disability and her medical issues already make her life more difficult than the average child. Being transgender adds a whole new kind of difficulty to life and all of it every last bit is caused by society and its refusal to accept that being transgender is not a choice.

I realise now that just because we understand and support her doesn’t mean everyone else will and that I will never be able to change that for her. I have to understand that it’s okay, it’s okay if people find it hard to accept who she is because she is happy regardless. I promise myself on a regular basis that I will worry less and focus on just letting life happen, I realise that will never happen and that too is okay. I know I have spent too much time focusing on the feeling of being judged for allowing Robyn to be who she knows she is. I intend to focus more on not letting that feeling affect how I support Robyn. I have hesitated over and over again in certain ways I could support her in some situations, I don’t speak up as loudly as I should for her. I fear confrontation so often that I have not defended her when I should have.

If she can show the strength to live her true self then I can be braver in the situations I would usually shy away from. I should learn from her because she is so much braver than I have been. So, when she goes off to high school I will remind myself that all of her life so far she has shown me she is stronger than I have given her credit for. That worrying about situations that haven’t happened and may never happen won’t change anything, she will handle high school and whatever comes with that with the same strength she has always shown. I will have faith that I will deal with whatever comes with the same attitude she has. I will not be scared to call her my daughter to anyone and everyone, and I will not shy away from showing how proud I am of her because I’m scared of confrontation. My children are everything to me. its my job to stand up for them and Robyn deserves every person who loves her to trust she knows herself, to respect her decision to live as the person she knows she is.

She is my beautiful daughter and If she can be brave then so can I.