Well, I finally gathered the courage to have my coming out to my mother. Overall I would rate the experience a solid 4/10. The first reaction was kinda trash (She replied with, “does that really have to be”) and then later complained, that I told it to her at around 8pm, because now she will think about it and probably wont be able to sleep that easily. Some of her not so nice other reactions:
- You wont take surgeries (I replied with we’ll see)
- I shouldnt have dressed you as a girl that one time in my last week of school (I told her that I have indications of me being trans before that)
- But maybe what you feel isnt what you interpret out of it
After the last thing I wanted to explain, why I am devinetively sure I am trans, but she interrupted me with “I want to take a shower (bruh) now and you can tell this when the rest [of the family] is there too, so you dont have to tell it 3 times (She kinda got a point there)”
But luckyly enough she seemed willing to accept it (“We dont really have any choice”), and agreed to tell the rest of the family (yay). She also said, that I will continue to be her child, so I guess thats a win. She was absolutely shocked, but she will get over it.
When taking into consideration, that my parents are conspiracy theorists, this is about the best possible outcome I could have hoped for. It could have been much worse, especially when taking into consideration, that there whole social circle are also conspiracy theorists, of which some are right wing and I also heard such nice statements as “The WHO wants to make us all gay” (or something like that) from one of their friends.
Congrats on coming out and being your true self, that was a very brave thing to do.
Your mother, like many parents, had hopes and dreams about who you would become as a person. She’s now being faced with the prospect that those hopes and dreams are dead, that the person she thought you would become is gone. She’s going to need to grieve and from what you’ve written here it seems that process has started. Shock, denial, bargaining, some level of acceptance. I expect anger and depression might show up at some point. It doesn’t necessarily happen in sequence and can cycle too. She’s going to need some time to process, but what’s positive is she’s not outright rejecting who you are, there’s room for her to grow.
My parents weren’t hostile when I came out as gay, but I heard similar things - it’s just a phase. Are you sure? Was it something we did? Where did we go wrong? What will your life become? Over time they came to accept it and told my extended family (including my very religious Pentecostal grandmother). Everyone is now very welcoming of my wife and my parents are delighted to be grandparents to our kids. I know it’s not the same, but there is hope for things to get better, just keep being authentically you.