My transgender son recently wore a dress as he left the house. I couldn’t understand why he’d choose to wear women’s clothes when he’d worked so hard to live as a young man — to be perceived as a young man.

Before my son came out as transgender, he announced that he was as a lesbian. He had a girlfriend. He wore masculine-looking clothes. I thought I was such a progressive parent accepting him as the gay daughter I assumed he was then.

In his mid-teens, he stopped dating and came out as transgender. I tried to roll with the punches and gladly fell into the role of trans advocate and supportive, accepting mom. We legally changed his name to one more suitable that he chose, we took him to therapists, psychiatrists, and endocrinologists to help him with whatever a healthy transition meant for him. …

Any time I called my grandmother and asked her how she was doing she’d reply the same way.

“Fat and sassy.”

That always made me chuckle. She was five-foot-one and might have been eighty-pounds soaking wet.

As the matriarch of the family, my grandmother was the reason we all got together often— three adult children all married, and five granddaughters. My cousins felt more like siblings to me because Christmas wasn’t the only time everyone saw one another.

Grandma hosted sleepovers for all five of her granddaughters. She encouraged us to support each other in sports, school plays, and academics. We even took vacations together. …

Hello, Fabulous Friends!

I’m so excited for the new year! I have so many projects and goals to accomplish — advocacy, horror stories, and personal growth articles abound!

First and foremost, LgbtQueer-ies would like to welcome MaryRose Denton to the family! She will be hosting her own column on our Medium publication with personal essays and articles exploring her role as a parent of a transgender young adult.

You can check out her first installment here.

My child, Z, was eight when they first told me they wanted to be a boy.

That word wanted really threw me.

I thought it was like they were telling me they wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up. Or a teacher. Or a kickass rockstar.

Trying to always be the supportive parent, I simply said,

Okay. Well, I’m not sure how that would work, but we could figure it out.

My kid smiled at me and ran back to the Batman Legos in their room.

I was left thinking my daughter had spoken to me. Later I’d realize I never had a daughter. …

Unfortunately, our lives are not like do-it-yourself tv shows.

We can’t overhaul our living rooms in 24-hours from drab to fabulous.

So why do we think we can make such significant changes to our entire lives in the same ridiculous amount of time?

Permanent change is never quick. Whether it’s implementing new good-for-us habits or trying to kick old ones to the curb, it all takes effort and time.

It’s impossible to achieve our happiest lives — or even just yearly goals — with such impossible expectations for ourselves.

Life is multi-faceted and much more complex than that.

Many new year goals fizzle to a shadow of what we originally dreamed or intended. But, with determination, we can make this year different. …

Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time.

But that’s sort of the whole point.

Anyone can carve out fifteen minutes.

So, forget setting vague, unachievable new year’s goals and commit to a fifteen-minutes-a-day habit instead.

Success and failure are both choices.

Being successful depends on what you decide is a priority in your life. No one will hand you your success on a silver platter. You have to take action to get what you want. And this is where many people fail to make the most of a new year ahead of them.

Writing down what you want is a great first step, but it’s also where many people stop. Without action and follow-through, your goals will stay unachieved dreams. …

Oh, the tense, unhappy feeling of frustration.

We’ve all allowed it to overwhelm us from time to time.

And then, of course, it invites its friends — anger, disappointment, and fear — to join the party in our heads.

But is this really all bad?

Why not lean into those feelings and use them to motivate us to do better?

Your emotions are valid.

Acknowledging our feelings is important. Our emotions tell us more about ourselves than whatever we’re reacting to.

The trick is to embrace feelings such as joy, pleasure, serenity, humor, and delight. …

I knew our marriage was over the moment I cheated. No wife cheats on their husband because she loves him.

John deserved a wife who adored him the way I should have.

I was only eighteen when I first took the plunge into matrimony. My husband had started out as my high school sweetheart.

By the time our relationship ended we had experienced several massive losses. John had joined the military, we had moved more than six-hundred miles away from our families and friends, John’s younger sister died in a horrible car accident, and I’d given up on art school.

I learned a lot about myself during this first serious relationship. …