The following days were all about research. I buy books, when I’m feeling overwhelmed or unsure of something. The one that helped me the most during these first few weeks was “Love Lives Here” by Amanda Jette Knox. We were not ready to tell anyone else, so I felt alone at the beginning. We quickly agreed that Brooke needed to see a therapist to work through her feelings and what her next steps should be. Looking back, I wonder if I thought Brooke affirming her gender to me would be enough. Something the two of us would just work through together without any major changes to our public life. It became obvious that Brooke needed do a lot more to be happy and complete in her body.
At first, I didn’t feel a lot of emotion but a couple weeks in, it finally hit me all at once. Would our marriage last, would our friends and family abandon us, would our jobs and therefore livelihood be affected, would our children be mad at us, or would their friends not be allowed to hang out with them? We could lose everything that mattered to us. It was so scary and lonely that I just broke down in tears.
In many ways I feel like I am going through the stages of grief. What I have learnt about grief is it isn’t linear. You can jump from one stage to the next then back again. At first, I was in denial, not denial that she knew herself and knew what she needed to do, but denial about how hard it would be and how much it would affect our lives and marriage. From there I often bounced between sadness & acceptance and occasionally frustration.
Guilt was another primary emotion that I struggled with. I felt that if I was truly an ally to the LGBTQ community, I shouldn’t have an issue with Brooke transitioning. “Why should it matter? I knew she was the same person”. This made it hard for me to express and feel my grief. This is where working with a therapist really helped me. I was able to see that blocking my emotions is something I’ve always done. It was never a healthy habit but with the stress and grief I was feeling it was very detrimental. I am getting better at letting my feelings rise and come out, but long held habits are hard to change so I still have to work at it.