Coming Out - Part 4 (other family members)

Just a random pic of me in 2013 

I told the majority of the rest of my family via email because they live all over the place. I have tried getting into my old email account to find exactly what I said and everyone's responses but for some reason Outlook is telling me the account doesn't exist, So I'm gonna do my best to remember how things went with various people. There was a largely varied response, and some were quite surprising. The people I thought would be supportive were not, and the people I thought would be a bit more hesitant, were actually fine. I had some very difficult comments from my Grandmother, which I will share later. These however were mostly horrible sounding due to the lack of education and her understanding of the subject rather than intentionally offensive. For example “why can't you just be a butch lesbian” was one of the questions asked. I will add some excerpts from a selection of responses and talk about it properly in a bit.

Firstly I am going to talk about how things went with one of Aunts and Uncles. I have 4 sets of Aunts and Uncles, these were the pair I was closest to, and they have 2 kids, twins who were 9 at this time. I sent an email to my Uncle, pretty much the same email that I sent to everyone. It just explained how I felt, and what I was going to be doing, name, pronouns etc. I thought that these 2 would be more open minded and supportive than the others, especially since we were so close. That wasn't the case unfortunately.  He said that I was too young to know that this is who I am. He also didn't want to tell the kids, which basically meant I wouldn't be able to see them any more. I am writing this now almost 5 years later and I haven't seen my cousins in this time. I have seen this Aunt and Uncle once, and that was at my Nana's funeral last year.

Me and my cousin at Mum and Step Dad's wedding in 2010

However, in the last year, the girl twin has added me on facebook, snapchat, instagram (crazy social media obsessed 13 year olds these days haha!) but it's been so great reconnecting with her. We were so close when she was little, I remember her saying once at a family meal “I want to be a tomboy like you when I'm older”, this was obviously before I came out or anything, but it was so cute, thankfully my Uncle didn't hear that. As it turns out though she's actually become quite girly instead, she's somewhat followed in my footsteps doing gymnastics though which is pretty cool. She's an amazing dancer, and I love that I get to see her growing up now, it's such a shame I missed out on seeing them over the last 5 years. I will make sure to get some photos of us when they all come down to visit next week! It's going to be so strange seeing them again, and I'm slightly concerned they're both going to be taller than me. I'm pretty sure the boy will be as my Aunt told me he has size 8 feet the other day when I asked what I could get them for Christmas! That's crazy, is it normal for 13 year old boys to have feet that big!?

Nana at my Mum and Step Dad's wedding

Moving on to another unfortunate outcome, my Mum and Grandma decided that they didn't want to let my Nana (great grandmother) know about my transition, because it would upset her. Being in her 90s and a Christian, they figured she would be very against the whole thing. They didn't want her to know I had a girlfriend before this either. This was the worst for me, Nana was also the family member I was closest to. She was the coolest person ever to me. When she was younger she was the first woman in her town to wear trousers, which was obviously frowned upon at this time. She also had a pet monkey that her brother brought back when he was serving in the forces overseas. She had afternoon tea with the local Vicar once and the monkey hit the Vicar's cup of tea out of his hand. You can't make this stuff up. I could go on and on but you get the idea, she was awesome. So you can imagine how upset I was about this, especially because she lived really close and I use to see her pretty often. But I didn't want to ruffle any more feathers, so I didn't really argue their decision. I stopped seeing her and that lasted about a year I think, something like that.

This is the Tumblr blog post I wrote about telling Nana from September 2013:

Nana and I the first time I went to see her again 

“I’m actually finally allowed to tell my Nana (great Gran) about me transitioning today.. So for the year my Mum and Gran haven’t wanted me to talk to or go and see my Nana for two reasons, one being that they don’t think she’d react well and she’s in her early 90’s, and the other being that they expected/hoped I was just going through a phase or something. But now since me having my top surgery, they’ve decided I should be allowed to talk to her and have her know why I haven’t been to see her. Apparently they have just been telling her that I have been off doing my own thing and not had the chance to go and visit her, which really upsets me ‘cause it is so not the case, and she was the family member that I was closest to before all this. So today I am going up to see her, my Gran and Grandad will already be there and have explained to her what is going on. I’m a bit annoyed that they insist on telling her themselves because I doubt they will explain it well, but I haven’t bothered arguing 'cause I just want her to know now so I can see her again. My mum won’t be there because apparently she said she wont be able to hold it together, and we rarely see each other anyway.
Really hope it goes well. Wish me luck guys, I will report back this evening.”


“So I arrived at my Nana’s house and my Gran and Granddad had already told her as they said they would, I’m not a hundred percent sure what they told her, and to be honest I was very nervous about how they would explain it. However, from the second I walked in, all three of them were very happy to see me, I went over and gave Nana a hug as its been almost a year since I’ve seen her and I’ve missed her a lot. I sat down next to her and it was like nothing had happened. My 94 year old great grandmother immediately started using male pronouns for me when talking across to my grandma and I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t been allowed to see her all this time ‘cause everyone said she would react horribly. She is annoyed at my mum for not letting me go and see her. She said to me before I left that she has a good friend who’s granddaughter was born as her grandson, and she talks to her about hairstyles and things. She was not at all phased by anything. She said I must make sure to go and see her often now, which I plan to definitely :) 

As usual, signing off with a recent pic. Jan 2017

We went by my mum’s on the way home to tell her how it went, and she seemed in a bad mood from the second I walked in the door, even when my Gran told her the afternoon went extremely well, she still didn’t cheer up at all, she probably just feels a fool now though. 
Also when my grandparents were dropping me back home afterwards they said “Nana is going to call your mum now and will be asking how is Adam and Mum is not going to be happy” but anyway, it all pretty much went fantastically.”
The next time I went to see Nana, her friend was there and as I walked in she said to her “oh is't he handsome”. It made me feel so good, which was the day the above photo of us was taken.