So your child has just come out as gay
Or bi or transgender or any other queer related label
Anyway you have a child and they've told you something new about them that may or may not be expected
Here's a list of what to do when your kid comes out
1. Try not to take it personally that your child didn't tell you sooner. Try not to notice the fear in their eyes, the quiver of their lip when they open up to you. Ignore the fact that they're afraid to tell you who they are. Its not like any of your past side comments during movie nights about dykes and how it's gross for two men to kiss would've made them feel judged.
2. When you look at your daughter you see a little girl wearing a plastic princess dress or a beautiful woman walking down the aisle to her husband who awaits her. The wedding bells stop when she opens her mouth in the passenger seat of your car uttering the words you never expected to hear. You think you'll never get to walk her down the isle, holding her frail hand as you feel proud tears rolling down your face as you give your baby away placing her heart in the hands of another man. Now that image has trickled away. You don't see your daughter as a princess anymore. Maybe because she is a warrior
3. Remember she didn't choose this. Why would she choose to be different?
4. This may be difficult to hear, you may need to process the information over time. You realize there are things about your own child that you didn't know.
5. She may tell you about how at a sleepover she was told to sleep separate from the other girls, or how in the hallways people call her gross, on the bus a boy told her to pray to god to fix herself, middle school boys who resemble the boy you once were utter the word dyke as she walks past their desks. Try not to grip your hands on the steering wheel so tightly that your knuckles turn white. Try not to think about marching down to that school and finding those boys who said those things that you said in middle school too but now it isn't okay because this isn't a girl in your class you can't recall the name of anymore, this is your daughter
6. Love her. You love her. You want to protect her, you want the best for her and this shouldn't change a thing.
7. Your child is still the same person they were before. Nothing you've come to know so well has been altered. She still laughs like no ones watching, she still belts show tunes in her room in the middle of the night, she still looks up to you. She stills wants your approval.
8. Don't say it'll "take some getting used to" say that you love her no matter what because she is your flesh and blood. You raised her. You read her bedtime stories in funny voices just to make her laugh. You tucked her in so carefully at night as though not to break her but she cannot be broken. She cannot burn out and you will not make her. She is proud of who she is and nothing will ever change that.
She will march proudly through the streets with a rainbow flag flowing behind her, the spitting image of a powerful woman. She is a powerful woman and you should be proud. She loves with her whole heart whether she loves a boy or a girl does not make it any different. Her love should never be a burden. She is beautiful. She is proud. She is passionate. And most of all, she is human.
