Advice for those with transgender loved ones: expect holidays to be hard
- Suzanne DeWitt Hall
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
The passage below is excerpted from Holding on to Hope: Help for friends and family of transgender people.
Emotions run high at holidays, and special days on the calendar add emotional complexity to the transgender experience, particularly in the first year of coming out.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are hard for trans parents as both they and the children work out how to view their roles and titles.
Birthdays can trigger sorrow in trans people for the years they were forced to hide, or despair that they aren’t young enough to take transition steps they would consider if they were younger. They might be sad they can’t live as openly as they want to, and feel like the coming years in the closet will be long.
When family members have struggled to accept your loved one’s transition, long-standing holiday traditions and rituals may be uncomfortable. You may decide not to engage at all due to the disruption they could cause.
All of these situations and more can contribute to stress. Trans people struggling with addiction may face heightened temptation to self-medicate.
Given the likelihood of difficulty, it’s wise to plan for managing events like this. If you have to opt out of traditional holiday or celebration activities, plan something entirely new to replace them. If you normally cook a particular menu and spend the day at home, consider going on an adventure instead, or eat at an unusual restaurant, or pack a picnic and go somewhere to breathe fresh air. Hold a dance party in your living room. Take a donation or treats to a transgender support organization in your area, or to fire departments, emergency rooms, or other places where people have to work while others have the day off.
Finding new ways to celebrate helps eases the pain of not being able to honor holidays in the ways you’re used to. It doesn’t fix it entirely, but it helps.
Trying to take up as little space as possible only pleases people who don’t want you there in the first place.
Merryn Armstrong
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/they) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotional series, the Living in Hope series of books supporting the loved ones of transgender people, The Language of Bodies (Woodhall Press, 2022), and the Rumplepimple adventures.
