I miss having a family. Anyone else totally disconnected from theirs?

[JennyA]

I had the most awesome family too. On Thanksgiving and Xmas we would all get together and have a blast. Their were no fights or drama, we just laughed and enjoyed each others company.

I had a great relationship with my Dad and knew him better then my siblings or my Mom. I was my brother's best friend and I used to call my sister Christa 'friend' when I was little cuz I couldn't say here name.

My 2 cousins were like siblings to me and I pretty much helped raise Louie. He was in heaven when he used to come by for sleepovers, we had so much fun.

My uncle Joe was the best uncle you could have. He looked out for you, he was younger then the parents so he'd let you in on secrets and show you a good time.

Then it all fell apart slowly, starting in 2004 till now.

Now I'm sitting here in a apartment all by myself. I haven't seen or talked to one blood relative since January and even before then hadn't really seen any for a year.

I try to have this really tough skin and pretend like I don't care. I keep that face up for as much as I can, but then all of the sudden this deep pang of sadness and regret will hit. I can't predict it or stop it, it just appears. It doesnt help that I dream about my family all the time. I can't get away from them.

I wrote an email to my Mom last night. I hope she responds.
I'm not really sad or anything about it all it's just that I now know how important family is and I'm pretty sure they are gone. I imagine I will reconnect with at least 1 or 2 of them in the future, but I sure could use the support of family love. It makes life easier ya know, the idea in the back of your mind that when life goes shitty you have a group of people that have your back.

I didn't choose to lose them all, some yes, I had to break away from my father to start my transition and such.

I just wonder, if I always think about them, do they think about me, or have they all moved on and consider me dead or lost to them.

[Andrea85]

Nope, I don't miss mine whatsoever. I still have my parents, but the rest of my family is gone forever now. Why miss bigoted fools?

[Gizmo, Debbie]

I still have family but we're not a close knit family. We don't realy do anything together any more.
It's friends i lack. I used to have lots of friends and would frequently be out and about doing things.

[JennyA]

Yeah I hear the friends thing too. None of them dropped my for being Tg, but I don't have a car and most of them moved to other states. Finding new friends is hard. You have to start from ground zero and learn everything about each other and THEN hope that they are actually cool and trustworthy. The friends I made in high school are connected to me like blood. Making a new friend at 31...their isn't that internal bond and blood feeling.

[suzy1]

Your thread really got to me Jenny.
I don’t know what to say. A family should always stick together. So what’s wrong with yours?
It goes without saying that you have us lot for friends but it’s not quite the same is it.
I just hope things get better for you.

SUZY

[Eryn]

It's likely that you've presented them with a dilemma that is outside of their ability to cope. Sometimes people in that situation simply assume that you don't want contact with them and therefore leave you alone even if you don't want that. You have nothing to lose by reaching out to them. It may be that reality isn't nearly so bad as your assumptions.

[Julia_in_Pa]

Hi Jenny,

My family and I have been estranged since my transition.
I've been full time for approx five years so I'm coming up on half a decade without them.
I've moved on because I had to not because I wanted to.
I pray for them daily and think of them thousands of times a week.

My thoughts and prayers are with you as well sis.


Julia

[Starling]

How hard it is to feel alone! I recently spent an evening, as myself, talking to a three-months-post-op young lady and her loving mom. The thing she emphasized most was to create a caring, flesh and blood trans network for myself before I go full-time.

Then, if friends and family aren't immediately accepting, there will be a personal support system in place. I'm working on it now, but it's a slow process--after all, so much of my life I've been in denial and in flight from the very people who will be my solace in the unhappy event I am rejected by my loved ones.

World turned upside-down.

:) Lallie

[Katesback]

Family was a casualty of transition. Sucks big time but life.

[Alexiz]

This is of great concern to me. I've started to look into therapists now, and it seems one of the biggest obstacles is letting my parents know. I am concerned about losing them... They're really all I have. The friends I know in person are nothing but just that- they're unreliable and would put me in further isolation rather than support me.

I'm sure someone will come around for you, though. Things will work out, as long as you believe and work towards it. You're making an effort and I think that's saying more than enough. I really hope things start looking better for you!

[Sara Jessica]

This stinks, I totally feel for your situation. But for my personal situation, it's a huge reason I have chosen my middle path, constantly fighting off a sometimes overwhelming need to transition.

[AKAMichelle]

While my family was never that great, I do wish that things were different. I didn't lose my family because of my transition, but because my parents divorced dragging everyone into the fight. I haven't talked with my brother for 3 years and father for 2 years unless you want to consider an email in December. I take care of my mom but I never was that close to her.

So I do realize the pain that having family turn their backs on you causes. I hope you find a solution to your issue.

[Simply_Vanessa]

half of my nuclear family wont talk with me.

my father thinks i'm doing this for attention. he thinks I would do this to shock people, or to ruin peoples' perception of our family. he thinks someone convinced me to be this way and I just decided to roll with it.

my younger sister thinks I'm doing this because I want to imitate her. she won't talk to me because she's freaked out at how similar we look. and she also thinks im doing this for a sexual fetish.


I'm realizing that there will be no way for me to reason with them because they dont even care to try to understand. they will always be stuck to their insanely off base perceptions. no matter what I could tell them, they still think i'm doing this for all the wrong reasons.

but they cant even see how much happier I am just after achieving self acceptance. let alone how much happier I will be once I can stop switching genders. so I have no room for them in my new life as a woman.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

good luck with making family progress.
i have met many transpeople that had families edge back after a couple years of successful transition and often that starts with one family member that starts to "get it"..that person then can help others start to get it too..

[Debb]

Just wanted to note, OP ... your family hasn't moved on; they haven't declared you dead, they miss you but just don't know how to get over what, to them, seems a yawning gap between you and them.

Chances are good that in the future, you will reconcile with at least some of them. Yeah, some families completely fall apart ... but that's unlikely, it's not common.

Do what you can to help them get over their problems with you. Do what you can to stay positive.

[Leanne2]

Dear Jenny,
First thing, here's a big hug from me. If you lived closer you could be my daughter. Secondly, most people just don't get it. I have a nephew that is gay. One of my sister in laws that lives on the west coast replied to a mass family e-mail from my nephew. She said that she still loved him but disapproved of his "choices". Like he even had a choice! People believe that if you are different then you must have chosen to be different. Don't give up on your family. If they want to know the truth then they will discover it. Unfortunately, some people don't want to know the truth. We all love you. We are your brothers and sisters. You are a good courageous person and we are proud of you. Leanne

[Steph.TS]

I love my mom, and don't want to lose her, my dad and I aren't close, he's always been strict, but since he's lost his job he's been distant and irritable at times, he's working on his home business from when he wakes up until he goes to bed, and he disapproves of this lifestyle calling CD, TG, TS etc... as simply 'gay' or 'homosexual' there's no way to educate him he won't listen when he thinks he's right. then there is my sister who tends to take after our dad (both are Bible thumpers). I would have little issue with coming out and living my life except I honestly don't want to hurt my mom she does so much, and the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt her by breaking up/damaging the family.

[Myojine]

It's been hell with my family...
OH were to begin...
Well i dont know who my birth mother is, my Father...
OH daddy... what a looser washed up religious stupid ingorant #@$% he is.
My father will not listen to facts or reason at all.
I have explained to him that all this stuff isnt a choise and... GOD how can someone like my own father is such a freaking idiot.
I dont need my old family.
I'll just adopt kids and mother my own family one day.

[Andrea85]

I'll just adopt kids and mother my own family one day.

That is exactly my plan, since my relatives will disown me soon as they find out. Makes for better traditions anyway. :)

[Kelsy]

Jenny

There is a serious downside to GID and loss of family is it. I feel for you and wish I could do more.
I am not close to my family and we were once very close and it breaks my heart. I Haven't told my
Mother yet, she is 88 and will likely disown me and cut me out of my inheritance but I cannot continue living a lie.
I will take my lumps and carry on and hope for the best. Remember there is always hope and things may improve!
I hope so for your sake.

Hugs, K

[thechic]

I was lucky most of my family stuck with me, my mothers 82 shes the understanding type and i do take her shopping which she enjoys,lost my sister she didn't like what i was. Still have my real friends,even though the number is less than the fingers on one hand.There were several realitives that i thought would understand but they don't want anything to do with me.My father died before i came out,mum told me he would of not taken it that well.
You just got to think positive,and enjoy the best you can of life.

[Sarah Jayne]

I naturally live a very quiet and private life, and my family and closest friends are the other side of the world, it was my choice to move to Oz, not theirs. None of them know about my double life and I have not even contemplated transitioning yet in my journey. The crux of this is that I live privately out of choice and would hate to live alone out of rejection, so I fight my demons on my own to keep the emergency exit clear. Maybe I have my priorities mixed up, but people's experiences below have hit hard about decisions yet to be made

[lauraabdl]

I lost most of my family when my SO of 16 years just decided to leave and when to live with her children across the country. I have not heard from or seen any of my children from before my marrage or after my marrage, I have three of my own from first marrage and two step children came with with her. In all those years we accumlated 20 grandchildren. I sorely do miss talking to most of them and feel that I have lost a large part of my life. I was the only grand parent that a lot of them ever knew and now the parents wont even accknowledge I exist. It leaves a hole in your heart that nothing can fill. so i know what you are saying and feeling, just don't know how to deal with it most of the time, crying and feeling sad all the time is so depressing and just as my therapist said time will tell and heal, just don't know how long that is.

[~Seana~]

it's about year since my mom died ( she died June26) and my dad a year before that. At a supper fter the funeral there was my brother, a toronto cop, bitching about trans people and belittling them, then telling everyone at the supper how they regularly got around searches without including a female officer, something they were supposed to do and bragging about it.
The ony family I have left i talk to , are my children and spouse. The rest could die tommorrow, and i probably wouldnt notice.

Seana

[Frances]

I had lost my parents and grand-parents by the age of 25. I have not spoken to my mother's sister and her family in over 20 years because of a dispute over an estate and a very lengthy lawsuit. All I have left are my father's three brothers and their families. I am the oldest of the cousins on that side. Half of them have not spoken to me since transition, and the other half have expressed support, but do not seem very eager to see me. My closest cousin will send me translation work, which I do not want to do, as I already do it full-time in a sweat-shop all week long. I keep asking him to spend time with me at a café or something, but it is not happening. I am basically an orphan. It has made me suspicious of friendship's also. People come and go in my life... even family.

[Starling]

...I keep asking him to spend time with me at a café or something, but it is not happening...

This made me weep spontaneously. I feel so bad for you. I told a very close old friend (and former lover) I needed to live as a woman to save my life, and while she felt "honored" that I would tell her, she took weeks to view a small head shot I sent her, and said she's "not "ready" to see me as myself. Too many people we count on give only lip service to their acceptance, and it frankly ratchets up my fear index. Good luck to you, Frances.

:) Lallie

[JennyA]

So I guess losing family members is like a nicotine addiction. You can quit them, but you'll always and forever have pangs of wanting them...cigarette or family.

The dreams are what I can't take. I can't control the dreams and I have at least two a week. It nullifies any sort of forgetting about them I try and do during my weekly life.

[~Seana~]

Since I'm also quitting smoking this week ( to afford laser, woulld you believe the cost of cigarettes in Canada over a month, and Laser, is about the same? Guess which I'd rather have) this comment hit pretty hard. And I had to giggle, because the similarities is almost striking:

Both will make you cough
Both will make you feel dirty for just being who you are
You'll be forever tempted towards both even though you know neither are good for you.
Both will burn you in the end.

It almost sounds funny, but from what I understand the relationshp between the TG and family is often stressed, and that in the end is somewhat less humorous.

Seana

[JennyA]

Yeah it's asinine in a way. A transitioning person needs family more then anything else and that is one of the first things they usually lose.

[Starling]

It seems as if love is not as strong as what the neighbors might think. I came of age in the 'Sixties, and cynical youth that I was, I mocked the idea that "love is all we need."

As I've learned through bitter experience, even if love isn't really all we need, it's certainly something we all need.

To the Yankees here, Happy Fourth of July. And to our brothers and sisters elsewhere, We Come in Peace.

Love,
Lallie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XpAuu8G3Wk

[JennyA]

Yes LALady, happy 4th. If our forefathers hadn't died for us and given everything they could their is no way we could even be contemplating the possibility of switching genders. Just imagine if we were born in Iran or deep in the heart of China.

I love The Beatles. I love the message of All You Need Is Love. The cynic in me, in my times of sadness, has tried to tell me that the simple message of love is foolish. My cynic has told me that love is just a chemical reation in your brain to make sure you procreate. That love doesn't trump the security of money.

But the cynic in me is just a jaded child who didn't get what she wanted in life and wants everyone to suffer just like she is. The real me knows that true love really does trump all. Money be damned. Whether it is the love of another human or the always neglected love of ourselves.

I get through every day trying to love everyone, even the jaded jerks like the cynic buried in my mind.

The love you take is equal to the love you make. That line from The Beatles to me is genius and I try to live by it.

[sandra-leigh]

I have just returned from a week of the first get-together of my immediate family in the last 2 years. I was getting torn by having to decide which of them to visit, so I asked them to get together and they agreed.

My mother hadn't driven down (350 miles or so) to visit my sister in 2 years, but after half a week my mother was regretting that she had to go home for an appointment and was planning about whether she could perhaps come back soon after that to help my sister. I incidentally helped my mother reconnect to my sister, and that helped fill a gap in my mother's life.

My mother and I spent several days doing things like weeding and pruning and some small carpentry and the like for my sister, who has been overextended for years. It wasn't anything big, but my sister was overwhelmed that we respected her enough to be cheerfully helping her: she hasn't had much of that in her life in the last few years.

My mother and sister both know I am TG; I told them two years ago and they took it well then. A year ago when I visited my mother she got a bit upset at the changes she could see in me (or at least now had a framework to interpreted). This year, I wore casual clothes like girl shorts, and one of the days I worked all day in a tank top; I didn't even get a frown.

A few days before I left one of my therapists suggested that my mother might be feeling lonely because she might be feeling as if I am drawing away from her, and she might be feeling as if she is "losing" her child. I thought that was an interesting comment.

During the time I spent with my mother, I happened to ask her about how her friends were doing; that sparked her to talk to me about her situation. My mother is in her early 70's, but her closest friends are in their early or late 80s. They are starting to change noticeably due to age (obvious Alzheimer's for one), or personality changes, or unresolvable family feuds about inheritances, or just diverging interests. My mother remarked about how everyone seems to be going away from her, just at a time when (due to a health issue) my mother needs some stability in her life.

Although my mother did not give any hint at all that she was also referring to me, the matter does give me something to think on: that how-ever I choose to proceed with my life, that it would be good if my mother got the reassurance that I am still "the same person".

While I was doing some of the yard work, my mother commented to me that I was a "good worker". The words were not flowery, but I understood: she was saying she loved me and was proud of me.

My earrings and long hair and tank top... those have stopped mattering to my mother. Helping my sister when my sister needed it: that matters to my mother.

I do not anticipate losing my immediate family as I go through my journey, though parts of it might be difficult to understand and take time to accept.

My extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins... unfortunately most of them I don't know very well. The ones I do know best are the ones who have the most "invested" in continuing to perceive me as male, and those might be the ones who find it most difficult to accept. Some of my third cousins (or whatever the relationship is) I've only been getting to know over the last couple of years, and have mostly gotten to know me over the internet (e.g., facebook) and so do not have a particular image or role for me nailed down, and might find the changes easier to accept.

[arbon]

...their is no way we could even be contemplating the possibility of switching genders. Just imagine if we were born in Iran or deep in the heart of China.

Actually, from what I understand, you can get grs in Iran, they do a lot of them over there. Being gay however, can be deadly.

[Frances]

Actually, from what I understand, you can get grs in Iran, they do a lot of them over there. Being gay however, can be deadly.

They do it in China as well. Read Jin Xing's autobiography. Changing sex is not an American thing. It started in Denmark, and the modern techniques first appeared in Morocco at Dr. Georges Burou's clinic.

[Beth-Lock]

My closest family has been a pain over my transition, and eventually we became estranged. Sad on certain holidays to be alone, but good not to have to face up to the problems they emerged me in, a long-running hell. Most of my family really doesn't give a damn about me. This is the sort of thing you have to leave behind.

A friend has said that they lose, because having a trans plus a unique individual in the family, is an experience worth it.

[JennyA]

yea I thinking that the Holiday season will be a time for me to start doing volunteer work. I want to help out at animal shelters. Doing something kind like that will help me to build a good feeling of self worth, meet other caring people, and do something worthwhile. My last 10 Xmases were not cheerful in any sort of way,

I fully intend to make this holiday season one of caring and joy. It's going to be my first holiday season as a full time woman and I intend to enjoy it like I used to as a child.

[dawnmarrie1961]

Jenny, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sat and cried because I felt so alone and isolated. I know my children love me and that they understand why I cannot be with them right now but that doesn’t make the distance between us any smaller. All I can do is continue on my journey and hope and pray that someday circumstances will allow us to be reunited again. It gives me something to look forward to.

[Starling]

...It's going to be my first holiday season as a full time woman and I intend to enjoy it like I used to as a child.

That sounds like a great way to approach it, Jenny, with your head up and your heart open. They'll never forget this Christmas, because you're giving your loved ones the gift of You.

:) Lallie

[Bree-asaurus]

So I guess losing family members is like a nicotine addiction. You can quit them, but you'll always and forever have pangs of wanting them...cigarette or family.

The dreams are what I can't take. I can't control the dreams and I have at least two a week. It nullifies any sort of forgetting about them I try and do during my weekly life.

It will get easier... and the dreams will become less frequent.

[ReineD]

I just wonder, if I always think about them, do they think about me, or have they all moved on and consider me dead or lost to them.

I'm sure they do. :sad:

I was estranged from my oldest son for a few years, nothing to do with gender, but the betrayal he felt over the issue at hand was just as devastating. As difficult and heartbreaking as it was to call and send texts & emails without having them acknowledged, and even travel across the country to see him and have him refuse to acknowledge I was even there, I listened to friends who kept telling me to not give up. Even though every time I reached out and he ignored it, it felt as if my heart was being stabbed.

Eventually it took a family crisis (the death of his grandmother) to bring us into contact again and now he is speaking to me again. He still feels uncomfortable and distant (which still breaks my heart), but at least there is contact now and there is always hope that it will continue to improve with time.

Please don't give up on your family. Send them cards once in awhile and tell them you miss them and how much you love them, and keep them up to date with your milestones. When and if you ever do see them again, it might take awhile before they use the correct gender pronouns or the correct name, but if you can look past this for the time being I'm sure that in time they will internalize the fact that you've transitioned. The importance is that they will still be a part of your life.

I know this is a trite saying, but it is true: time is a great healer.

:love: