Lisa Marie, reading your words really sad me and st the same moment I feel so lucky on keeping my family almost intact except for one of my son's, the youngest one, he's pass tomorrow 35. He's a pareduc firefighter. I mention the last because heaped me to "understand" what's going on with people's rejection to MTF more than ftm.
There's a huge unsaid but very established and rooted in our minds the figure of a male. All the things we have throughout centuries if not thousands of years about the male figure is doubled in the father.
I know we all know what I'm talking about, a man is stronger than a woman, he's the provider and many more things that are an aberration just to be a gay man but a effeminate man, more than that aam transitioning to be a woman is so ununderstandable as is the death. As with the death of a loved one, that is something we can't understand and we need grief, our transition, in those that really love us, will take time and grief to overcome. Unfortunately, being honest, your teenager children will need more time because st the begining they will feel comfortable just being far from you but just the years of maturity that brings wisdom will make them to approach you with a different perspective.
I would finish saying, just enjoy what you have, don't cry for you don't or lost and be there always for your lived ones.
Time sometimes flies so slow but with perspective of years it really love fast ...
