Hi all,

I’m new here, and I am so grateful for this forum. My 14-year-old child came out as transgender to me a little over a month ago, and told me very clearly that she wishes to be called Olivia and go by she/her pronouns. I was grateful that she shared this with me, and have been doing everything in my power to support her in living as her authentic self. I have been pleased to see that she feels comfortable wearing feminine clothes at home, and when we go out somewhere just the two of us.

The issue is this: I am currently in the middle of a terrible divorce from a man who has proven himself to be an actual sociopath. I won’t go into the details, because they are completely whackadoodle and sound like something out of a telenovela, but we are currently in a custody battle because he is insisting on 50% custody despite the fact that he hasn’t contributed a DIME toward our child in over a year and was barely involved in any parenting for my child’s whole life. (It’s also telling, I think, that his version of 50% custody is that he wants every single weekend – i.e. no actual parenting.) He has been regularly sending me text messages insisting that “our son begged me to fight for 50/50 custody and wants to be with me as much as possible”.  Meanwhile my kiddo tells me that she feels pressured by him to spend more weekends with him but she doesn’t know how to tell him she doesn’t want to – what a rotten position to put a kid in anyway.  It’s clear that he doesn’t even understand who our child *is*, let alone what she wants.

So, yeah, she has definitely NOT come out to him, and from the discussions we have had, I don’t think she plans to anytime soon. Right now, she is out to me and to 2 of her friends, but I get the sense she would like to transition publicly. She will be going to high school in the fall, but it is a private Quaker school – one that I thought was a great fit before I knew she was transgender, and now that I know, I am *so* grateful that she will be going there.

BUT. There is still the matter of her father. I have no doubt that when and if she comes out to him, he will try to use it against me somehow.  But I can deal with that. I keep going back and forth, because I want to make all of this easier for her, but also I know that if she is going to be out as a transgender woman, she will need to be able to have these conversations and I can’t fight every battle for her. So if she is not ready to come out to her dad, maybe she’s not ready to be out more than she is, and that’s okay.

And I admit that there is a selfish part of me that thinks, “Please just wait a few months until custody is settled…” But I know she has to do what feels most authentic to her, and frankly, that has nothing to do with me.

So basically, I would love to connect with any other parents who have the specific intersection of trans kid and sociopathic ex. :b