“It’s a Boy”: Writing as a Conduit for Coming Out to Parents

This collaborative narrative examines the personal experiences of children coming out to their parents as transgender. One author uses autoethnography to share her experience from a parent’s perspective, and one author utilizes fiction to relay his experience from the child’s perspective. This collaboration revealed that not all parents react negatively, and even those who may respond negatively when they first learn of their child’s gender identity may grow to understand and accept them over time; empathy toward the other will help both sides in these difficult contexts. In addition to the therapeutic benefits of writing, writing as a tool offers children a helpful conduit for approaching these difficult discussions; and fiction writing, in particular, can offer children the distance to help them feel safe in approaching a sensitive subject and allow them the freedom to imagine positive futures living as their authentic selves.