Credit: SWNS
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Living as an LGBTQ family is freeing
00:03 because we get to live our truths.
00:05 I'm Sarah, and this is my wife, Jenny,
00:14 and I am a trans woman.
00:16 I came out after we were married for 12 years.
00:20 We have two boys.
00:22 When we first met, we were both going to college,
00:26 and we met through a mutual friend,
00:28 and I asked my mutual friend, I was like,
00:30 "Hey, who's that cute girl?
00:32 Can you kind of hook us up?"
00:33 They told me that Jenny had a boyfriend at the time.
00:36 I was like, "Oh, okay."
00:37 Three years later, that same mutual friend was like,
00:39 "Hey, by the way, that cute girl you liked
00:42 broke up with her boyfriend."
00:43 And then literally from that night-
00:45 - I moved in like two days later.
00:47 - We haven't been apart since that party.
00:49 We got married, and things happened gradually,
00:52 a little bit at a time.
00:53 I would start really early with things like,
00:55 "Hey, can I get these silk pajama pants?"
00:59 You know, that are blue, so you know,
01:01 they're still a boy color.
01:02 - 'Til eventually she started buying me clothes.
01:07 I was getting strange gifts of like pink satin tank tops
01:12 and little pleather skirts,
01:16 and I'm like, "Cool, babe, thanks."
01:19 - So I would get her those things,
01:20 and then I would be like, "Hey, can I wear that?"
01:23 - For Halloween, I think I'm gonna be-
01:26 - Anytime Jenny said yes,
01:27 I would wanna take it one step further a little bit later.
01:30 - The wardrobe became bigger,
01:32 and there were now dresses and skirts and shirts and stuff.
01:36 I remember it being well after the boys were born.
01:39 None of this was ever in front of the boys.
01:40 It was always like after they went to bed,
01:41 it was just kind of like our little secret kind of thing.
01:44 - It's like I would get depressed
01:45 having to switch back into guy clothes.
01:46 - So it was during that time that I started
01:49 Googling the word transgender and, you know,
01:51 what happens if, and during that time,
01:53 I realized, yes, I can do this.
01:55 Yes, I want to do this.
01:55 Not only that, but hey, I kind of like the prospect
01:58 of being married to a woman.
01:59 - By the time I said, "Hey, I need to talk.
02:02 I think I wanna transition,"
02:04 she had kind of already done all this other research.
02:07 - And I was like, "Well, you know, sounds good,
02:10 'cause in the meantime, I think I'm a lesbian."
02:11 - So telling the boys went really, really well,
02:14 and kids don't have a preconceived notion
02:18 of the world around them yet.
02:20 The kids don't care in general.
02:21 And they're like, "Okay."
02:23 - Daddy has a girl's brain and a boy's body,
02:26 and we're gonna work on trying to get the two to match.
02:29 - And our nine-year-old, we find him crying,
02:32 and we're like, "Morgan, what's wrong?"
02:34 And he's like, "Will Daddy still play Minecraft with me?"
02:39 And that was all he could think of.
02:42 - I mean, it's brought us closer.
02:44 - You were definitely hiding who you were,
02:45 and through Sarah hiding who she was,
02:48 I realized I was hiding who I was too.
02:50 - Not being a straight family anymore,
02:53 we really had our eyes open to the privileges that we had.
02:58 - We hold each other's hands when we're out in public.
03:00 But now, it's not as easy.
03:03 Like when one of our kids has a competition
03:04 in a really tiny town on the outskirts,
03:06 that's pretty conservative.
03:08 Like, how far apart do we need to stay?
03:10 How much can we interact?
03:13 - I don't think everybody is lucky enough
03:15 to have that moment in their life
03:16 where they really get to look in the mirror
03:20 and really ask themselves, like, "Who am I?"
03:23 I think society pressures all of us, right?
03:26 Like, "This is what you should do.
03:28 "This is who you should be.
03:29 "This is how you should act."
03:31 And I don't think many people really get a chance
03:34 to say what makes me happy.
03:36 Living as an LGBTQ family is freeing
03:40 because we get to live our truths.
03:42 (gentle music)
03:45 (soft music)
03:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]