Allie Jane:
Glad that you found us!. I hope that the time that you spend here will be beneficial to you going forward.
Coming Out process is an interesting one. The easy part is that you get to define how things sit for you to others. The hard part is that you get to define how things sit for you to others.
It is almost always better to come out rather than be outed. If you get outed, it becomes very hard for you to say what you need to say, in the ways that you would like to say it. People are placed on the defensive, arguments start and things may be said that are regrettable. What I would recommend is:
- Do research on the transgender movement, the lives of transgender people and the Coming Out Process for trans people
- Put some conscious thought into what you need to say
- Describe what you thought about yourself in the past
- Describe how you think of yourself now (the idea is to convey the thought is that you have had these feelings for a long time; it is NOT a whim or the product of confusion)
- Put your thoughts together in print
- Could be text or bullet points, but it helps to crystallize your thinking
- However, I don’t recommend that you read it when you have the discussion as it might work to take some of the sincerity out of the process
- Try to anticipate possible questions
- Be truthful
- Don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t know something
What I wrote above is not set in concrete. These are the things that come to mind for me, but realize that every situation is different.
