You won't think families like ours are defective or weird. You'll get to know the queer parents at your kids' school. Knowledge creates change. 'If you learn along with me, then you won't be afraid. 'I want people to learn with me,' she writes. 'After nearly 23 years together, I finally have my whole partner, not just the part she wanted to show me,' and, she slays in every dress she tries on, Amanda jokes.Īmanda hopes that sharing her family's story will help to erase stigma. 'I am so in love with the person she is,' Amanda says, adding, 'Zoe has so many great qualities and those haven't changed over the years – the difference is that now she's happy.'Īlthough Amanda may have initially been blindsided, she says that she and her wife have never been more in love. 'Our marriage is better than ever, because for the first time we're two real people, having a real relationship.' I was concerned that once she transitioned, I wouldn't be attracted to her qualities as a woman.' But, as it turns out, Amanda says, 'Now she's way hotter,' adding with an excited giggle, 'Zoe is a tall drink of water.' But I was worried I was attracted to the man I married and the qualities that he possessed. Gender their mom was, whether it was male or female it wouldn't matter. 'I always told the kids it never mattered to me what Amanda had to make sure that the person Zoe was about to become would be the same person she initially had fallen in-and for a time- out of love with.

'For awhile I didn't know what to feel anymore,' she admits. 'I didn't know what I was going to do,' Amanda said. 'I felt so betrayed and this healing scab had just been ripped off. I was angry and hurt and at the same time, really wanted to support her.' That is not until Zoe was able to admit who she was. 'She was a songwriter, and I just thought, so you're a little moody, and you'll get over it.' But she didn't. 'The life I knew–the life I had with my husband – died that night. And then Zoe came out and I had no idea how I'd do it all over again,' she told us.

'I was just starting to heal from feeling like I was losing a son, getting her settled in her life, and I was finally able to focus on other things. 'I replied with an eloquent, You've got to be f*cking kidding me. On July 2, 2015, Amanda's husband of 19 years, Zoe, also came out as transgender. 'Her confidence has grown, and that tearful, fearful little person I once knew as my son has morphed into the most incredible young lady,' Amanda shares.īut less than two years after Alexis came out as her true self, Amanda was faced with another astronomical challenge. Now, at 13, Alexis is thriving at an LGBTQ-friendly public school that has an all-gender bathroom and prides itself on being a 'safe space.' Maybelline loved me very much two years ago,' Amanda wrote on her blog, The Maven of Mayhem. 'The world as she knew it was folding in on her.'Īmanda remembers 'spending those early days crying into the phone, crying into the eggs in the frying pan, crying while going through the drive-through ('can you repeat that, ma'am?'). Lots of mascara reapplication.

We just thought you be you,' Amanda, a writer from Ottawa, Canada, said. 'She liked Hannah Montana, and iCarly and she wanted to sew, but weĭidn't assume anything. 'She had always been anxious, and withdrawn. We had done everything we could to help her, but it wasn't until she went on anti-depressants that she was able to control her moods enough to realize what was actually going on,' Amanda explained.Īlthough she was different than Amanda's two other sons, Aerik, 19, and Jackson, 9, Alexis, was never particularly 'girly.' So she climbed under the covers with Alexis, who had been sobbing in her bedroom, and held her daughter. 'I didn't know anything about transitions at the time – I didn't know there were trans kids, except from watching Montel Williams. I remember looking at those kids and thinking how awful it must be to be judged like that.'īut without missing a beat, she says 'I thought, whoever this child was, whether she's male or female, or anything, we loved her and we needed to tell her that.'

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