“It’s funny. We have legal documents declaring our marriage valid in two different states. We’ve been together and in love for years. But it was the birth of our daughter this daredevil, this personality, that really made our home feel like family.”

It’s a boy, until and unless he tells us otherwise, I thought. It’s a boy who will be raised without gender roles. It’s a boy who will be defined by their heart and mind, not by the organs that happen to be between their legs. It’s a boy who will be loved wholly, deeply, and completely by the two women who created him.

“Sometimes, when you’re in the business of parenting, you have to phone a friend for a bit of perspective and advice. Sometimes, you have to phone more than one.”

She didn’t say “I have suspected this for years and I still love you.” It went more like a Scared Straight kind of thing but instead of scaring me about drugs and a life of crime, she wanted to scare me straight, straight. “Just Say No to Lesbianism” straight.

“As a lesbian mom, it was especially hard to fight the urge to do the “right” thing, however slippery a concept that was, because I was representing a community, not just myself, I thought.”

My transgender wife and I are both people with a lot of serious challenges to face, and we chose to confront those challenges as a team. That’s not heroism. It’s love.

Sometimes the gulf between my own experience and “typical” parents is the same as that between parents and non-parents. And yet, on a fundamental level it’s also the same joy and the same challenge that we all face.

Once upon a time I married a man, had kids, and realized I was a lesbian. Here’s what happened and what I wish somebody had told me at the time.