We are a family of three living in the beautiful Bay of Plenty. There's myself, my husband, our daughter who is seven, and our two cats. We love spending time at the beach and being with our friends and family. The way our daughter explains her story is that she was born as a boy, but she's actually a girl.
My husband and I had two daughters before our son was born. Nothing in her childhood was a clear indicator that she was just born in the wrong body. At the age of 16, miserable and having had 18 months of poor attendance at her all-boys school, she finally told us what was going on in a note left for us to find. At first we were devastated, and mixed messages were being given and received. My husband struggled to be in the same room with her as he felt he would cry, so would often leave the room. My daughter thought he was rejecting her and got really upset. Nothing in our lives had prepared us for the shockwave that reverberated around our home those first few days.
We are a pretty nuclear young family; Mum, Dad, 16 yr old daughter, 14 year old trans daughter and eight year old son, We live in rural New Zealand. I have a government job that allows me to work from home two days a week and my husband is a self-employed artist who works from home, and is into his board sports.
We are a family of five. I'm a kiwi born in Lower Hutt, and my husband is English. Two of our children were born in the UK, and we moved back here when they were tiny so that we could take them to Playcentre and be involved in their earliest years. My wonderful rainbow was a child that was destined to be born. There is a five-year gap between him and his brother. X has never been defined by gender. He has always been ‘he' but his early influences were not gendered at all He had a wonderful child-led Playcentre education, and has had the benefit of being part of a very community minded, and open family.
We are a family of five, with three kids (one living and working overseas, one undertaking post grad uni study and one in their second year at uni). We've lived and raised our kids in Auckland. Mum runs an adult education business and Dad runs an IT company. Our middle child came out at 17 (6 and a half years ago). It was out of the blue – a complete shock. Yes, we freaked out, and spent months hoping she had made a mistake. There was nothing (to us) about her past that remotely suggested that she might be trans. I think it was a shock to her to realise too, although she had worked it out a while before she told us.
We are a family of five from Wellington. We have three children - an older son and daughter and our youngest, an affirmed girl who came out just over two years ago. With two older children we thought there wasn't much we hadn't seen and dealt with already. But when our youngest came out to us we were completely blindsided and had no idea what to do.
We are family of four, living in Auckland. We have two boys. The oldest is 15 and our youngest is 11. Our oldest came out to us when he was 13 and had just been at secondary school for about 4 weeks. At first we were in shock, as this is new territory for all, with so many questions that have more questions. Together both his Dad and I took some time off work to help him and ourselves find the support we needed.
Alice (mtf) is part of a blended family. We live in Wellington. Alice is my youngest child (aged nine) with an older brother (12), and sister (18). Alice lives between our home where my partner and his daughter aged eight and son five, live part time. She also visits her dad who also has an older son (half-brother) who no longer lives at home.
Before I had Alice I can't say I knew much at all about the LGQTBI community, and I am embarrassed to say that if I saw someone who I thought was transgender in the street I would stare in confusion.