Our daughter celebrated her 16th birthday this past weekend. Her second birthday as her true self. At a time when the president has said trans folks are no longer welcome in the military and when the hate group known as the American College of Pediatricians issued a statement essentially equating support for trans folks to child abuse, seeing our child just being a teenager was a welcome gift. She celebrated with her friends as so many kids do -- a movie and a slumber party fueled by junk food -- without any of the baggage of other people's issues; other people's expectations of what is good, moral, "normal." She just got to be a teenager.

We are fortunate, as parents to a trans child, that we are surrounded by overwhelmingly supportive people. We won the lottery of circumstance: supportive family, supportive medical professionals, supportive school district, supportive faith community. And sometimes we take it for granted that the haters have removed themselves from our circles. They've self-selected and moved on. Last week we heard, second hand, about a dinner party at which a mutual friend of mine and the hosts made some derogatory comments about our daughter. We also heard how the host laid in to the person who said them and made it perfectly clear that the comments were ignorant and unwelcome. I don't know who made the comments - and I don't really want to know - but I am beyond grateful to know that the host stood up for us. I sent her a message just to say thanks. Her response was "Parenting is a journey, and I think supporting each other is the way to go. xoxo." Nothing about trans rights, nothing about equality. It's just about supporting each other as parents. So Simple.

A few nights after our daughter's party, as she lay in bed freshly showered and ready to sleep, I popped my head in her bedroom door to say good night. She met me with a contented smile and a request for a snuggle. As I lay there beside her -- this beautiful creature that used to smell of dirt, and sweat, and "boy," now smelling like flowers -- she turned to me and said, "Mum, I'm really happy, y'know. Like, I feel really confident and good in my skin." For any parent, there can be no better gift than those words. But, especially for a parent who has seen the anguish of a child in pain, this moment confirmed again for me that we are doing the right thing by supporting our child. And we have so many to thank for our ability to focus on loving and supporting our child; our community that fights battles for us when we don't even know they're being fought. Thank you.