The past, the good the bad and the ugly, always remains.

It’s Father’s Day, and there’s no denying that it’s a strange day when it comes to working out how to negotiate it, navigate it and feel about it. As a trans woman that has begun to transition in my mid to late 40's I have a whole past that includes 3 children. Three children that for most of their life have known me as their father. However I feel about that, that fact remains, that’s how they experienced me, grew up with me. For the vast majority of their life that was the role I played in their life.

Exactly what my role in their life is and will be as life goes on is still a work in progress. We’re just trying to work it out as we go and, at least for me, hope that love does indeed conquer all, as the love I feel for all three of my girls is deeply entrenched into the core of my being.

I recall how the moment all three of them emerged into this world and as I saw them emerge and held their tiny soft wonderful bodies the instant overwhelming mixture of emotions that left me crying my eyes out with unsure of what the mix of emotional feels I was experiencing was, except that here was this brand new human that I was charged with, and privileged to be a parent to.

There is no question or doubt in my mind that that moment of holding brand new life is one of the most raw, intense and special moments of life and I feel amazingly privileged to have experienced it with three wonderful daughters.

So I sit with confused feels about this day. I sit in a sense without a role and with a role all at the same time. On the one hand I remain their father, in whatever way that looks like and yet on the other hand I am totally not a father. I never really felt like a father, mostly I just felt like I got a lot of shit wrong.

The idea of taking on a role of mother to my girls is fraught, not least due to the attitude of my ex wife who whilst to an extent being able to accept my transition is having some significant difficulties and the idea of my taking on a mothering role to her is intensely threatening. I have no interest in that being the case.

In all the years of denial and repression I managed to show my girls love and care but never in my mind in a way that was good enough. Always I felt like as a father I was totally inadequate. But for a long time, what else could I be. I like to think love conquers all, and over time together we will carve out a new kind of understanding of ourselves and our relationships and regardless of gender, motherhood, fatherhood, whatever that we will all be bound together in sharing a strong bond of love that manifests itself in care and support of each other.

Regardless of all of that stuff, today remains, well, a little odd. My girls took me out for a lovely breakfast, it was kind of weird, sitting there a group of five women celebrating the Father’s Day of one of them. It felt somewhat exposed, not really unsafe just exposed, or sticking out like a sore thumb kind of thing. It was a lovely time and my girls shared their love in words on cards and thoughtful gifts.

Nevertheless, it feels weird. I’m not really sure how I am meant to feel or how I do feel. I never really felt I was much good as a father, but I haven’t been a mother either, and the situation is what it is that makes taking on that role now would result in deep hurt of others.

What I do know I suppose, is that I love my children deeply and that I am their parent. That doesn’t change. That never will change. The past, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, remains as an actual history that is contained and encoded in our hearts and memories, and it is what it is. The future is yet to be encoded in our hearts and memories and what is most important is that it is done so through a grid of experience that is encased in love, care and support for each other.

What that future is going to look like is an unknown. All I do know is that I can move forward and show love and support of my children as I move forward in my life in the most honest and most authentic way I can.

I’m not a traditional dad, and I’m not a traditional mum either, but I am a parent, and that can’t be taken away or changed. It will always be. I can choose love and to care and support my kids. It is unfathomnable to make an attempt to pretend that the past, the good, the bad, and the ugly are the past of some other person. But that’s the thing, the crux, I am not a different person now than I was, then, I am just more me, more authentic, more true and more real.

Acceptance of the truth of my gender identity and to transition into the most authentic expression of it, can only mean that my authenticity will be greater, my sense of self will healthier, I will be, and already am, a happier, more generous, person.

A key learning for me, as I transition is, that the longer I transition, the more I embrace my true gender and express it how it feels best to do so; well, the better a person I seem to become. My capacity to care increases, my happiness is more robust, my ability to do things, to be successful and to believe in myself as a valid, useful good person in a way that in the past has always been somewhat impossible.

So it’s a weird kind of day, with some weird kind of feels, and yet at the same time it is an affirming day, a day that underscores as absolutely the right thing to do was to embark on this journey of transition.

So that journey continues, bodily changes continue, the course towards whatever medical changes will be continues, and as they do, I allow myself to become, to embrace, to grow into the woman that I was always meant to be.