#TransLoveStories for Trans Awareness Week. @glaad We met at a summer camp in Canada, where we worked with adults with special needs. I was recovering from a disastrous year, and Canada was the perfect getaway to continue healing and to explore being out and visibly trans in a new continent.
She showed up late to staff training, as she put it in her contract that she wouldn’t miss Toronto Pride. I distinctly remember getting to know her that first week and realising I had no option but to fall for her. I kept looking for red flags, and couldn’t find any. She kept ticking boxes I didn’t know I had. Scared of my feelings, I avoided her.
I got over myself when Maggie went away for a weekend and I couldn’t stop talking about her to everyone who would listen. I knew I couldn’t spend the whole summer pining after her, or avoiding her (it was a small camp!), so decided to write a note telling her how I felt. She thought the note was going to say that I was uncomfortable and ask her to back off. Instead, it was the first of many notes throughout the summer.
We stayed up every night together after that. At first, we respected the natural expiry date. That lasted a week before we started discussing long distance.
We continue to make each other a priority from 6000km away every single day.
Maggie has been and continues to be my biggest advocate and supporter. She genuinely cares more about my gender than I do. I never had to send her any resources. She educates herself, consults me all the time, and does great advocacy work for everyone in her regular life. She understood and accepted me from the start. She affirms my identity constantly and naturally. I used to worry that me being trans would be too much for her, but she makes it a total non-issue. Embracing and celebrating it and making sure it doesn’t define our relationship.
I’m happy that it makes her feel more valid and comfortable in her queer identity too, as being with Maggie has made me feel like I can take on the world. I’m even more excited to transition knowing she is too, and I’m more patient, as I am reminded daily that I am perfectly valid the way I am, right now.
Maggie’s take & tips for cis partners in the comments: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4zPqGFgtsD/?igshid=50twdvzah7g4
