The Black Sheep

Does your family have a ‘black sheep?”

This family had one…

My transgender uncle: A family secret hidden for decades
Clearing her mother's house, Sara Davidmann found a stash of letters, documents and photographs revealing a closely kept family secret. She tells Hannah Booth about her transgender uncle's hidden life in the buttoned-up 1950s
The Guardian
By Hannah Booth   
Friday 15 November 2013

Then they found a chest of drawers in the garage. In the top drawer was a copy of every letter Sara had written to Audrey; in the drawer below, two brown manila envelopes. On one was written, in small, neat script: "Ken. To be destroyed." A stash of letters, documents and photographs, it was the full story of a closely kept family secret – one that Sara knew something of, but not the whole story.
[…]
Among the documents was a letter from Hazel to Audrey, dated 10 September 1959. "This letter will no doubt come as a surprise to you," she wrote, "but don't be unduly alarmed.

"Last October, without any previous inkling whatsoever, I learned that K was changing his sex."

How many of us have written that coming out letter? As we drop them off in the mail box we know there is no going back and we can now only hope and pray that our world will not end.

For me I think it has mostly been a positive and I am now closer to some of my family than ever before. The article goes on to say,

Sara and her siblings knew nothing about their uncle being transgender. Very young at the time of Hazel's discovery, she believes they were kept away from Ken and Hazel's home. "I remember him very little. Perhaps being so young we would have found things we shouldn't have."

I wonder what my family will think of me in three or four generations? Will I be the black sheep? Or will it be cool to trans-aunt in the family? I wonder how I’ll be listed on the family tree? Maybe I will have an asterisk after my name with a footnote.