Simon C. sent us this story. It is about nine sentences long and it covers three years, a music video, a painting, a name, and a first shot of testosterone.
We are publishing it the way he wrote it.
"I watched the music video for 'The Village' with my family. For those who haven't seen it, the video features a transgender man struggling to come out to his non-supportive family. At the end of the video he paints a really beautiful painting with a really good message. I decided to make my own version of the painting. My mom saw it when I was done and she told me she understood the message. We had a good talk, but we were still far from full acceptance. It took time but now she finally calls me her son and I'm getting my name legally changed soon and I just started testosterone. :)"
There is a thing in Simon's story that gets missed in most of the advice about coming out, which is that he did not do it with a sentence. He sat with his family and watched somebody else say it first, on a screen, at a safe distance. Then he made an object and put it where it would be found.
That is a real strategy and it works for a reason. It gives the other person somewhere to look that is not your face. It gives them time to arrive at the answer themselves, which people are much better at accepting than an answer handed to them. And it does not require you to hold your voice steady, which on the day is often the part that fails.
The other thing worth sitting with is the sentence in the middle. "We had a good talk, but we were still far from full acceptance." Simon does not skip that part and neither should we. The talk went well and it was not the end. His mother calling him her son came later, after time he had to live through without knowing it was coming. If you are in the gap between those two sentences right now, that gap is not a sign the story ends badly. It is just the length of the gap.
He signed off with a smiley face, three pieces of news, and no complaint.
If you are somewhere in the middle of this
Our coming out stories page is filling up with accounts like Simon's from across the community, and it exists because reading someone else's version is the thing that makes your own feel survivable.
If you want to talk to somebody trained for it rather than to us, the Trevor Project runs free, confidential support for LGBTQ+ young people twenty-four hours a day, and Trans Lifeline is staffed by trans people for trans people.
And if you have a story of your own, we would like to read it. There is a form at the bottom of the stories page. You choose whether your name appears on it.
Simon flies the trans flag now. If a flag is not safe where you are, a pin or a ring from the pride flags collection carries the same thing more quietly, and you can read what each of the designs actually means on our flag meanings page. All sales benefit LGBTQ+ charities.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
