Reflections on forgiveness

Most families do find a way to stay connected with their transgender member — but for the smaller number who struggle, the stakes can be serious, especially when the family member is a minor child still dependent on their parents. This page looks at why that matters, and then turns to forgiveness and reconciliation as a path forward.

Why this matters

Just under a third of families with a transgender member may run into relationship difficulties. When the transgender family member is a minor child, this is worth taking especially seriously: a child who is rejected by parents they depend on faces real risks — including risks that already exist for many transgender youth around substance use and suicide, which rejection can make worse.

When the transgender family member is an adult, similar risks apply, though they look somewhat different — transgender adults face elevated risk of depression and anxiety, particularly before any medical transition, and experience higher rates of both suicide attempts and homelessness than the general population.

If you or someone in your family is currently struggling with thoughts of suicide, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is available 24/7. The Trevor Project (1-866-488-7386) also offers crisis support specifically for LGBTQ+ youth. Also see Crisis resources for more information about resources that are available if you or someone you love is in crisis.

Because of these risks, if your family member is a dependent minor child, it's worth carefully weighing what rejection or estrangement could mean — not to induce guilt, but because this is a place where the stakes are genuinely high. When the family member is an adult, other family members face a similar, if somewhat different, calculation.

So what are Christian families to do with this?

Forgiveness

Working through grief — from denial toward acceptance — often surfaces a need for forgiveness. A parent may carry real anger about gender-specific hopes or expectations that won't be realized. A spouse or child may need to forgive a family member for leaving behind a role — husband, wife, father, mother — that they once filled.

A few things worth knowing about forgiveness as you find your way through this:

It's both a decision and a process. Forgiveness is a real, explicit choice — but that choice sometimes has to be renewed, more than once, as new feelings surface.[⁹]
After any crisis, we get to choose what we build from it. Holocaust survivor Edith Eger writes about learning to live again after unimaginable loss, without letting it curdle into hatred or resentment.[¹⁰]
Forgiveness is sometimes a daily choice, not a single moment. After a devastating 2006 shooting at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, PA, the Amish community chose, daily, to forgive the shooter — even reaching out to embrace his mother in the years that followed.

Estrangement and reconciliation

If your family has experienced estrangement, you're not alone — it's common across many kinds of families, not only those with a transgender member. The book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them notes that a family member coming out can be one factor that contributes to estrangement, even though the book isn't specific to transgender family members.

Reconciliation, according to the book, doesn't have to mean "forgiving and forgetting." A helpful first step is simply accepting that you and your family member may remember the same events differently — and that this gap doesn't have to be resolved before you move forward. From there, families generally land in one of a few places:

Reinstating the relationship largely as it was
Redefining the relationship on new terms
Choosing not to reconcile, while staying aware of what that choice may cost — particularly if the other person depends on you

If you do choose to resume or redefine the relationship, the book suggests thinking through what the least acceptable version of that relationship would look like for you, and setting clear boundaries for what you need going forward. And it's worth naming honestly: while most people experience reconciliation as a positive step, some people find real relief and even liberation in estrangement instead. There's no single right answer here — only the one that's true for your family.

Continue exploring:

*The citations on this page come from the research literature and other publications and are available upon request.

Grant et al, 2011
Johns et al, 2019
Baams et al, 2019
Choi et al, 2015
Dhejne et al, 2016
Herman, Wilson, & Becker, 2017
Keuroghlian et al, 2015; Benotsch et al, 2013
National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2019
Seamands, 1981
Eger, 2017