Trystan Reese - How We Do Family: From Adoption to Trans Pregnancy, What We Learned about Love and LGBTQ Parenthood

About the Author

TRYSTAN REESE is an established thought leader, educator, and speaker on diversity, equity, and inclusion. He is a professionally trained anti-racism facilitator and curriculum designer, studying under Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington at the Social Justice Training Institute. Trystan has been an organizer in the trans community for nearly two decades and is on the frontlines of this generations biggest fights for LGBTQ justice.

Trystan launched onto the global stage as the pregnant man in 2017 when his familys unique journey gained international media attention. He gave closing performances for The Moth Mainstage in Portland, Albuquerque, and Brooklyn. Trystan has partnered with many major media outlets, including CNN, NBC, People, and BuzzFeed, to bring his message of love and resilience to the mainstream.

The founder of Collaborate Consulting, Trystan provides customized training solutions for individuals, organizations, and communities interested in social justice. He has trained hundreds of medical providers on LGBTQ inclusion and has delivered keynotes at dozens of conferences and convenings.

He is married to his partner, Biff, and they live on the traditional homelands of the Clackamas, Chinook, Cowlitz, Kalapuya, Kathlamet, Multnomah, Wasco-Wishram, Tumwater, and many other Nations who made the Columbia Basin their home (also known as Portland, OR), with their three kids: Lucas, Hailey, and Leo. They are very happy.

collaborate.consulting | @biffandi

How We Do Family: From Adoption to Trans Pregnancy, What We Learned About Love and LGBTQ Parenthood
Copyright 2021 by Trystan Reese

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

ISBN 978-1-61519-756-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-757-6

Jacket design by Beth Bugler
Cover photograph by Mark Pratt-Russum
Text design by Sarah Schneider
Author photograph by Rhys Harper
Photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing June 2021
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents, Janet and Clay, who taught me that you dont have to do anything special to become a parent. Just open the door and be ready when children walk in.

Chapter One

How We Do Love

B ecoming a parent after only a year of dating was never the plan.

Biff and I had celebrated our first anniversary as boyfriends and had just moved in together. Our goal had been to take it slowly and date for at least a year before living together, but we broke that promise when my lease was up. We found a spacious one-bedroom on the top floor of the same Hollywood apartment building I was living in when we first met. We both adored the vintage wrought iron railings in the lobby, the creaky elevator, and the view overlooking a secret garden with a fountain and swinging bench. At that point in our relationship, our biggest disagreements had been over Biffs dog, Olive, who barked at anyone and everyone. Other than our differing approaches to doggy discipline, we just fit together. Where I was spontaneous and adventurous, he was thoughtful and frugal. We balanced each other out and had both come to depend on our relationship as our primary source of love and support.

Becoming a person who was open to that love wasnt as simple. I came out as transgender at age nineteen. I was living in Portland, Oregon, as a teenage girl, in a tormented relationship with a boy whose mood swings oscillated between weeks-long bouts of depression and regular fits of anger at the world. In retrospect, it was a deeply troubled relationship that I should have left long before I did, but I have grace for my younger self who didnt truly have any models for healthy non-heterosexual relationships.

One night it came to me with such precision and clarity that I knew it couldnt possibly be wrong: Im a boy. I suddenly knew that I had never been a girl. Though the realization rang clear as a bell, it still took time to come to terms with my transgender identity. I went to meetups for transgender men and started performing as a drag king at an all-ages queer night club. The coming-out process was rocky: People who attend support groups are often those without much support to give. Many were confused by meI was a girl who said I was a boy but still looked and sounded like a girl and was also attracted to other boys. Somehow, I still managed to barrel forward in my self-discovery.

Even without role models or access to formal language, I was clear about my gender identity (the internal knowledge I possessed about my own gender): I was a boy. I was also clear about my sexual orientation (who I was attracted to): I was a boy who liked other boys, which made me gay. Oh, so youre actually a straight woman? people would ask me. Why would you want to be a man if youre just going to date other men anyway? was also a common refrain. These inquiries sound quaint now, but to young adult me, they were confusing and devastating.

There was no confusion about my assigned sex, either: It was female (born a woman, as we said then), but I was not at all clear about my gender expression (the ways in which one conveys their gender identity to the world). I knew I wasnt butch, though I liked the snarling, leather-jacket-clad, motorcycle-driving, pompadour-sporting people I knew. I also couldnt be femme, because others already viewed me as a girl, so when I put on makeup or a dress, I just looked like I was going to a high school dance. I was attracted to all kinds of boys, but none of them helped me discern who or what I was. I would have to do that for myself. I discovered that in order to continue on my journey, in order to keep living in this body, I would need to transition in one way or another.

Most of the people in my life told me I was delusionalthat I wasnt actually transgender: I wasnt manly enough! I didnt date women! I didnt fit any of the criteria that would have designated me a Man. It took me three years to work up the nerve to see a doctor who could prescribe hormones legally, three years to begin the process of aligning my body to more accurately depict the person I knew myself to be. Once I started testosterone, my body began to slowly reconfigure itself into a new form, one that was slightly more muscular, slightly hairier, and with a slightly deeper voice (although none of those changes happened in the extremes I would have preferred). My ovulatory and menstrual processes were put on hold by the hormone shifts as well, and I even had to sign a legal form stating that I understood the fertility implications of testosterone. The paperwork inaccurately suggested that I may be rendered sterile by the hormonal transition process. It would be more than a decade before I would learn that my doctor had been misinformed about the actual impacts of testosterone on fertility. At the time, I was more than willing to sacrifice the possibility of future parenthood for the very real present reality of a more masculine appearance.