Somewhere Under The Rainbow

FOREWORD / Chapter 1

Thank you for joining us on this crazy journey.

Disclaimer: This book is not actually a guide to much of anything. There are going to be some tips, tricks and thoughts sprinkled throughout, but the main purpose Jayce and I had in telling our story was to entertain. Maybe the ideas in here will make you more comfortable with the trans community, who after all are just people. Maybe you're parenting, supporting, or mentoring a trans kid yourself and need some ideas or need to feel like you're connected to a bigger community and are not alone. Maybe you ARE a trans kid living with the physical, psychological, and social ramifications of being transgender in today's society and you just want to be able to laugh about life a little bit with someone who is there with you. We're game. We'll walk the road with you and listen to your thoughts about your own journeys and provide a little camaraderie for you, or shed a little light on the realities of day to day life as a trans guy (or in my case as the parent of a trans guy.) We'll also make you laugh.

Note this book is written mainly from the perspective of the transgender male teen, or rather from that of his mom. For clarity, someone who was assigned the female gender at birth based on anatomy, and who later transitions to male is a transgender man. Someone who was assigned the male gender at birth based on anatomy, and who later transitions to female, is a transgender woman. Trans men are men, period. Trans women are women, period. Since Jayce is a trans man, neither he nor I have a lot of insider experience on the care and keeping of trans women (or agender, or nonbinary, or genderfluid, or genderqueer, or whichever thing you identify with) folks. I haven't parented or supported a transgender girl before, so we won't be speaking much about that experience. We can make semi-educated guesses about some of things they might experience, but that's about the best we can offer. Also, we are trying very hard to be conversant with current and correct language being used to describe the people and events in the book. Missteps and misidentifications in this respect are more likely to be mine than Jayce's, but rest assured we'll clean it all up the best we can and try to discuss issues with care, kindness, and humor.

Another note for you: we totally get that a lot of traumatic stuff happens to people in the trans community. We are not aiming to belittle or invalidate ANYONE with this work. We just want to tell our story from a somewhat lighthearted point of view.

The last disclaimer here is that if profanity, discussion of body-related topics, or discussion of sexual functioning offends you terribly... this is not the book for you. We are seeking to interject some humor into some difficult situations and sometimes we get a little crude, and other times it's necessary to describe things with clarity and precision.

This book covers roughly the first year after Jayce joined our family. It's been a year of highs and lows, rearrangements and reprioritizations, and a lot of love.

CHAPTER1 Meet the Prices

I have been a registered nurse for a long time. I've got two Masters degrees, three kids with various special needs, and clinical experience in home health, pediatric special needs care, and hospice care as well as an education background. I am, if I do say so myself, a hell of a good advocate for people whose voices, for whatever reason, are stilled or muffled. On top of that I am an extreme extrovert and I have amazing friends. I can network like a CEO. I know people in local and state politics, people attached to community resources, and people who are just generally fabulous humans.

In the summer of 2018, my husband Daniel and I were living with our three kids in suburban Denver, minding our own business. Part of that business was vocal advocacy for the LGBTQ community. Two of our three kids at that time fit in "somewhere under the rainbow" with one transmasculine son who is pansexual, one cisgender daughter, and one nonbinary first grader. We did not know at that time that any of the Price kids were gender quirky, we thought we had three girls, but as they've explored their own identities they have changed things. I'll get to that.