Op-ed: Happy Father's Day, Trish
Filmmaker Sharon Shattuck learned it's OK to be different, that people will love you despite, or because of, your differences.
BY Sharon Shattuck
June 17 2012 9:48 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2012/06/17/daughter-wishes-her-trans-dad-happy-fathers-dayI'd like to say that growing up with a transgender parent was always a positive learning experience, that we spent my teen years trying on makeup together and sharing dressing tips, but let's be honest — when I was in high school, I was way more concerned with fitting in. And my dad, then known as Michael, now Trisha, was a great big sore thumb.
We were pretty young when my sister accidentally found some photos of Dad dressed up in the trash. Dad sat us down and told us that he was "different," like a woman trapped in a man's body. It sounds cliché now, after Oprah and the Internet and Boys Don't Cry, but we had never heard the word "transgender" before, and we just nodded in mute confusion.
