My sort of grandmother

[NathanielM]

Hi,

I'm going to have to come out to my dad's aunt (only sort of grandma I have) pretty soon. I'd rather not since she's 90, has a hard time undrstanding a lot of 'new' things and is very conservative. I'm also scared I might really hurt her health or she'd get a heartattack ur something... But she spents quite some time with us,  up to two weeks at once and I hear her every week and my parents call me Nathan and he all the time. And switching back for her seems out of the question both for them and for my mental health. So they want me to tell her and I see no way I can keep going withouth breaking contact without tellig her.

I have no idea how to go about this.  I think she'll have a hard time even understanding what I'm trying to say.  I have decided to do it alone since she's likely to blame my mother (long story) and I sort of am her favourite (completely for no other reason then her being my godmother) so it seems the best option. Having my dad there won't help because he'll get frustrated over it.

Any tips? Any easy to understand way of explaining this? I don't inted to go into detail about surgery and stuff. I also don't expect her to change any pronouns because she won't. 

[JayDawg]

If she has memories of you being a tomboy, you might start by reliving some of those to set the stage, and lead into "As you can see (indicating your male attire), I never outgrew that. So I'm seeing a therapist, and they agree that I have Gender Dysphoria. Mom and Dad and all my friends call me Nathan now, and I live as a guy."

If it was my grandma, I'd make it clear that I don't expect her to understand, I don't expect her to call me Nathan or "he," I just wanted her to know, so when people refer to me as Nathan and him she will know why.

[Jess42]

Sometimes grandmas know more about us that we or our parents do. At 90 yrs old she has probably seen a lot, met many interesting people and so on. But really you know her better than anyone else and what she may think better than anone else. Mine knew I wasn't quite right for a boy and we talked a lot and she never ever let anyone else know hwat we talked about, God Bless her Soul.