4. I will not purposely embarrass any of you in any way. Again, this is partly why I have decided to relocate in the near future.
5. I will unconditionally respect your decisions on how you need to deal with this.
6. I will keep you up-to-date about my physical, emotional and spiritual health unless you make it clear that you don’t want to know.
WHO I AM TELLING
If you wait patiently enough, eventually you will come to the end of your patience.
-Reference lost
Again, so you know, below is a list of the people who I am planning to talk with about this. It is likely that, as you are reading this, I have not yet had a chance to talk with all of these people, but my intention is to proceed through this list expeditiously so that all of the following twenty-one people hear about this from me and in person.
My Children
My sisters and their spouses
Friends
WHAT ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE?
NEICES AND NEPHEWS
I will be talking to my nieces and nephews (actual and honorary) about this only if requested to do so by their parents. I have issued requests for information about what, when, if and how to tell children. I will make these available to those of you with kids as available and requested.
OTHER RELATIVES
If anyone thinks that other friends or relatives should know, I will be happy to talk about it. I suppose that I have at least one aunt/uncle set who should possibly know. I would like to discuss this with some of you first. I do not believe that my grandmother would benefit from knowing, but I will leave that up to my mother. We should discuss whether my grandmother should know and, if so, who should talk with her.
BUSINESS ASSOCIATES
As far as I’m concerned, there are only two business associates who I plan to talk with about this. In fact, the reason that I am telling them is that they are more than business associates—they are friends and mentors and have taken very good care of me, especially emotionally, for a very long time. I will be talking to clients and other business associates only at their request.
EX-SIGNIFICANT OTHERS
Informing ex-significant others seems like an odd possibility to me, but I have talked with lots of transgendered people who feel like they have a responsibility to tell/confide in former significant others or even casual dating partners. I suppose it’s a natural reaction to the guilt of having lied to them previously. In my opinion, though, ex’s have no reason to know, no right to know, and indeed it may even hurt them to know.
EVERYONE ELSE
No matter how carefully I plan this, and I have tried very hard to plan, it just is not as containable as would be optimal. As a friend aptly mixed metaphors about this very situation: “once the avalanche starts, the pebbles don’t get to vote.” Other people are just going to know. I apologize to everyone I care about for any embarrassment that this may cause you and I will do my best to minimize it.
WHO SHOULD YOU TELL?
Two people can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead.
-Someone
From my point of view, you may speak with anyone you want to about this. This falls again into the category of do what you have to do. I would never ask any of you to hide a secret from someone you tell everything to, nor would I want to hinder you from getting any support you think might be helpful to you or, if relevant, your kids.
I have decided that I am only sharing this with close family and very close friends. While I am not hiding this anymore, I don’t have a need to shout about it to strangers. Nor do I think it is especially responsible for me to burden people by throwing my issues into their laps unless they have a reason to know. If I have asked you to read this, I thought you needed to know.
As to whether you should tell particular people, consider the following thoughts, but again, please do what you think you have to.
· Does the person need to know?
· Is the person someone to whom you tell everything and on whom you rely for insight/support?
· Does the person have the right to know?
· Will it hurt the person to know?
· Will it hurt anyone if the person does or does not know?
