Since my child came out as a transgender woman (read more about that here), I have found that my emotional stumbling blocks haven’t come all at once. They have played out over time, revealing themselves like terrain on a newly explored map.
I’m lucky to be married to my best friend. But, until my wife and I got together, the person I was closest to was my daughter. I didn’t consider myself a “buddy parent”; she was just an old soul who had always made being her parent easy.
She was always very much her own person, and her interests opened up new worlds to me. Over the years, we would connect through different things: video games, philosophy, politics, psychology, and music. As she went through different phases, she’d share songs with me.