Laura's story

Even experiencing the journey of a trans child second-hand can prove disorientating. Laura joined Space Youth Project, a support service for LGBTQ+ young people in the UK, to better understand her child's transition.

It helped that Laura identified as queer, and therefore understood the feeling of being out of place in society. Space Youth offers a support model through positive conversations, quite the opposite of conversion therapy. While young trans people are brought together in one room, the next room allows trans parents to converse over their shared experiences and ask and answer difficult questions.

Being a trans parent is tough. In the early days and weeks of a transition, friends and family of a trans person may unintentionally misgender or deadname their loved one because of spending so long with that person being the gender and name they were born with. What matters is putting the effort in, and to correct yourself if you say the wrong name or pronoun.

On that journey as a trans parent, Laura explains: "It's sort of one of those things where you don't want to f*** it up. It's a lot for them to go through, as they re-explore themselves as an entirely new human being. Being part of these groups allows you to ask the dumb questions that I didn't need to bring to him. I didn't need them to support me though. I needed to learn how to support him.

"I needed to learn not to be pushy, and one of those 'I have to fix the problem now' kind of parents. You just want to be able to fix all their problems, but you have to learn to step back and leave them to explore their own journey in their own time. Sometimes it can be quite isolating, and without Space Youth I probably never would have met any other parents of trans children."

Space Youth gave Laura the platform to challenge local MPs and police forces on recent legislative changes relating to trans people, and advice on how to support their child through safe 'binding' processes. This is where a trans man or non-binary person will compress their chest to present in their new gender.

Laura was raised in a highly conservative household, and has experiences of conversions being used to the opposite effect: to harm and undermine LGBT communities. Talk therapy could work towards a resolution for certain issues, but Laura says that those who really need to have these conversations are those around trans people, rather than the trans people themselves.

She said: "I was thirteen when I realised I was not straight. "The way I was raised, if you were gay, you were going to Hell. If you were trans, that wasn't even a conversation.

""The transphobia when I was younger was so covert. It was such a simple idea that it was never discussed, or if it was discussed it was done so in hushed tones. Being gay or trans was regarded with the same level of debauchery as being a rapist, all thrown into that bucket, and when I realised I was in that bucket, I was like "holy s***.

"I am cis. I did not realise at that time how much of a privilege that was to be a cis woman. The worst thing anyone can do when they are being oppressed is hide away from it all. You cannot hide from oppression. It will find you regardless, so the best thing to do is to find people who can help you stand up to it."

Last week, I spoke to Avril Clarke from Distinction, a charity which offers support for the partners of transgender people who are trying to get to grips with their loved one's transition. There are certainly some similarities between these second-hand experiences, and you will hear more from Avril about the challenges of that journey later in The Trans Cure?