There is a part of transition that almost nobody talks about, because it sits in a strange place next to all the joy.
The part where you are finally, genuinely, home in yourself for the first time, and you are also quietly grieving.
Grieving the years you did not know. Grieving the person you were before, who got you here and who also had to be let go of. Grieving the people who did not stay. Grieving the body you had. Grieving the body you will not have. Grieving the photos from childhood where you look so small and so serious and so early. Grieving the parents who stopped calling. Grieving the friends who disappeared without explanation. Grieving the future you once pictured and the ordinary landmarks that now carry a different weight.
This grief does not cancel the euphoria. The euphoria is real. The relief of being seen is real. The joy of finally living as yourself is real. It is just that the grief is also real, and the two of them often live together, inside the same week, the same day, sometimes the same breath.
I am a Vancouver-based psychotherapist working online across Canada. I am trans, genderflux, and nonbinary. I have faced street harassment, medical trauma, and relational harm as a visibly trans person. I have also spent years growing, steadily, into my own authentic expression, and I have found more joy there than I knew was possible. Both of those things are true. This post is about what I have learned from living inside that truth, and from sitting with many trans and nonbinary people as they live inside their own versions of it.
The grief that does not fit the usual shape
Most of what we are taught about grief assumes a death. Someone dies, and the people who loved them mourn. There are rituals. There is a shape to the loss, even when it is terrible. The losses at the centre of gender transition are not like this.
The family therapist Pauline Boss, who has spent her career studying loss, calls this kind of grief "ambiguous loss." She uses the term for losses that do not have a clear ending, losses that go unrecognised, losses that do not come with rituals or sympathy cards or a pot of soup left on your doorstep. Her research has mostly focused on families of people who are missing, or who have dementia, or who are physically present but psychologically gone. But the framework applies directly to the grief trans and nonbinary people carry. You can read more about her work at Pauline Boss's Ambiguous Loss site.
What ambiguous loss names is a grief without closure. A grief that stays. A grief that does not let you fully move on because nothing clearly ended. The self you were before transition is not dead. The family who stopped calling are not dead. The childhood you did not live is not dead. They are gone, and also not gone. Present, and also absent. That specific kind of absence is harder for the nervous system to metabolise than a clean loss, because there is nothing to bury.
What we are actually grieving
When trans and nonbinary people talk honestly about this, the grief often has many layers. I am naming them here not because every person carries all of them, but because reading a specific name for something you have been feeling can be its own small relief.
Grief for the years before you knew. Not because those years were wasted. You were doing the best you could with what you had. But there is still a quiet mourning for the version of your life that might have started sooner, if the world had been different, if you had had the words, if it had been safe.
Grief for the self you had to let go of. Even a self that did not fit was still a self. You built relationships inside that self. You built a career inside that self. You built a body of memories, habits, and ways of moving through the world. Letting that self go, even on purpose, even with relief, involves grief. You cannot set down a whole version of your life without something that weighs.
Grief for the people who did not stay. Coming out as trans or nonbinary changes who is around you. Some people meet the news and keep showing up. Others fade quietly, stop returning texts, become strangely busy. Some make it explicit. Each of these is a loss, and the losses are often not marked by anyone. People just stop being there.
Grief for the body you had or the body you will not have. This goes in both directions. Some people mourn changes brought on by hormones or surgery, even as those changes are wanted. Some people mourn the body they will not have because transition came late, or because medical access is limited, or because the body their gender wants is not one they can achieve. Both of these are real grief, and they are allowed to exist alongside gratitude for the changes that have happened.
Grief for the childhood you did not get to have. The pictures where you are wearing what someone else chose for you. The confirmation dress. The first boy haircut. The moments that everyone around you treats as sweet and that you can barely look at. Mourning a childhood you did not live is a specific, strange grief. The child is still you. The child is also someone you never got to be.
Grief for the future you pictured. Weddings, holidays, milestones, the shape of a particular kind of life. Some of those futures are still available in new forms. Some are not. Either way, there is a version of your life that you put down when you started transitioning, and sometimes you notice its absence in ordinary moments.
Grief for the ongoing cost of being visibly trans in public. Street harassment. Medical appointments that take more energy than they should. The moment someone's face changes when they realise. The particular exhaustion of being read, or read wrong, or having to explain. Each of these is a small loss of ease, and across months and years, they accumulate.
None of this grief is a sign that you should not have transitioned. None of this grief is a reason for regret. The grief and the rightness of the decision are not in competition. They live together.
Why the joy is still real
Here is the thing that the outside world often misses. All of this grief coexists with euphoria, relief, pleasure, and a specific kind of joy that comes from living as yourself.
Pauline Boss writes that the central work of ambiguous loss is learning to hold opposing truths at the same time. Instead of either-or, you build the capacity for both-and. I am grieving, and I am joyful. I lost people, and I have found others. The old self is gone, and I carry her with me. Transition cost me things, and it gave me myself.
This is not a tidy psychological formula. It is a slow, lived practice. Most of us were trained by a culture that likes stories with one emotion at a time. You are supposed to be happy about the good things, sad about the bad things, and resolved at the end. Living inside ambiguous loss means letting that expectation go.
For me, this has meant learning to lean toward the joy like a flower toward the sun, while letting the grief exist quietly in the background. Not denying the grief. Not performing positivity. Just making a deliberate choice, day by day, about which direction I am growing. The grief gets to be there. The joy gets to be the centre.
To love myself, in the context I actually live in, is an act of persistence. To be my authentic, genderflux, evolving self and to find joy inside that is my way through. It is not the only way. But it is mine, and it has been real enough to build a life on.
What helps, over time
A few things that have mattered for me and for many of the trans and nonbinary people I have sat with.
Letting the grief be specific. Vague grief is harder to carry than named grief. When you can say "I am grieving my father, who has not called in four years," the grief has shape. When you can say "I am grieving the version of myself who did not get to live as a girl in high school," the grief has shape. Shape is something the nervous system can work with.
Making room for both at once. On the hard days, you do not have to push the joy away to honour the grief. On the good days, you do not have to apologise to the grief by dimming the joy. Both get to be there. You do not have to choose.
Community that knows this territory. Other trans and nonbinary people know the specific texture of this grief without having to be taught. A few people in your life who can hear "I am grieving my father and I am also the happiest I have ever been" and not get confused is a particular kind of medicine.
Gentle rituals, where they fit. For some people, creating small markers for what has been lost helps. A letter to the self you were. A photograph kept in a specific place. A quiet acknowledgement on the anniversary of coming out. Rituals do not have to be elaborate. They just give the grief a place to land.
Therapy that holds both. Gender-affirming therapy at our practice is built to make room for this. The joy gets a seat, and so does the grief. Neither has to win.
Reading others who have named this. Making room for gender joy is a companion post if you want to spend more time with the joy side specifically. For grief, there is a slowly growing body of writing by trans people who have named exactly this kind of loss. Some of it is academic. Most of it is personal essays scattered across the internet. Finding voices that match your specific experience is worth the search.
What I want you to know
If you are grieving right now, in the middle of a transition that is also the best thing you have ever done, you are not failing. You are not ungrateful. You are not regretting it. You are simply carrying what this kind of change actually weighs.
The grief does not go away entirely. It softens. It loses its sharp edges. It takes up less of the room. Most days, I do not think about it. Some days, I do. Both are fine.
To live, to love, to love myself, to be my authentic self and find the joyful moments in an ever-evolving identity: that is my way through. It is not neat. It is not finished. It is enough. It might be yours too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to grieve during transition, even if the transition is what you wanted?
Yes, and it is common. Grief during a wanted transition is not a sign of doubt or regret. It is a sign that transition is a real change, and real changes involve real losses, even when the change is right. Naming the grief as grief, rather than as ambivalence or second-guessing, usually makes it easier to carry.
What is ambiguous loss and why does it apply to transition?
Ambiguous loss is a term coined by family therapist Pauline Boss to describe losses that do not have clear endings or cultural rituals. The losses at the centre of gender transition fit this description closely: the previous self is gone but not dead, family members who disappeared are gone but still alive, the childhood you did not live is gone but still somehow present. Because these losses lack the rituals we have for death, they are often unsupported and invisible, which makes them harder to process.
Does the grief mean I should not have transitioned?
No. Grief and rightness of decision are not in competition. Many of the trans and nonbinary people I work with are the happiest they have ever been and are also grieving. These things are allowed to coexist. The presence of grief does not mean you should have stayed. It means transition is weighty, and you are feeling its weight honestly.
How do I talk to people in my life about this kind of grief?
Most cis people will not fully understand this grief unless it has been named for them. Some trans people in your life will know exactly what you are talking about. A useful move, if you are looking for support, is to identify one or two people who have the capacity to hear both-and (grieving and joyful at the same time) and to talk with them rather than trying to explain it to everyone. You are not required to educate people who cannot hold this well.
Will this grief ever fully go away?
Probably not entirely. In my experience, and in what trans people who have been out for decades have written, the grief softens over time. It loses its sharp edges. It becomes something you carry rather than something that runs your life. Some losses stay tender forever. Others become more bearable. Most people describe an evolving relationship with the grief rather than a final resolution.
