Thanksgiving Time and questions

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone I thought I would stop by to talk about my experience this year. I made a video on my Youtube channel which I encourage you to check out if you have time. Just type in toralynn1986 in the search bar and you should find me....anyways back to the subject at hand.

Thanksgiving this year was pretty cool. I unfortunately didn't get to spend a whole lot of it with my girlfriend and son because of various reasons but I did get to spend some time with them. My girlfriend spent the day with her family. When I went to drop her off I encountered a rather uncomfortable situation. Now some of her family has known me since before the beginning of my transition, therefor they know me as my birth name. I cringed at the sound of hearing "hi amber how are you" but I wore a smile and was polite. I was also introduced to family members I had not met yet as "amber". It was rather uncomfortable to say the least but I was stuck in a hard spot. How do you correct people that once knew you by one name and now know you by another? How do you explain and answer the questions of "why would you change your name."

After leaving Crystal's families house. I was off to spend Thanksgiving with my best friend Blake's family


Being invited to spend the day with Blake's family was a blessing. It was the first holiday I spent in a house full of people I had never met. From the time I walked in the door til the end of the day I was known as Jason. There was no discussion about my transition, there were no questions asked about my chosen name, I was simply accepted as Jason. It was very nice.

My biological family is still coming to terms with my decision to make this transition so phone calls home where rather interesting. They are all at different places as far as their comfort levels go at this point. Some have accepted my change and call me Jason, my mother calls me A.J. and some have not even come close to being able to accept it. I respect each of their comfort levels and try not to push the issue yet, hopefully someday they will all accept it, but for now it's a working progress.

So my question is how would you have dealt with that situation, when some people are ok with calling you by your chosen name and others can't let go of your birth name? Do you correct them? Or do you simply ignore it, cope and deal and move on? I am curious to know.

Until next time....love and peace

~Jason~