My father is a woman and I’m proud to call her dad [Video]

This First Person column is the experience of Kenzie Sproat, who lives in Regina. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I can still remember the nervous energy rolling off my dad when she first told me she was a woman.

It was the year after I had graduated high school when she called me into her room to show me a journal entry. In that entry, she confessed she was not the man I knew her to be, but rather a woman. 

When I read that, it was the last thing I would have expected and I was filled with disbelief. But as I looked at her, I could see she had been trying to get the courage to tell me this for a while and I wanted to provide her reassurance.

“Cool,” I said.

“Cool?” she asked, surprised.

“That’s cool. That’s awesome,” I assured her.

While I wanted to …