These Parents — One of Whom Came Out as Trans — Remain Committed to Putting Family First

Judy and Julianna's inspiring path through transition and parenthood

1 Judy Julianna AP 19 — Judy (left) and Julianna Wilson with their daughters at their Plymouth home. Photo: Andrew Potter

Published: August 2, 2024 | Last Updated: August 10, 2024

It’s a love story that starts as many do: in middle school, where sweethearts Judy and Julianna Wilson first met. It’s also a love story that has dramatically evolved since those early days nearly three decades ago.

Much has changed for this set of parents, who are sitting in the dining room at the Plymouth home they once lived together in as a romantic couple. But they haven’t for a while now, not since Julianna came out to Judy in 2022 as a transgender woman.

Could they make their relationship work still, even though Judy remains attracted to the opposite sex? Could they, once Julianna was finally comfortable enough to live as the woman she first saw herself being at age 4? The short answer is no. They are still married, but separated. Co-parents first now. Friends second.

Yet, like those love stories that make us believe in love despite the odds against us as LGBTQ+ people, this story evolves as we might hope all such stories do: with love still, in the end, enduring.

The long table they’re sitting at on a recent evening is still something they share regularly since that table is built for a family, and that they are. On this particular weekday evening, they’re preparing a simple all-American family dinner. Julianna grabs the air fryer as their girls play in the living room. Tonight it’s quick and easy: a Trader Joe’s frozen meal. Minutes before, Julianna was at the table, trying to choke out reflections of how hard it was to talk about her transition with their daughters, then 2 and 4 years old, and how it changed her relationship with Judy. She can’t help but succumb to all the tears that start running, and don’t let up so easily, as she reflects on one of the toughest days during their breakup: when, after moving out of this home, the girls visited her just after she’d furnished her new place.

“This is what I understand about myself,” she recalls telling them, “that I have a boy's body, but I'm a girl and mom doesn't want to be married to a girl.” Their oldest reacted tearfully, confused not by that, but by something else entirely: “But you are married,” she said to Julianna.

“I broke her heart that day,” Julianna says, in tears still.

“But the girls understood right away that dad is a girl,” Judy adds. “They got that right away. It was the separation that was hard.”

When Judy and Julianna first met as very different people in the 1990s, they were both students at West Middle School in Plymouth. Julianna was the new kid at the end of eighth grade. A Cedar Point trip — and a makeout session on the bus during that adventure — took them to new romantic heights. Throughout high school, they broke up and got back together and then stayed together through college, while Judy attended Western and Julianna went to University of Michigan. Then they had two girls, who they raised through an historically challenging time — those pandemic years characterized by immense stress and upheaval — even beyond Judy’s postpartum depression and Julianna coming out as a trans woman.

“I've heard it described that dysphoria is a boulder that you carry with you until you reach a point and you can't go forward anymore,” Julianna says. “The pandemic has to be important in terms of that being a reflective time and the prolonged, unmitigated stress that sits on top of all the depression and anxiety that I was experiencing.”

Even as a kid who grew up in the ’80s, Julianna carried around that weight, suppressing her feelings of gender dysphoria because, partly, “there was no name for them when I was 4.”

In the fall of 2021, amid a wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping the nation, Julianna was ready to be who she felt she couldn’t be as a kid, or even decades later, when she married Judy and they began raising a family together. Like many cis straight parents born in the 20th century, she followed the societal roadmap to a bygone version of the American dream, and then dismantled it completely.

“I kept saying to myself, ‘I don't want to be a suburban dad guy,’” she recalls. “‘I can't be this dad guy.’”

Around that time, a friend casually mentioned during a conversation they were having that the topic wasn’t something that would resonate with Julianna because she just wouldn’t get it, the friend said, “as a cis straight person.” “My brain was like, wait a second,” Julianna remembers thinking. “That's not how I describe myself."

At that time, childhood memories and past thoughts that put her into a depressed state rushed into Julianna’s mind. Finally, a counseling session in spring 2022 helped her see more clearly that she was transgender.

“I told Judy and she had a very negative reaction,” she recalls. “She had a very, very negative reaction.”

This reveal, which was news to Judy, came at a time when Judy was struggling with one child who wouldn’t sleep through the night and another in the early stages of potty training. “I was sliding head first into postpartum depression,” she recalls. “We really weren't in a place to support each other. We really weren't. Some of the circumstances for postpartum depression are moms who don't feel supported.”

“Is it because we lose our partners? That’s what happens. You just roll the dice. And if you're in a straight-facing relationship, and you transition, what're the odds of that [other] person being straight? Nine out of 10, at least."
Julianna Wilson

It became clear that Judy’s feelings were mirroring what Julianna was experiencing: “They say the biggest challenge for people who come out as transgender is not having the people who love them support them.”

Still, they lived together for a challenging nine months, trying to figure out what was next for their relationship and their family. “We were fighting a lot,” Judy says. “We were just bickering and that would lead to small things that would just explode into bigger fights.”

“I think it was really hard for me,” Judy says. “I mean, I misgendered Julianna for those nine months. It was because it felt like the end of my marriage.”

“I had a lot of grief,” she continues. "Which I know is common, but… I don't know. I hate to go too much into my feelings because I know that there's gonna be trans people that read this article, and I don't want to be triggering for people.”

Julianna, who says that “it’s difficult for someone that is going through a gender crisis to be put on the stand,” which she says was her experience, puts it plainly when asked how the last few years have been for her as she has transitioned and come to terms with the end of her romantic relationship with Judy.

“Is it because we lose our partners? That’s what happens,” she says. “You just roll the dice. And if you're in a straight-facing relationship, and you transition, what're the odds of that [other] person being straight? Nine out of 10, at least. So, it's not inconceivable that north of 90% of people who transition lose their partners. This is part of our lived reality. And if there's people who are going through this now — and everybody's story's different — it's my belief that this is the road that you're gonna have to walk. You're gonna have to walk down the road with a partner that doesn't understand you. You're gonna have to lose that partner and find your way on your own. I just believe that that's true.”

“This is a hard existence,” she adds, bluntly. “There’s a ton of joy in it, but it’s not easy.”

What’s especially hard is when the anxiety kicks in; sometimes it happens just going to the bathroom with the kids at a public restaurant. “I worry,” she admits. “If Judy's not there and it's just me and the kids, it’s like, is someone going to perceive me as a threat and do something about it? And what if they do and I can't protect my girls?”

3 Judy Julianna AP 15 — Julianna and Judy with their daughters. Photo: Andrew Potter

At the same time, joy also keeps finding its way into Julianna’s life — in all of their lives, actually — in new and unexpected ways. And actually, sometimes because of the transition. Both Judy and Julianna get a kick out of sharing how their oldest daughter, who is now 5 and Julianna’s “biggest cheerleader,” charges Julianna’s mom a dollar when she messes up her name or gender pronouns. (Julianna is quick to note that her mother is “very supportive,” even if sometimes she gets the pronouns mixed up.)

Two months after Julianna came out to the kids, Judy took them to the Plymouth Library, pulled “The Pronoun Book” from the kids’ section and read it to them right then and there.

And then there are the sidewalk sales. Judy notes a recent one as an aside, and Julianna excitedly peps up at just the mention. It’s not just the idea of shopping for clothing near their homes in downtown Plymouth — the sidewalk sales have become a gesture of love and support.

It began last summer after Julianna had moved out. At the time, Judy began going to downtown stores to do what she calls a “vibe check.” She made a point of stopping into women's clothing boutiques to gauge their experience with trans customers.

Where they both live in Plymouth now, just five minutes from each other, may not seem like a place where those kinds of queries would be met with positive affirmations, but mostly they have been. Even if that wasn’t the case, Judy and Julianna aren’t going anywhere. Plymouth, where a big Pride flag hangs right in front of Judy’s house, is home.

“If this were a movie and this were taking place in the ’60s, then, you know, the father figure would take off for San Francisco right away,” Judy says.

Judyjulianna — Julianna and Judy bake with their kids. Photo: Andrew Potter

In this home, family always comes first, and the deep, lasting bond between Judy and Julianna is evident in everything they do. You can see their love in the little things — like the sidewalk sales they visit together, the air-fryer dinners and the way they both laugh when Judy jokingly says, “I’m trying to get Julianna to become a Girl Scout leader because I don’t want to do it.” And the heartfelt moments are clear when Julianna looks at Judy and says, “This is a person that I love forever.”

“Even when Julianna was still in a questioning mode, what I would say is, ‘Don't worry about us.’ What the kids need are two happy, healthy parents. And that is the most important thing. And that's something we still hold to,” Judy says.

“We're family. We are our family. We still have a relationship. I love Julianna. I don't just love Julianna — I genuinely like her. I like spending time with her. I like the four of us. But that love has changed. It has a different texture. But it is just as strong as it ever was.”

This version of family is defined by their own rules, on their own terms. Or, as Julianna says, “We're not gonna have a queer marriage, but we sure as shit are gonna have a queer divorce.”

“Everyone changes,” she adds. “This is my best friend who I've traveled the world with. We used to spend 23 hours a day for years on end, literally without exaggeration. There's not a romantic future there. Not the one that we thought that we had. But it doesn't mean there's not a future there, and possibly, dare I say, a better future because it's a more complete and a more honest thing than what we had before.”