I agree. I'm scared to come out as a transwoman to my parents.

Another thing that Rezcek should explore is where there's a difference between one set of parents. For example, I knew a man whose partner's father, after his partner's mother died, went up to him after the funeral and said, "I was only pretending for your mother, I don't want to see you again." Needless to say, he has nothing to do with his other adult children and he returned to his country of origin and entered into a relationship with his girlfriend from his youth. In my family, it would be the reverse. I am frightened that if my father predeceased my mother, that she'd do to me what that man did to his son. Why? When I told her, her response was, "He's entitled to do that."

In this man's case, it was carefully hidden. Sometimes, not always, one parent is accepting and the other parent isn't, and the accepting parent is told, "Look, I'm not comfortable with admitting that our son/daughter is in a same-sex relationship, so yes, they can come for Christmas, or on this holiday, but we'll say, "He/She/They is/are so and so's friend from university."

It can also happen, in heterosexual relationships, especially if one set of parents are conservative, that they'll say, "Okay, they can come, but you're not sleeping in the same bed until you're married."

If anything, I think being in a toxic relationship with your biological family is worse than being cut off from them. In the latter case, you know where you stand, in the former case, you do, too, but you are being relegated.

One piece of advice, and I'm not saying that you should stay in contact with toxic people, but sometimes people who you think you can rely on will say, "Oh, I'll always be your friend," but if you or they move to another suburb, town, city or state, will, if you message them and say, "Hey, I'll be over your way for a couple of days next week, let's catch up for dinner," will get back to you and say, "Who's this?" Or most hurtful of all, if you saw them in the street and said hello, would ignore you or make up some excuse not to talk to you, and a family tragedy can cause your biological family to beg you for forgiveness because it caused them to see how wrong their attitudes were.