Your transition is unlikely to be the main cause of the estrangement. I would write to your children – to try and understand what happened from their point of view
The dilemma I am a 72-year-old trans woman. Outwardly, publicly, I can say my life has been interesting and successful. I’ve had a good career. My last job was to run an NGO to safeguard the interests of girls and women in a part of the world where their interests are habitually overlooked. I now live back home and am happily married. I feel blessed. And yet I am haunted by a loss that I find difficult to comprehend. I have not seen my children for years. The reason for this estrangement is not, I think, specifically my transitioning, but the act of telling: the demand by the hospital that to advance in my progress towards surgery I must take this step to tell my children. Yet the hospital offered no guidance. I managed it badly with – for us all – terrible consequences.
Prior to my telling my children, I was depressed. I had already stopped work on mental health grounds and my then wife also had mental health difficulties.
