My name is Sasha Buchert and I’m from Portland, Oregon. 

When I was younger, Iike a lot of people, I didn’t have the greatest relationship with my dad. We just weren’t close. He was from… he was a boomer. He was part of the generation where work is everything.

And the work that he did involved a lot of construction-like work, and it’s something that I just have never been attracted to. I don’t have any natural talent or proclivities toward, and it just created a little bit of a distance between us. But I got to my mid 30s, I had settled into the Pacific Northwest at the time, and he had moved down to Phoenix, and he and his wife had a few rentals and started work on them, and realized he needed some help.

So he reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to come down, and I didn’t want to go to Phoenix. I didn’t wanna do the work, but I knew that it would bring us closer and it would help develop the relationship that I wanted to develop with him. So I did that and would come down for one or two weeks at a time, two or three times a year.

And, it really –  it started to develop this really wonderful relationship with him through work. We built this little house and it was in Phoenix in July. And if you know anything about Phoenix in July, it was so hot. And it was just… just awful work. But again, it was just an amazing experience to get to know my dad and it was really a huge change in our relationship.

But at the same time, I was also struggling with my gender identity. It’s something that I had concealed all my life and suppressed, and… but it got to a point in my mid-30s around the same time that I was going down there that I just realized I just can’t. I can’t. It became more painful to hide who I am than to come out and I thought the world would end if I did that.

And so I did the thing that I knew that I had to do, the hardest thing in the world, for me at the time was to come out to my dad and tell him who I am and fearing that all of this close relationship that I had developed with him would just evaporate. 

To his credit and to my stepmom’s credit, they were completely accepting and loving. I think that they had a lot of questions. It took some time. They said that they would support me and embrace me, but they were very concerned about my safety and – but I still had fears that that might not be what they really feel. 

And so I made it clear that, “Look, just because I’m transitioning doesn’t mean that I’m going to be a different person. I am always willing to come down and help, with the work still, whatever you need.”

After about… I don’t know, six or seven months after coming out, my dad finally did contact me and said, “Hey, look, I’ve got this job coming up and, if you’re serious about still being available and willing to help, I could use you.”

And so I came down, it was still pretty early on in my transition. And that’s a really awkward time in general for folks. But we went on this job site and I was particularly grungy, was wearing a baseball hat and a dirty shirt and dirty jeans and dirty tennis shoes. And the job itself was pretty dirty.

We were gutting out a rental house. This guy walks up and he starts talking to my dad and I overhear that the guy’s the contractor. If you know anything about construction folks, they have a certain – there’s a certain hail fellow well met, a certain vibe. I wouldn’t necessarily call it macho, but it’s a very distinctive way of interacting. 

I was trying to continue to do the work, but trying to stay out of the conversation if possible. The guy that was talking to my dad, the contractor turned to me and asked, “Who’s that?”

And my dad, without skipping a beat just looked at me and said, “That’s my daughter, Sasha.” And it was just one of those moments of truth, where you believe your family supports you, but you don’t always see it in those kinds of ways under fire. And it was just a really beautiful moment for me.

 

My dad, without skipping a beat, just looked at me and said, “That's my daughter, Sasha.”

And it just made me see that, my dad loved me and saw me and supported me. Even at the risk of social cost. I know that this person obviously knew that I was transgender. But my dad didn’t deny me. He could have said a lot of things. He could have said, “Oh, that’s Sasha” or “That’s my kid.” But he said, “That’s my daughter.” 

So it was just a really beautiful thing and cemented the relationship that I had always hoped to have with him. In the years since, he’s developed Parkinson’s and hasn’t been able to do that work but it was just really… sorry… it was just really a beautiful experience for me, and I’m grateful.

I can only speak about my own experience, and as a trans person, it just feels, sometimes that  there is, and this is true, I’m sure, for gay and lesbian and bisexual and queer people, it’s just so much misinformation and hate in the world. And we’re taught to hate ourselves. And to be authentically seen and loved for who we are, can give people hope. And that’s life-saving and life-changing.