The 12 year-old child of basketball star Duane Wade came out this week as transgender. Some would say she came out, however what she really did was to invite the world in. Zion Wade was born male, and has come to identify as female. Zion is now known as Zaya and is receiving unconditional love and family support from dad, Duane Wade and step mom, Gabrielle Union. One of the kindest things we can do is to use Zaya’s preferred pronouns, she/her/hers. Words matter, pronouns matter.
People don’t choose to be transgender or non-binary. More than half of transgender and non-binary youth have seriously considered suicide. My hope from this post is that we use this as a learning opportunity. If you only take-away one thing from this post, it may astonish you. If just one adult is supportive to a transgender or non-binary youth, the suicide rate drops by 40%! Being kind and supportive does indeed save lives!
