Why advice on pastoral care for families is needed alongside the liturgy of celebration

I fully welcome and celebrate the Church of England’s decision to move towards an official liturgy for trans people, but I think an element of the discussion has been missing. We are talking about giving ministers a liturgy to use, but we have not spoken about giving them advice or training on the pastoral care needed around administering these services and the feelings that they may arouse in family members, which will need to be handled with sensitivity.

I have spoken before on this blog about the feelings that were aroused in me when my husband had this type of liturgy within a service. Whilst it was a time of great celebration, it created feelings of real dissonance in me. I was suffering from feelings of ambiguous loss and had had no formal way of acknowledging that. For me, the naming liturgy felt like a funeral as well as a celebration. It was formally celebrating the “new” identity of Karl which implicitly meant his “dead” name was truly that, as was the “old identity”.

One aspect of the debate not being fully acknowledged or explored at the moment is the impact on family and partners who are supportive but are having to deal with the feelings of dissonance and ambiguous loss we have been talking about.

We need real work doing not just on the pastoral care of trans people but of their families too. Churches will often be welcoming families who are on a journey, not just the trans people.

Now, I get this is a sensitive subject – I have been in rooms where when I have spoken about this there has been difficult emotion. There have been trans people who have been rejected by families and there have been trans people who have felt guilt about the journey others have had to take with them. On line I have had trans people who have said what I am saying seems to reject trans people.

I want to be clear, my husband’s transition is the best thing ever to have happened to him and I have seen him flourish as a result of no longer having to repress who he is. We have a Hungry Caterpillar money box which celebrates the butterfly emerging. I am 100% supportive, but I had to go through a grief process as a result of this and those feelings of loss that family, particularly, go through needs to be recognised. We need to produce resources which help those coming alongside in churches to understand the complexity of these situations and how to pastorally approach them.