For me, so much of that process was being confused because from the time that I was a little kid — from before I can remember I felt comfortable identifying as female. Coming from an academic family and somewhat hippie family, I think there was some tolerance of that that other people may not have experienced but there was no context for it.  It was simply a thing of "Oh that's what my kid’s like" but there was certainly not an idea of "Oh my kid’s trans." Like that wasn't there at all, I was born in 1974, it’s not my parent's fault. What my experience was mostly, was trying to navigate through life and make sense of that, of the fact that I was more comfortable identifying as female. As I got older that became more and more difficult because it’s one thing to be like "That's what my kid is like" but it was a different thing to be "Oh that’s what my 22-year-old who just graduated from college is like." I remember my mom being very confused why I was moving to New York with a suitcase full of women’s clothes and I’ve shared about it before but I have a history with addiction and it's pretty clear to me that that interacted with my denial around my trans identity. And the more help I got around that and more time I was able to put together away from that stuff, the clearer it became. And though there isn't yet a cure to treat the chronic strain of the disease, Bella and her family are proof that you can not only carry on with life after diagnosis, but absolutely kill the game — and pay it forward by raising awareness, too.Related: So, the story goes like this: A 23-year-old piano prodigy from Texas won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. The problem? It was during the Cold War, and obviously people weren't on the friendliest of terms. But him winning kind of changed things, and even though they weren't sure if an American should take home the grand prize, an eight-minute standing ovation made the judges realize he was the only one who deserved to get it, bringing some sort of peace between two nations that really needed it. (Don't worry, history lesson is now adjourned.) Bruno Mars Still Looks EXACTLY Like He Did As a KidCheck This Out:A video that recentlycirculated