Thanksgiving in the Wreckage

The turkey I’m planning to cook next week weighs seventeen pounds. I’ve been texting my dad obsessively—what size roasting pan does he have, does his oven run hot, should I bring my own meat thermometer? He had surgery two weeks ago, and I’m driving out with my partner, Adrian, to make Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. I’m a good cook. I can do five sides without thinking. But a whole turkey feels different—a test I’m taking without knowing if I’m ready.

My dad is allergic to cats, so Cosmo and Wanda will stay with a friend. Right now they’re on the bed with Adrian, who’s sketching while I sit at our kitchen table surrounded by recipes I’ve printed like I’m cramming for finals. My apartment is small and full of plants and string lights, the kind of space I couldn’t have imagined building five years ago. It’s the safest place I know, which is why I rarely leave it. 

Not because I’m naturally a homebody. I used to love crowds and parties. But moving through the world as a visibly trans woman means calculating risk every time I step outside, and most days I’m too tired or too scared. The holidays used to mean gatherings and markets and social energy. Now they mean isolation with better lighting.

This Thanksgiving will be different. My dad knows who we are. He uses my name. When I came out, he said he needed to “grieve his son,” which felt like being buried before I’d existed. But he did the work. He was raised by lesbians in the seventies, which gave him a framework that a lot of men in his generation don’t have. Now he meditates, plays clarinet, and volunteers at bird sanctuaries. He’s the gentlest person I know, and I’m cooking him a turkey to say something that I don’t have words for.

My mother died five years ago, right before Halloween. In the week before cancer killed her, she told me I was worthless and that she regretted having me. She’d supported my transition publicly—renamed me with my dad, performed acceptance—but privately she was violent in ways that didn’t leave marks. Her funeral was packed. My siblings and I knew a different version.

I used substances to survive her final months. My brother and sister, who’d internalized the trauma younger, couldn’t stop when she died. They’re both still caught in addiction patterns that started as survival. I’ve been in recovery for five years, not because I’m stronger but because something in me refused to let her poison outlive her.

She doesn’t get to be part of this Thanksgiving. 

My son is seven now. The last time I saw him, he was four, standing in a parking lot crying and holding onto my legs, twelve days before his fifth birthday. He was wearing a blue shirt. I remember how the fabric bunched in his fists as he begged me not to leave. He’d started asking about my gender, and his mother told me I wasn’t allowed to discuss it. So I didn’t. I hugged him, said I loved him, got in the car, and left.

From his perspective, I disappeared.

His mother supported my transition initially. But as the political climate shifted, she asked me to stop. To detransition for our son’s safety. I tried. The dysphoria was severe, but I thought maybe I could push it down. I couldn’t. When I started hormones, her support became something else.

My mother’s chaotic final illness meant custody was never formalized. I have no legal standing in my state. After she died, visits went from regular to nothing. A lawyer told me to wait out the current administration—that given my unemployment, disability, queerness, and activism, appearing before a conservative judge would mean losing him permanently.

So I wait. He grows up without me. And I carry that parking lot like an open wound.

The holidays make this sharper. I grew up Italian Catholic, where traditions and gathering mattered. Now I’m building new traditions with chosen family, but it doesn’t fill the space where my son should be.

In January, I’ll hit three years on estrogen. Three years of building a body that feels like mine. Three years that my son hasn’t seen. The hormones have given me softer skin, curves, and a dysphoria that whispers instead of screams. They’ve also given me the experience of moving through the world as a woman, both euphoria and the awareness that I’m less safe.

Medical gatekeeping is its own violence. Doctors questioning if I’m “really” trans. Insurance barriers. Having to perform a specific narrative to access care. My chronic illness complicates everything—providers can’t separate transition changes from other conditions, and I’m constantly advocating for myself in systems that view me with suspicion.

But my body is becoming mine.

Next week I’ll drive to my dad’s house with Adrian and groceries. His place backs onto acres of trees, the quiet I’m craving after months of not feeling safe enough to leave my apartment. My brother recently moved out after years of making it unsafe for me to visit. This will be the first holiday where I can show up as myself. I’ll stand in his kitchen and cook a meal I’ve never made. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and cranberry sauce from scratch. My siblings won’t be there—alive but unreachable. My son won’t be there, seven now, living a life I’m not part of. But my dad will be there. And Adrian. And we’ll eat food I made, and it won’t fix anything, but it’ll be real.

Chosen family isn’t the romanticized version on social media. It’s what you build when everything else has been destroyed or taken. It’s cooking for your father after surgery. It’s a partner who holds your hand through dysphoria and fear. It’s two cats destroying your furniture. It’s a body you’re building despite a government that would rather you didn’t exist. It’s recovery, activism, and insisting that your life matters.

I’m thirty-three. I’ll be thirty-four in January, the same month I hit three years on hormones. Right now I’m at my kitchen table covered in recipes, texting my dad about basting, feeling anxious and excited and heartbroken.