Elizabeth Coffey-Williams (ECW) and Jennifer Coffey (JC)

ECW: When I first came out to my family, it was the late ’60s, and a lot of the words that they have today, like transgender and non-binary, they didn’t have them. 

JC: Yeah…

ECW: You know, all the fruits and nuts were already on the tree; they just hadn’t been assigned names. So, attempting to tell your extraordinarily loving blue-collar parents that you were transgender was tantamount to telling them I was from Jupiter. 

My parents were afraid, well, you know, this might be contagious, and they sort of whisked me away for a while. And, at that point, my parents were telling the rest of the family that I had just gone.

JC: That’s got to be traumatizing.

ECW: It was years that I did not see my brothers or my sister. I would call, my mother would let me talk to them on the telephone, but I couldn’t come home. 

And at that point, I had heard Johns Hopkins was, if not the only place, one of the only places in America where they would perform gender confirmation surgery.

And I pushed open those big doors and said, ”Hi, I’m here.” They said, ”That’s not how it works. We have a whole program that you have to go through.” And I thought, ”I’m not really here for a shrink, I just want a plumber.”

JC: (Laughs) Good lord…

ECW: I know! But, I did get through that program. 

Later on, my mother sat the kids down and told them the truth. The big secret. 

And then one day, there was a knock on my door. And there was my little brother, Billy, who was only 11 or 12. And he just looked up at me and said, ”Hi, it’s me.” 

JC: (Laughs)

ECW: The next thing I knew, I was hugging, and he was smiling, and I was crying. 

Was he ashamed of me? Uh-uh, he wanted me back.

JC: Wow.

ECW: And when I opened that door, all I can say is it was like my heart was exploding and I was going to have family again. It made me feel wanted, and it made me feel loved. That meant more to me than anything had meant in a long time.