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Jamie Lee Curtis recently got candid about embracing her child's gender identity and the transition journey.
The 62-year-old star says she is learning a lot along the way as she stands by her daughter Ruby Guest, formerly publicly known as Thomas.
“It’s speaking a new language,” she says. “I'm new at it. I'm not someone who's pretending to know much about it. And I’m going to blow it, I’m going to make mistakes. I would like to try to avoid making big mistakes.”
The process has also taught Jamie the importance of being more intentional in how she speaks. “You slow your speech down a little,” she explains.
“You become a little more mindful about what you're saying. How you're saying it. You still mess up, I've messed up today twice. We're human.”
This comes just three months after Jamie Lee and her husband, Christopher Guest (73), announced to the world that their younger child was transgender. "We watched in wonder and pride as our son became our daughter Ruby,” they said.
Jamie Lee also spoke about how she battled to come to terms with Ruby’s decision to change her birth name. “That was, of course, the hardest thing,” she confessed.
“Just the regularity of the word. The name that you'd given a child. That you've been saying their whole life. And so, of course, at first that was the challenge. Then the pronoun.”
While the adapting parents “still slip occasionally,” Jamie Lee believes “that's sort of evolutionary and a very important step in our home. We have tried to maintain it in a big way.”
But more than anything, the Halloween star hopes that her story with Ruby will not only inspire other parents but people who are still afraid to proudly share their true gender identities.
“If one person reads this, sees a picture of Ruby and me and says, 'I feel free to say this is who I am,' then it's worth it.”
READ MORE| Charlize Theron shares rare glimpse of her daughters: a lookback at her parenthood journey
Ruby (25) was 16 when she began to consider transitioning.
“A friend of mine who is trans asked me what my gender was. I told them, “Well, I'm male,” she recalled recently.
“I'd dwell on the thought. I knew I was — maybe not Ruby per se, but I knew I was different.” But because of the negative backlash she received in therapy after coming out as bisexual, she remained in the closet.
It wasn’t until seven years later that Ruby, a computer gaming editor, was finally ready to come out to the world, first telling her then partner and now fiancé.
“I told the person who is now my fiancé that I am probably trans. And they said, “I love you for who you are'."
It was now time for Ruby to share the news with her parents, “It was scary — just the sheer fact of telling them something about me they didn't know,” she said.
"It was intimidating but I wasn't worried. They had been so accepting of me my entire life."
Initially Ruby had decided to sit her parents down at their family home in Los Angeles, but she got cold feet and decided to send her mom a text instead.
“I called her immediately. Needless to say there were some tears involved,” Jamie said.
It’s been a year since Ruby broke the news to her family and now she’s finally ready to lift the veil publicly too.
“No one knows anything about me, and I've tried my best until now to keep it that way,” she admitted.
“But I'm happy to talk about my experiences now. Is it helpful to come out? Yeah. Like, people will still remember me for who I was, but I haven't changed that.”
For Ruby it’s about finally allowing people to see who she’s always been. “Now I finally get to show it on the outside. I've tried to stay out of the spotlight for many years, or at least done my best to. I'm happy to be more visible if it helps others.”
Here’s a look at other celeb parents who have supported their kids on their LGBTQ journeys.
Dwayne Wade and Gabriella Union
Last year the actress and the former sports star revealed that Dwayne's daughter Zaya (14) was transgender.
“When I say we're learning from our 12-year-old, we're literally learning from our child,” Wayde said.
Charlize Theron
The South African-born star realised seven years ago that she was raising a transgender child and has proudly embraced Jackson as her daughter.
“My kids were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be is not for me to decide,” she said.
Sade
In 2016 Sade’s son Izaak formerly known as Mickailia came out as transgender after previously identifying as a lesbian.
“Today is the first day of the rest of my life. 4/10/16,” he captioned the post.
