One day we got a call from the White House asking if we would be available to meet President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office as representatives of the Juvenile Diabetes Association. I was still nursing Brandon, and the timetable was, basically, "We would need you here in Washington the day after tomorrow." We didn't want to miss the opportunity to have an audience with the leader of the free world, so I barely had time to store up some breast milk, find something appropriate to wear, and get on that plane to our nation's capital. It was a quick turnaround. We were back in Malibu in a matter of hours, but the honor of meeting the president of the United States is a lasting memory. I was very content to be back home in Malibu with my sweet baby Brandon in my arms and an interesting memory to tell him about when he was older.
Bruce possessed such a natural athleticism in everything he attempted to do. He seemed to excel in every sport he tried. Whatever he did, he was daring and cut an amazing form. Bruce was pretty much the perfect specimen of a man. Men aspired to be like him and wanted to hang out and play sports with him, and women were clearly attracted to him. The Bruce I knew back then was unstudied, affable, and seemingly very comfortable in his own skin. So it seemed.
One summer Bruce and I were asked to do a summer stock production of
Li'l Abner in Birmingham, Alabama. We thought that sounded like fun, so we agreed to do it. Bruce was surprisingly very musical and liked to dance. We traveled to Birmingham and went into rehearsals. Of course we took Brandon along, and he had a great time parading onstage right along with us, in his very own Li'l Abner costume. We actually got good reviews, although I discovered live theater was incredibly nerve-racking. I had done plays in high school before, but this was a full-on musical and was really quite demanding.
Bruce and I spent our days living at the beach, jet skiing, walking on the beach every morning with our coffee, sailing on a Hobie Cat, playing tennis, and otherwise just enjoying each other and many of the same activities. I thought we lived a pretty idyllic life.
When Brandon was just over 1 year old, we thought it would be nice for him to have a younger sibling. Pretty soon I was delighted to be pregnant with my second son, Sam Brody Jenner. I named Brody after my brother Sam. Brody was born Aug. 21, 1983.
Those were the happiest days of my life. I had a wonderful husband, who was the most athletic, high-spirited, energetic, easygoing,
manly man imaginable. I had two beautiful, healthy baby boys. I had two great stepchildren. Life was just about as good as it gets. We had moved into a sweet, one-acre mini-estate where I planted roses, fruit trees, and flowers, and where many lasting memories were made.
Bruce traveled a lot, doing motivational speaking, working for NBC SportsWorld, racing cars, and throwing himself into other assorted jobs and activities. I often accompanied him, always bringing our sons, and sometimes I stayed home with the boys while he traveled.
When Brody was about 18 months old and Brandon was about 3 and a half years old, Bruce came to me one day with a very somber look on his face and said, "There's something about me that I really need to tell you, something you need to know." I truly thought he might possibly tell me he had had an affair while on the road. But that's not what he wanted to confess to me. Bruce told me that he identified as a woman. Not understanding exactly what he meant, I questioned him. "What do you mean you identify as a woman?" I asked. "What does that mean?" He replied that it meant that for as long as he could remember, he had looked in the mirror and seen a masculine image staring back at him where there should have been a feminine reflection. Bruce lamented, "I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside."
People have asked me, "Were there any signs or clues through the years that Bruce might have had this issue? Any evidence he wore your clothes?" No. Not a clue. Nothing. Nada. Never.
I would venture to say that 30 years ago, very few of us were adequately educated about the world of gender dysphoria. I certainly wasn't. I was living in my little Malibu cocoon of marital, motherly bliss with my world-champion, muscular, athletic, handsome husband. So my reaction to Bruce's shocking declaration was one of confusion, even desperation. I suggested that we go to therapy. I needed to understand fully what Bruce's issue was, and then to determine if it was something we could overcome or "fix." I was naïve. As I said, I was pretty ignorant of the fact that being transgender isn't something that can be overcome, fixed, prayed away, exorcised or obliterated by any other arcane notion. Being transgender, like being gay, tall, short, white, black, male, or female, is another part of the human condition that makes each individual unique, and something over which we have no control. We are who we are in the deepest recesses of our minds, hearts and identities. I had to learn that life lesson and apply it to my own expectations for my future and the future of my family.
I found a therapist who specialized in gender dysphoria. Her name was Dr. Gertrude Hill, and we began going to her right away. She was a lovely woman who very calmly, and as gently as she could, massacred me with the information that broke my heart into a million pieces. She told me in one of the first few sessions, "Linda, this is who Bruce is. His identity is that of a woman, and that will never, ever go away. You have a choice to make. If Bruce goes through with his gender reassignment, as he is now planning to do, you have the option of staying with him after
he becomes
she, or you can divorce him and move on with your life." She told us that 25 percent of transgender people commit suicide because they are so depressed and feel so hopeless.
Around that time Bruce considered traveling out of the country, possibly to Denmark, to have the gender-confirmation surgery and then come back to the U.S. identifying as female. I asked Bruce, "What about the children?" He thought maybe he could reenter their lives as "Aunt Heather."
As devastated as I was, my heart bled for Bruce and what he must have lived with his entire life. It's impossible for those of us who are comfortable living in our own skin to fully grasp what an imprisonment that must feel like to be born into the wrong body. I know it's difficult to understand, to emotionally or even intelligently wrap your head around. It was extremely difficult for me to comprehend, and adjust my life accordingly to, the realization that the man I had married -- the very masculine, gorgeous, ideal, wonderful hunk of a man -- would be no more. The human entity was still alive, but it truly was like mourning the death of the person I had grown to know and love.
Bruce and I separated after going to therapy for about six months -- just to exhaust any hope of keeping our family together. Being married to a woman was not what I had envisioned for my life.
I was so heartbroken that I would get in my car day and night and aimlessly drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway, crying. I mourned the death of my marriage, my man, and my dream of enjoying a lifetime of family togetherness. But I was also empathetic to, and mourned for, the pain that Bruce had experienced every day of his life. As earth-shattering as his confession had been for me, pulling the proverbial rug out from under my world, Bruce's struggle made mine pale in comparison. I now had to "man up," support Bruce and his decisions regarding his own body, take care of my sons, and move on with my life.
Bruce went to see a Dr. O'Dea and began taking female hormones. Thirty years ago the only hair removal that was permanent was electrolysis. There were no laser hair removal places then, as far as I know. Poor Bruce began the process of having electrolysis performed on his heavily bearded face. He then began having the hair on his chest removed. One excruciatingly painful hair at a time was targeted by an electrical current. Unimaginable. Bruce began to grow breasts as a result of the female hormones he was injecting. My life, my psyche, my femininity, my sexuality, my sanity was in a state of upheaval. I panicked about what I would ever tell my two boys about their former Olympian father, and how I would raise them alone. And then I would experience waves of crippling sorrow, not only for myself and my sons but for Bruce.
I may be the only woman in the state of California to have waived child support and alimony. But when Bruce and I divorced, that's what I did. As confused and sad as I was, Bruce was also very confused and extremely distraught. Again, Dr. Hill had told me that one in four transgender people commits suicide. I knew I didn't want that to happen. I had an open-door policy for Bruce when it came to visitation, letting him see his sons any time he wanted to. Brandon and Brody went over to his home occasionally but never spent the night there.
One day, after having spent a little time at Bruce's house, both boys came into the kitchen and said to me, "Mommy, we saw Daddy getting out of the shower naked, and Daddy has boobs!" That day I began trying to cover for Bruce, trying to protect him and trying to explain away what was clearly happening to his visage. I said, "Well, boys, you know how your dad was super-muscular and trained very hard for the Olympics? He had big muscles, and some of those muscles are called 'pectorals.'
When you stop training and you stop lifting weights, sometimes the muscle turns to fat. So his pectoral muscles have probably just gotten a little flabby and look like boobs." I was trying to shield Brandon and Brody from the truth and protect Bruce at the same time. It was exhausting.
I began dating David Foster, whom I subsequently married a few years later. Bruce dated several women, even though he had begun his transition and showed signs of it. He had no facial hair, no chest hair, and boobs, and he had gotten a nose job and trimmed his Adam's apple. Clearly he was still confused and conflicted as to how fully he was ready to commit to changing his life completely.
If Bruce had told me about his gender issue when we first began getting romantically involved, I would not have married him. Pure and simple. But looking back, I'm so grateful to God, the universe, and Bruce that I didn't know, and that Bruce played the role in my life that he did. What a tragedy that truth, if Bruce had confessed it in 1979, would have been for my existence as I have known it! I would never have experienced the joy, the honor, the privilege of being the mother of the two most precious gifts I have ever known, Brandon and Brody. As life has a way of unfolding as it is meant to, I have learned to trust life.

I felt such a reverent obligation to keep Bruce's gender dysphoria a secret for Bruce to reveal or not that I did not even tell my sons until they were 31 and 29 years old, respectively. I wanted Brandon and Brody to experience enough life and garner enough knowledge, confidence, and compassion to be able to deal with their father's true self. We are not defined by our parents, but we don't know that as young children. I tried to raise my sons to embrace open hearts, forgiveness, kindness, tolerance, and compassion. They have been imbued with good values and are remarkably noble, showing incredible acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness toward Bruce and others.
I
wouldn't be completely forthcoming if I didn't disclose in this writing that after Bruce and Kris married, there were periods of several years going by without Bruce attempting to contact or visit his sons. No birthday cards or phone calls, no "Merry Christmas," no "Everything OK?" after the big Northridge earthquake. Brandon and Brody will never have those "Hallmark memories" of father-and-son moments. They were saddened by his lack of participation in their lives, and my heart ached for them. When Brandon asked me, "Mom, what kind of a father doesn't come to his son's graduation?" I meekly replied, "Honey, your dad may have been the world's greatest athlete physically, but emotionally, you have to view him in a wheelchair. If he had emotional legs, he'd get up and walk to you, but he just doesn't right now. Just try to understand him, love and forgive him." It was an analogy that seemed to soften the blow at the time, and I do believe that forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves; it's really not even for the person we choose to forgive but for us. We only do harm to ourselves when we harbor resentment and vitriol toward another. I do believe that everything is forgivable; some things are inexcusable but forgivable.