Transgender love story a ‘beautiful family’ affair
CALGARY— If you ask Nick McArthur and Anna Kunnecke, they have a pretty ordinary life.
They live in the suburbs of Okotoks, 20 kilometres south of Calgary, their kids spend the evenings biking around their cul-de-sac. They drive a minivan crammed with carseats and littered with Cheerios. They spend their evenings switching between Netflix shows.
And getting their five children ready for school in the morning can only be called “pure chaos.”
“If you met us, you’d think we were a really ordinary suburban family,” Kunnecke said.
“We look like a stereotypical family. Of course, like every family, there’s a lot more going on. Not just the fact that Nick is transgender, but that we’re a blended family.”
And next year, they’ll be bringing the story of their unique family to the big screen. The two received a $50,000 TELUS Story Hive grant to produce a documentary about their family. It’s titled Just Another Beautiful Family.
“We’re on the other side of a lot of the other hardest spots (of transitioning),” McArthur said.
“We can help other people like myself and kids, like I once was, sort of know that life is OK. It can better and it will get better and you will find love.”
McArthur is a transgender man. He has four biological children with his ex-husband, who he divorced in 2015. Kunnecke and McArthur were good friends for years. Their children got along well together. Years later, the two started dating and eventually tied the knot in 2016.
In the fall of 2016, McArthur began his transition.
But as parents to young children, McArthur and Kunnecke had a lot to think about.
“We have small kids in a small town, so there’s no way you can change genders without anyone noticing,” McArthur said.
“I have to either address the elephant in the room or be cool with my children thinking I’m ashamed with who I am, which I’m not.”
Kunnecke said there was a lot of conversation and therapy sessions on how it may impact their children. In the end, they decided they wanted to show their children it was important to live an authentic life. “We wanted to model for them, to try to walk our talk and stand up for our beliefs,” Kunnecke said.
“It doesn’t mean we always do it well, but at least we’re trying and we’re trying to be really open with them.”
Although they struggled finding resources to help guide them on how to explain the situation to their kids, it went down with no big fuss.
“I did a ton of research and there’s no guidebook on how to come out to your kids,” said McArthur.
The children “were the most complicated part in theory, in preparation.
“But in actuality, they were like, ‘Cool, whatever.’ One of our kid’s big question was, ‘Why did you wait so long?’ ”