Dwyane Wade is reflecting on a moment where he had to look at himself in the mirror after revealing Zaya Wade was scared to talk to him once she came out as transgender.
While speaking with Chris Paul and his manager Lisa Metelus at the Creative Artists Agency Amplify event in Ojai, California, Wade spoke about the time Zaya first came out to him. “So I came home and I just remember my child being scared to talk to me, like hiding in my wife’s arm in a chair, I think I’m this dad that’s like, ‘Hey, come and tell me anything! I’m a cool dad.'”
“And so I had to check myself,” he continued. “I had to go look myself in the mirror and ask myself: ‘Why was my child scared? Scared to tell me something about herself?’ He questioned. “In a lot of work as parents — and as people — what we do is we put our fears and everything on our kids. And I guess I was doing that,” he said. “So I had to go look myself in the mirror and ask myself… What is it about my masculinity that has my child afraid?” He said.
During the conversation he also reflected on how the whole world went crazy when it went public that Zaya was transgender.
“I became all kinds of things because I support my child and being who she is. I’ve become ‘gay,'” he leveled. “I think the hardest part about it is shutting out the world and shutting out the people that really are not in (our) circle, But they have opinions and we are public-facing family.”
As we previously reported, Dwyane recently did an interview with Rachel Nichols for a new episode of Headliners and revealed he moved his family out of Florida due to the LGBTQ policies in the state.
“That’s another reason why I don’t live in that state,” the NBA legend shared. “A lot of people don’t know that. I have to make decisions for my family, not just personal, individual decisions,” he continues. “I mean, obviously, the tax [situation] is great. Having Wade County is great. But my family would not be accepted or feel comfortable there. And so that’s one of the reasons why I don’t live there.”
A lot of people praise Dwyane Wade for being an awesome father and later in the interview he credited his dad for the way he raises his kids.”I tell my dad all the time, I’m just a mirror image of the way he loved us and the way that he accepted not only myself and my brothers but other kids in the community that didn’t have father figures,” Wade said. “And so I don’t know any difference. And so yes, I had to educate myself and yes, I had to get a better understanding. And yes, I had to lose some friends along the process, but I never wavered on loving my kids and trying to find space to get the chance to understand them.”