"If I had it my way I would have been a dance mum making, like, glitter uniforms!" Kirsty Brooks jokes.
"I love glitter. But that was never how my daughter has been."
For a time, there was a distance between Ms Brooks and her child, Xero, but she could not quite put her finger on it until, one day, Xero opened up and said, "Mum, I don't feel like me. I feel like a boy on the inside".
Xero says that moment "wasn't hard as such at first".
"I just did it," she says.
"But the tears did come afterwards."
Ms Brooks never questioned her daughter's identity or choices and made it clear she was supportive.
But, confused about pronouns (Xero prefers they and them), she feared she did not have the right words to express it.
"We are from a mining town. Things are just different," Ms Brooks says about her lack of knowledge of the LGBT+ community.
"My social circle is not that social circle — well, it wasn't. It is now."
'Help! What's a pronoun?'
Searching for guidance, Kirsty Brooks typed three words into Google: "Gay people Kalgoorlie".
She found the Goldfields Pride webpage, a welcoming community and an unexpected outlet for her love of glitter.
"I picked up the phone and I went: Help! I don't understand what a pronoun is," Ms Brooks recalls.
"That was literally the first call."
Goldfields Pride chairperson Em Davis, who was on the other end of the call, says that to support their LGBT+ children, parents just have to believe them and love them.
Kirsty Brooks went beyond, educating herself.
"I just thought that it made her a really good mum, to be honest," says Xero.
Goldfields Pride also introduced Ms Brooks to WAAC, a not-for-profit organisation that offers a range of sexual health and support services across WA, including a "Supporting your LGBTQIA+ young person" workshop in Kalgoorlie.
"So many pennies dropped, like dropped and dropped and dropped," Ms Brooks says about that first meeting.
WAAC chief executive Lisa Dobrin says parents of queer teenagers don't have to understand, like, or even agree with their children's choices.
They just have to remember it is the person who matters, something that Ms Brooks knew instinctively.
"I'd rather love someone and have them in my life forever, than lose them because of my upbringing," she says.
But Lisa Dobrin says when a child comes out it can be challenging for parents who might never have known members of the queer community before.
She says parents may suddenly find themselves alongside the queer community as allies by default.
"Parents want to get it right. They don't want to add extra harm and barriers to the person coming to them," she says.
Ms Dobrin says LGBT+ young people are four to 15 times more likely to attempt suicide or self-harm than their heteronormative, cisgender peers.
'I have seen this huge smile'
Ms Brooks was afraid she could inadvertently say something offensive when she just wanted her daughter to feel safe coming to her.
"It's hard to be a teenager let alone an (LGBT+) teenager with straight parents," she says.
Ms Brooks says outback Kalgoorlie is becoming more progressive.
But there are still occasional expressions of homophobia she has to shield her child from: a nasty comment about a kiss at the pool or her daughter's short hair.
When people criticise, her daughter's joy gives her all the confirmation she needs.
"For the first time, I have seen this bright, huge smile across her face," Ms Brooks says.
"They said: I finally feel like me."
Normal like a mullet
Ms Dobrin says parents need affirmation that their queer children are going to be OK, and that there's a diverse and vibrant community waiting for them to join.
Ms Brooks joined that community too. The Goldfields Pride members became leaders for her daughter and friends for her.
They helped her avoid many "World War III" in her house, and so to thank them she took on the role of treasurer and "door girl" at Pride events.
One of the aims of these events is to boost the visibility of the LGBT+ community.
"When the mullet was first famous everyone went, 'that's weird'. Now everyone's got mullets," Ms Brooks says.
Em Davis says normalising being queer or gay would also make "coming out" less stressful.
"Then a kid is not going to be stressed about telling their parents because it's almost not a thing," they say.
Sharing the journey
Ms Brooks, who likes to say that knowledge is power, wants to empower other parents of queer young people.
She created PFlag+ Goldfields, a local branch of PFlag, an organisation founded 50 years ago to unite families of LGBT+ people.
Many of the challenges faced by parents who attended that first meeting in New York in March 1973, when homosexuality was considered a mental health disorder, have disappeared.
But even empowered parents such as Ms Brooks, can still experience a sense of loss when they learn their children identify as LGBT+.
Ms Dobrin explains that many parents go through a grieving process when a young person comes out.
"Many parents, whether consciously or subconsciously, plan a life for their child in their mind," she says.
"When their child comes out as queer, maybe the life they envisaged won't happen or it disappears for them."
Ms Brooks says she imagined her daughter growing up and finding a husband.
"That wasn't going to be the journey and we just didn't know what the journey would be," she says.
But adolescence is always a time of discovery, for both teenagers and carers.
And Ms Brooks wants to support other parents on that journey.
"Walk with them," she says.
"If they don't want to walk with you at least give them a guide."
Ms Brooks and Xero are navigating life's challenges together.
"Back then I felt supported and still do now," Xero says.
"She's a great mother."
