The best day ever – that’s how Erin Purdie’s daughter referred to the day Purdie bought her daughter a dress.

The six-year-old said it felt like “a million hearts coming out of her.”

That was the beginning of her transition to a trans girl, Purdie and her partner, Wes Marsh, said Wednesday.

The parents spoke at a Trans Inclusion Forum held at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre.

The day-long event included a panel discussion and three breakout sessions that focused on health and wellness, human rights, inclusion in the workplace, youth and families, and what it means to be gender non-conforming.

Chase Blodgett, founder of All Genders Yukon, said the event came out of a conversation he was having with the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre, about how the centre might support trans women.

Blodgett says the forum aimed to invite the public into an understanding and awareness of what the trans reality is.

Issues range from how difficult it is to change gender identity on your passport (the Yukon’s Vital Statistics Act says that, to do this, one must have had their “anatomical sex structure changed” and confirmed by two medical practitioners), to the availability of gender-neutral washrooms, to choosing to go by a new pronoun.

Blodgett said educating oneself on these experiences is the first step toward supporting others and becoming an ally.

That’s why Bev Buckway was there.

Buckway, the executive director of the Association of Yukon Communities, was one of roughly 100 people in attendance on Wednesday.

She said the forum presented a subject with which she has little familiarity.

Buckway said she thinks that if you shy away from the things you don’t know, you’re not getting involved in the conversations you could be contributing to.

Looking things up online is one thing, the former Whitehorse mayor said, but it’s great to be able to come out and learn from people who have personal experience.

“To me, knowledge is a powerful thing, and if you don’t have it, you can’t plead ignorance,” she said while waiting for Purdie and Marsh to speak.

By their own admission, Purdie and Marsh said they didn’t initially have the knowledge to help their daughter transition when they realized she was transgender, and identified as being female.

“We made the mistake of thinking she was gay,” Marsh told an audience at the cultural centre.

When she said she was a girl, they reminded her she was a boy. Though she loved wearing heels and skirts around the house, she dressed as a boy to go to school.

It was last December, when the only things on her Christmas list were Barbies and a Barbie house, that Marsh and Purdie realized their daughter identifying as a girl had nothing to do with sexual orientation.

The family found support by visiting a B.C. psychologist who works specifically with transgender youth, and by meeting with Blodgett.

Blodgett accompanied Purdie and Marsh to speak to their daughter’s peers during her transition last winter, first at Sunday school, and then at her school.

Marsh and Purdie said the kids in their daughter’s class have been supportive.

Some of the parents haven’t been, but school administration has dealt with them.

Marsh’s and Purdie’s other three children are supportive.

So too are their daughter’s grandparents, who did some research of their own when they weren’t initially certain what it meant to be transgender.

When the forum began Wednesday, Blodgett laid a foundation for people in the same boat.

He discussed terminology, including the diversity of definitions under the banners of biological sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and romantic orientation.

He wasn’t explaining the terms so the audience had the language to go around labelling people, he said, but to give them a better understanding of what it might mean when someone says they’re transgender, or pansexual, or non-binary.

He said that, regardless of your understanding of the language, one of the best ways to respond is by thanking the person for trusting you with that information, and asking how you can support them.

“I hope people walk away with an increased awareness of what a lived trans experience is like – in both the joys and the hardships,” he said.

For Marsh and Purdie, the challenges are not over.

They said their doctor has told them the Yukon is 10 years behind the rest of Canada, and the territory doesn’t currently have the mental and physical resources they’ll need in the coming years. (“We are hoping the process for others is smoothed out, but we seem to be the ones paving the road,” said Marsh).

But there are great joys too – a daughter who is happier than she’s ever been. Who is confident. Who is teaching something new to her classmates, friends and family. Who, Purdie said, seems like she’s been twirling ever since she put on her first dress.

“Letting her be her true self is what unconditional love is all about,” they said.