My father asked whether it was safe and he was right to

I found that other people's questions got much easier once I had one short prepared answer that I used every time.

The hardest conversation was about money, because this costs and we share a budget and I had been quietly not mentioning it.

My partner came to a family event with a prepared subject change and deployed it three times, and it was the kindest thing.

Grateful you posted rather than kept it to yourself.

My experience is that families adjust more slowly than individuals and that the adjustment does eventually happen.

My mother cooks as an act of love and my appetite changing felt to her like a rejection, and naming that out loud helped both of us.

Ozren — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

We used to eat together in a particular way and that changed, and neither of us said anything about it for months.

What helped was one honest conversation where I said what I actually needed rather than expecting him to notice.

I asked him to stop commenting, once, clearly, and he did, and I had spent four months building up to a two-minute conversation.