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The actress admits she still messes up their pronouns, but is "trying my best."
Busy Philipps revealed her oldest child, 12-year-old Birdie, is gay and uses they/them pronouns.
The "Freaks and Geeks" actress opened up about Birdie's identity and sexuality on the New Year's Eve episode of her Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best podcast.
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"For those of you who are my friends listening at home, this is the first you're hearing that Birdie is gay and out," the 41-year-old actress told her listeners. "Birdie told us at 10 years old and we immediately … I mean, obviously, I knew that Birdie knew."
"I've been doing a bad job with the pronouns, because Birdie said that they would like the pronouns to be they/them and I haven't been doing it," Philipps revealed, before explaining Birdie gave Busy permission to speak about them on the podcast.
"I have this public persona and I want Birdie to be in control of their own narrative and not have to answer to anybody outside of our friends and family if they don't want to," said Philipps. "Bird was like, 'I don't give a f--k. You can talk about that I'm gay and out; you can talk about my pronouns. That would be cool with me. That's great.' It's been wild."
"I f--k up sometimes," Busy added of the preferred pronouns, "but I'm trying my best."
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Philipps also opened up about a touching conversation she had with Birdie about life, getting emotional as she revealed some of the advice she gave her child.
"I was like, 'Are you all right? Do you want to talk about anything?’ And Birdie said, 'It's just, I feel like I'm alive but I'm not really living, you know? And I just want the living part to start.' I got really emotional," said Philipps. "I said, 'Well, first off, welcome to being my daughter.'
"But I want to say this to you, because I wish someone said it to me. This is living, you can't wait for it to start. You can't think, if only I can get to X, I can start living," she continued, getting audibly choked up. "This year, having all this shit happen and being forced to stop and just sit with what my life is, I realize that I did waste so much time fantasizing about a thing, so many things that I thought were gonna make me feel a different way. And the way that I feel, that's just me and I need to, I did, I had to face it and figure out how to sit in it."
She said she also told Birdie, "You get to build your life however the f--k you want to, and it doesn't have to look like anything you've ever seen or anything that's ever been modeled for you because maybe it doesn't exist."
"You get to choose what will make you feel fulfilled and happy," she added. "It doesn't have to be any of these constructs that we've all been fed our whole lives. This is a different world that you get to f--king build. Anyway, it was pretty intense. I love that kid and this has been a f--king wild year."
Birdie is Philipps eldest child with husband Marc Silverstein. The two also share 7-year-old daughter Cricket.
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