Dwyane Wade recalls difficult conversation about daughter Zaya Wade

Dwyane Wade shared how his daughter changed his perspective.

Dwyane was previously married to Siohvaughn Funches in 2002. The former couple shared two children together, son Zaire Wade and daughter Zaya Wade; however, their marriage ended in divorce in 2013.

As shared by People Magazien, the retired NBA player opened up about how he started seeing certain conversations differently as his daughter Zaya came out as a trans girl at the age of 12 in a podcast with Conversations With Cam.

“Before we came out and talked about Zaya in the locker rooms, I started to, like, become a little different. I started listening a little bit differently,” Dwyane said.

He recalled how a conversation with his ex-teammate and close friend, Udonis Haslem, changed his thinking: “I realized that masculine, toxic environment that we grew up in, and I remember having a conversation with UD because I wasn’t in on the jokes no more. I wasn’t laughing. I was leaving out of the locker room when I would hear certain things.”

Adding, “He was in on the jokes at the same time, and this was my brother, and I started feeling a way about his use of words.”

“He didn’t know, and he eventually changed his thinking, his verbiage, and then his actions,” he recalled.

He went on to elaborate, “The power of someone that he trusts to have a safe conversation with him in a safe environment to allow for him to feel safe to support something [and] believe in something that he didn’t grow up knowing anything about or being comfortable talking about.”

“[There] needs to be more spaces provided for those moments,” Dwayne further added.

Previously, speaking with NBC’s Today, Dwayne spoke about the strength he sees in Zaya, stating, “She’s the strong one in this family. She’s a hero.”

“It’s our family’s job to make sure that we listen to her. We listen to the doctors. We ask questions and we formulate our own ideas of how Zaya should be and should be raised in this world and we don’t allow others to do that for us,” he further acknowledged at the time.