A group of mothers are suffering. I am one of them.

My son is a sweet boy, a caring, gentle and sensitive boy. But everything changed since the day he turned into a different person who I do not recognize. His behaviour changed a couple of months before that day. I noticed significant and out of character behavioural changes from him. He limited his food intake and slept a lot during day time. He used a commanding tone when speaking to me. He tried to avoid conversation with the family.

I felt something wrong and started digging and digging. Then I found the cross-sex hormones in his room. It was a big shock. I had never noticed him having any issues or distress related to gender. When my husband and I tried to talk to him and tried to find out what was going on, he gave us the text book type of answer such as “This is what I want.” “I feel good.”, etc. When we asked why he wants to trans to a woman, his answer was so superficial. He talked about dressing in women’s clothes and wearing makeup. When we finally found a clinician who was willing to help him, our son left home and cut off contact with us.

That day was the darkest day in my life. Since then I lived in the hell. I can not believe this kind of thing happened in a modern era. A healthy, bright young man is willing to take harmful medicine for such superficial reasons, without ever seeding a non-harmful scientific solution first. When I think he is turning himself to a lifelong patient just for intangible feeling, my heart break.

The moment I realised I lost my loving boy, I lost control. I started hitting myself, cutting myself. In one stage, I could not get rid of suicidal thoughts and started looking for ways to end my life. But I still have a family to support. I still have parents who need I to look after. I kept telling myself “I need to be strong.” Even though every morning when I waken up, I am still wondering how this is could possibly be my life. My mind is floating in different stages of grief every day.

I started looking for answers. After reading lots of books, scientific papers and exploring online resources, I realised this kind of thing is happening across Australia and the world. It is happening to all different kinds of families, including “normal” families like mine. Our children grow up in a toxic culture and are brainwashed by gender ideology. They are being influenced by social media and groomed online to accuse their parents of not being understanding or supportive of their desire to “transition” to escape their authority and negate the need for consent. Trans activists are coaching younger kids on how to keep secret from parents, how to create stories to convince others they are truely trans, how to run away from families. There are thousands of families in the same situation right now.1 Each family has a mother like me who is stuck in the nightmare. Some mothers have daughters who run away from homes for years. Some mothers have sons who refuse to talk to them.

Why was my son captured in this sub culture? I keep asking myself. Then I read Dr. Lisa Littman’s paper2 and learned about ROGD (Rapid-onset gender dysphoria). I realised my son is a ROGD kid3. If he had not been influenced by peers, brain washed by media, he could have turned out differently and not used aggressive language to attack his parents or run away from the family who loves him most.

Almost 30% of those affected by ROGD since the mid-2000 are male. When I read ROGD boy profiles4, I recognize my son. He is highly intelligent, gifted, exceptionally creative. He is hypersensitive to environmental stimuli, has issues with body awareness and difficulty reading social cues. He has a strong interested in anime and plays a fantasy tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragon” a lot. Anime is tied to the transgender movement because anime is super-pornographized and hyper sexualized.5 D & D allows players to create character of different species, sexes and backgrounds and to explore their “gender identify”. Prolonged immersion in anime and D&D makes them unable to distinguish reality and fantasy. In the end, our son decided to turn himself into an anime character and play the game in the real world. So pathetic!

I do not know when he will wake up and face reality. People say trans kids hate their parents because parents are the reality. The reason I wrote my story is I want to warn parents. Gender identity ideology is impacting real lives and real families. Being alert to the tiny signs, such as the anime your kids are watching, games your kids are playing, social media your kids are using, friends your kids are hang on with, etc. Not like me. Too late to find out the truth.

Whoever said “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” has not yet met a mother whose child has been captured by the trans-insanity and medical malpractice of this generation.

Anger doesn’t begin to tell the story of how we moms feel. Not to mention the dads who have been blamed, alongside moms, for being ‘alpha male’ or for not being strong enough, for being too religious or not religious enough, for giving too much parental advice for not giving enough parental advice, for taking away the internet and for not taking away the internet, for putting food on the table and raising a family at the same time fighting off schools, online groups, medical professionals, and a so called ‘progressive’ society slathering to take our child.

We. Are. Done.

They have taken from us our very hearts, our minds are gone with stress, our emotions wrought with worry, our bodies exhausted from never ending battles. But we have to take heart. We’ve been locked in a paper cage for long enough. It is time for us tiger parents to come forth from our separate caves of pain, band together, and take back our sons - no matter the cost to us. There is strength in our numbers and now that we are connected, we can wrest back the future for all of our sons. Whatever their age and wherever they live and whoever they think they are: they will always be our precious sons.

As parents, we know these sons are not just your ‘regular’ sort of kids. Boys and young men who believe they can change their sex are typically, strikingly, extraordinary. Many are highly intelligent, sensitive, kind, empathetic, open to new ideas, creative, talented, passionate, brilliant at a level you’ve never seen before. Yet these gifts come with a darker side as these sons also tend to see things in black and white, are socially awkward, self-despising, lacking in confidence, argumentative, angry, and, like every young person on the planet, feel like they don’t fit in.

They really are special and this is what makes them so susceptible to trans ideology. Their self judgement is so harsh, that they believe something is always ‘wrong’ with them and that they just need to ‘fix’ it so they can ‘fit in.’ But it’s actually the exact opposite: there really is something ‘right’ about them that we as parents and surrounding community need to preserve and protect. Their difference is what we should cherish, not destroy.

Our son’s experience is echoed in the many stories I have read about children and young adults caught in the trans-cult web. Our son inherited his genius - and social awkwardness - from grandfathers on both sides. He also inherited a distaste for violence of any sort from his Auntie and Uncle who met at Woodstock. He tended toward individual sports (sailing, hiking, swimming) rather than the team ‘bro’ league. He was an outlier - talented in everything from science to music; from running to writing. He could talk to anyone and knew something about everything. Everyone brightened up a little when he walked into the room.

Then…when COVID hit, he turned to online ‘friends’ and groups. He became depressed because of the loss of his friend group that seemed to dissolve as the year progressed. This, sadly, drew him toward a friendship with a predator who sexually assaulted him at 14. This trauma spun our son into complete darkness. His world collapsed, as did ours.

His giant brain, in trying to ‘solve’ the problem of the trauma created a convoluted thought pattern that went like this: “Who is physically opposite of a person who would attract a homosexual predator?” …..a woman. This argument, by the way, is known as the fallacy of ‘transposition’ where A=B so B=C. I can’t think of a better description of the entire trans movement.

At his point our son started to think he’d rather be a woman as women’s bodies typically don’t attract male homosexual predators. We tried to talk to him, but this is when he was so closed it was impossible to get through. He had vanished literally overnight.

Taking this trauma response to his affirming therapist, he was told that the root of his depression, loneliness, and unresolved anger toward men is because he actually is a woman. My son’s therapist who is supposedly trained in the field of psychiatry not only supported my son’s fallacy of transposition but added her own layer of illogical deduction, making him more mentally unstable.

So, he decided this must be true.

Taking the affirming therapist’s advice, he asked his ‘friends’ online who said he looked like a woman when he dressed a certain way. Sadly, our son felt so unconfident in his own skin, he believed it all, listening to people online vs. his family and friends at home.

So, he decided this was the truth.

Planned Parenthood prescribed him female hormones at his request. Just like that. In the first appointment and without even seeing a doctor. At ‘best’ these incorrect hormones rearrange his body so he looks like a person who is neither male nor female, having aspects of both. At worst, these drugs taken over a period of time can cause irreversible damage including infertility, sexual dysfunction, psychosis, chronic pain, liver and kidney disease, early dementia, heart complications, and early death. But Planned Parenthood thought this was a good idea.

So, he reasoned, it must be safe to take these drugs,

His progressive boss and teachers called him feminine pronouns. People in authoritative roles may think they are being ‘kind’ but they are in actuality colluding with a mentally ill person: To me, it is cruel to perpetuate a fantasy. If a student came saying he could fly - would you encourage him to jump off the building? In essence, they repeated back to our son the insane script he had written in his head.

So, he decided, it must be true.

‘Doctors’ in white coats said in a very official way that he could change his gender. In my eyes this is criminal behavior that will go down in history as an even worse medical atrocity than doctors performing lobotomies in the early 1900s. Surgically deforming a healthy person’s body to match their mentally ill mind is the highest form of medical malpractice I can imagine, creating forever patients with long term, irreversible, and tragic physical and mental consequences.

So, he thought, of course this must be true.

As a loving parent, I can see how our son started down this path. Life is complicated and confusing. It is frustrating and violent. It makes even those of us with solid mental states want to retreat into a fantasy world that is softer, gentler, and kinder. Like Peter Pan, we want to live in a world that we create and stay young forever with no responsibilities, no obligation in this rough world. It is patently obvious how he sought out ‘professional’ advice and was supported each step of the way further into the devolution of his mental illness. Each step he felt shored up to go the next step, and the next. It is the same story you have all shared about your own precious sons.

It literally breaks my heart to see that what our son is chasing - what all these lost boys and young men are seeking - is love, acceptance, inclusion, and understanding. What horrifies me to no end is the people around him - knowingly or not - who are pushing him further into delusion and ultimately much further away from what he is seeking. In doing so, they are destroying every fiber of his being; the very fabric that is our son. As he unravels, so do we.

But this is not the end of my son’s story. Nor is it the end of story for your son or for any young person caught in the trans-cult.

This is a plea to those connected in any way to our ‘extra-ordinary’ sons to stop. Stop and think about what you are doing and saying. Stop and think of how you might be spinning someone further into a mental health decline and lifelong physical pain when you can and should gently guide them away from the ledge. Stop and think if you want this to be your legacy or if you want to be the person who stands up, shakes off former errors, and course corrects so you can be on the right side of history. It is imperative for everyone, from aunties and cousins to doctors and therapists to researchers and scientists to teachers and mentors - we must all stop the insanity of this trans movement that is destroying our very best of the next generation.

Now is the time to make the world a saner place so our sons have the opportunity to grow into the men they were born to be. It is our duty as parents to forge ahead, going directly against the doctors, Planned Parenthood, therapists, teachers, disillusioned friends, online groups, community leaders, ‘progressives’ who think they are being ‘kind’ and anyone who is pushing the trans agenda in any way. This sick illusion needs to stop. Lawsuits, medical license revoking, reporting of those who perpetuate harmful lies, speaking truth in this vortex - we parents need to support it all and support each other. It needs to happen now.

We tiger parents must come out of our paper cages. Together, safety in the number of our little tribe, we will no longer let fear, intimidation, and bullying push us away or shut us down. We must respond as the tiger moms and dads do: Protecting our young at whatever the personal cost.

Our extra-ordinary sons are worth it. Our families are worth it. Our future is worth it.

A discussion was going around the other day: “What is your line in the sand that tells you, ‘This is too far.’”

The answer, to me, was very clear. My line in the sand is “medicalization.” If he hadn’t been medicalized so soon life would have slapped enough sense into our son to do—or not do—certain things. Unfortunately for him and for us, he has medicalized.

That people like him will suffer because of these medical interventions as they grow older is almost a certainty, with some experiencing it more intensely than others. If they are on estrogen long-term, by the time they reach their 30s, their bodies will have already started to show signs of strain. As they get older, gradually, and then more precipitously, the probabilities of bad outcomes, including death, will worsen. And if he had surgeries, well, I don’t even want to think about that right now.

Will some of them beat the odds? Sure, that is the nature of probability. However, compared to a fellow parent whose son has not been medicalized, I will have more than three times the odds of seeing my child dead by the time he reaches his 50s, if private US insurance data is any indication. (Check out the Online Appendix: like most “research” in this area, the incriminating details are almost always hidden away in online appendices, if they can be found at all. The table below is created from the data within the online appendix).

Even if he doesn’t, it will be my wife and me who will be taking him to the hospitals and putting him under the care of doctors who probably have no idea of what to do with him. And this will be when we are in our eighties.

And then there’s the social bankruptcy. His identity, even if he beats the physiological odds, requires constant validation, and the market for that is way past its peak. He might still continue to get some validation now in his 20s, when there are enough of his peers who have the time in their hands to participate in his delusion.

But by the time they are in their 30s, most of those peers would have settled down, if they haven’t done so already. They will have risen up the ranks somewhat in their jobs. And so there will be deadlines. And unreasonable supervisors and whiny supervisees. Office parties they can’t get out of. And travel. And reward points. Checking into their 401ks. Mortgages, if they can afford it. ACs that stop working at 2 AM. The joys of DIY home repair. And finally—as Cori Cohn once said memorably in a podcast—children. Diapers. Colic. First words. First fever. First birthday. First steps—edited and posted on Instagram. Swallowed toys. Daycare. Bugs picked up at said daycare.

As his contemporaries juggle with that amorphous entity called life in all its resplendent glory, they soon will not know where their weekend went, let alone the week. And out of all the things they will be juggling, one thing they will quickly learn to jettison is the time they used to allot for our man-child, who will still need constant validation—perhaps even more so—in a world that has moved on.

And the world would have more than moved on. Just like scrubbed pronouns, entire memories of this medical calamity would have been scrubbed out of collective memory, with people like him treated as the unwelcome reminders of our era. It would make so much sense to consider him a freak for insisting, after all the emerging evidence, that “these interventions help,” and increasingly resembling Richard Levine every passing year, minus the uniform and any federally mandated healthcare.

(Richard, we should remind ourselves, had his children before indulging in his inner freak—and was honest enough to confess that he wouldn’t have transitioned earlier because he couldn’t “imagine a life without [his] children.”)

So, what does a person who bet his entire life on that single choice he made in what was practically his childhood do then? They are left with that one last chip: their parents.

And so, in a very selfish way, I draw the line at medicalization.

Things are starting to change. More and more people are beginning to see that the trans agenda is not the hill to die on.

My best friend growing up was one of the first people I knew to add pronouns to her bio. She runs a DEI company and proudly calls herself a social justice warrior. For years, I struggled to relate to her after my son went down the trans rabbit hole. Before that, I never questioned her views — I thought we were on the same page about the world. Recently, I visited her website again and noticed something missing: the pronouns were gone.

Then, there are my sisters. I was once incredibly close to them. But, after I told them what was happening with my son, everything changed. They treated me like I’d fallen into conspiracy theories. They were staunchly progressive, loyal Democrats, and refused to believe that “trans” might not be what we were told. To keep the peace, I finally said I didn’t want to talk about politics or gender anymore. But the truth was, I felt betrayed — abandoned by people I loved most.

For a long time, I avoided them. My husband encouraged me to try again, to reconnect, and eventually, I decided he was right. I missed my family. So, I got in the car and drove eight hours to visit one of my sisters.

What happened during that visit left me speechless. At one point, she mentioned seeing gender-confused kids everywhere and said she was worried about what’s happening. Later, she casually added that she and our other two sisters had all left the Democratic Party and changed their registration to Independent. I could hardly believe it. I thought they’d be the last ones standing.

It’s strange to watch this shift happen. The same people who once defended the ideology so fiercely are quietly stepping away. My friend deleted her pronouns. My sisters no longer believe what they used to. One by one, people are moving on, pretending they never cheered this on. They’ll erase the hashtags, take down the flags, and carry on as if they never believed it.

But families like mine can’t move on. We don’t get to delete what happened. Our children were the ones experimented on. We’ve watched them be harmed — sometimes irreparably — by an ideology that told them to destroy themselves to find themselves. There’s no undoing that. There’s no returning to “before.”

For the people who once believed, it’s a phase they can walk away from. For us, it’s a lifelong loss.

They can move on. We can’t.

It’s really weird at my house. If an anthropologist were looking through the window and secretly observing my family, he would be very confused. Why does the father use a male name for the son while the mother uses a female name? And everyone in the family goes along with this, like it’s completely normal?

My gender-addled adult son has been trapped in the trans nightmare for about a year and a half now. He’s a textbook case of ROGD, an “on the spectrum” kid who thinks that his discomfort with himself and the rest of the world is because he’s born in the wrong body. What nonsense. Yet his mother and younger sister “support” him in his “journey”. I don’t. I am the father who loves him and wants what’s best for him, so I don’t affirm what he’s doing to himself. I stay close to him - he still lives at home - but I don’t go along with the new name, the new pronouns and language, any of it. Meanwhile he’s not working, not going to school, doesn’t get out much, and just seems to be stuck in the game of life.

How did he get into this? My son has never had an easy path. He’s always been a smart kid, but social interactions were always difficult. When he was a child, we spent time and money on social education, occupational therapy, and other therapies. We worked tirelessly with teachers, counselors, and made some progress. He was fine at home. I still savor all the time I spent with him, building Legos, reading books, and doing all the other things you do with your child. But school and classes were different. He was bored.

He got through high school and into college. I truly thought he was on his way. Little did I realize that he spent virtually all of his time outside of his classes inside his room, online. While visiting home about a year and a half ago, he announced he was “trans”. Really? This issue was never mentioned in his 20+ previous years of life. Whatever he thinks defines a woman, he is not it. His self-diagnosis is about as insightful as saying he identifies as a fish.

So in our household, my wife affirms, and I don’t. It’s a problem and it’s escalating. My wife winces every time I use my son’s birth name. “You’re hurting him.” she yells. “Why can’t you accept him the way he is?” I’m hurting him? I do accept him, as him, she doesn’t. No one can change their sex. My wife should know that. The last few months I’ve been watching the slow transformation of my once-handsome son into something else, I’m not sure what. He’s hurting himself in ways he probably doesn’t yet know. He’s getting sick on cross-sex hormones but won’t acknowledge that those hormones are the cause of his sickness. He occasionally sees the classic “disturbed, close female friend” (a one-time girlfriend who says she’s also trans), and she likes to give him manicures. Really? Does he realize she’s treating him like a damn dress-up doll? Probably not.

Despite the fact that my son could be the poster boy for how a spectrum kid gets seduced by the gender ideology siren song, there’s no textbook “fix” for how to pull him out of this mess. He doesn’t talk about gender. If I bring it up, he shuts down. He’s the type who will dig in if challenged, so what can I do with this kid? “Wait until he decides it’s not working for him,” says one therapist. Really? Is that the best I can do? Stand around and watch this nightmare? It would help if my wife were on my side, but she’s not.

I have to do something. So what do I do? I read. I educate myself. I do normal stuff with my son, as much as I can. And I write, compulsively. The brave, too-big-to-cancel author J. K. Rowling says, “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” So I attack gender ideology with words. I ridicule gender ideology and all of its supporters. I have special contempt for the doctors who play god and harm our kids. I laugh at gender ideology. I curse it. I expose it as a fraud. To anyone who will listen, and even those who don’t. I don’t merely want to discredit gender ideology; I want to see “gender affirming care” placed in the same category as the “bloodletting” treatments of centuries ago, with gender ideology becoming as desirable and hip as a full-body contagious fungus. I will not stop writing until GAC becomes another one of the failed, damaging medical treatments that have been abandoned and banned. The list of medical failures is long and includes cocaine, heroin, shock treatments, lobotomies, thalidomide (in Europe), fen-phen, and now, “gender affirming care”. Once again, the medical community is failing us and treating our children like lab rats, though honestly, lab rats get better treatment.

Despite the challenges, I insist on being hopeful that I can restore reality to my family and someday pull my son out of this mess. A recent PITT essay talked about the magic of noticing “one good thing about nature” every day. Maybe showing him a little bit of beauty every day is a good start on the path back to reality. And I’m waiting and also preparing for difficult conversations. I don’t want to win debates, I just want him to talk out loud about the concepts underlying his “identity”. The underlying assumptions of gender ideology, when spoken, sound ridiculous.

I will never give up on my son in this battle with gender ideology. And I will never stop writing about it.

To my relatives who enable and celebrate my trans-identifying son and who have avoided me for years now:

I see your “Be Kind” posts on Facebook. The posts with a rainbow flag and other virtue signaling self-congratulating mottos and memes.

I see your posts of kitschy signs that say things like, “All I care about is your good intentions”. I guess you have forgotten the part about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

I see your photos posted of the wedding that you did not invite me to or even tell me about.

I see my estranged trans-identified son looking anxious and silent, covering his face with his long hair.

I can see how ill he looks from far away. It breaks my heart that he has cut off contact with us, his parents who love him and want him to be strong.

But you, dear relatives, can see only how Virtuous and Woke you are, what a Good Person you are for Being Kind. Because you have such Good Intentions.

You call my son by a female name. You pretend he is a girl, a woman, and tell him how brave he is. You express sympathy and tell him what awful parents he has.

My son is responsible for his mistakes; he chose to proceed with the trans-identification and medical transition. But it didn’t help that you embraced the opportunity to show how Nice and Considerate you are by celebrating his poor thinking and decline.

You see, you are so Kind. You gather ill people like my son around you because they make you look so Special and Caring.

When my son was younger, before the trans-identification, you had little interest in him. Why would you? What is interesting about a smart, strong, successful young man who does not require your Kindness to succeed.

So much better for you to have the opportunity to Be Kind.

One evening at dinner, my mother could not remember something; she also felt her vision was blurry and that she could not speak well. She spoke to her friends and then searched online. People told her she must have had a small stroke. She called me and told me she had had a stroke.

My sister and I took her to the emergency room where they ran an EKG on her heart and did a CT scan of her brain. Thankfully, both showed her to be healthy. The doctor assured her she had not suffered a stroke and sent her home.

When my son struggled with dysphoric feelings, he spoke to his friends and went online. People told him he was a woman. He went to a doctor. The doctor did not run any tests. This is unusual. Doctors like tests; they show how a patient is doing, and they make money for the doctor and the hospital. Some doctors will order a test even though the results will not change the patient’s treatment plan.

My son could have been given a cheek swab test for XX chromosomes. He could have been told he is not a woman and sent home. Instead, they affirmed his feelings and prescribed estrogen and testosterone blockers.

When my son told me he was a woman, he also told me that brain scans of “trans women” were similar to brain scans of women. I asked him if they had scanned his brain. They had not. Why don’t doctors routinely do brain scans on men who claim to be women? They would profit financially from running the test. Could it be that brain scans would not show that some men have brains like women? Could it be that there is no scientific basis for a theory of male or female brains? Could lack of evidence reduce their profits in the long run?

My father is 90 years old and is declining. Since we have ruled out a physical problem, this is likely the cause of my mother’s distress. We are going to seek out a caregiver support group for her. Hopefully, she can find some ways to cope with her distress.

I wish the doctors had told my son that he is physically healthy and sent him home with no treatment, except encouraging him to allow someone, his family, clergy, or an honest therapist, to help him find the cause of his disturbing feelings and ways to cope with his distress.

Isn’t that how medicine is supposed to work? Do doctors still take an oath to do no harm?

The day before Erika Kirk spoke at Charlie’s memorial, I woke up with an idea to write about the lost boys. The following day I was stunned when I heard Erika speak these words.

“Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West”. She later went on to add, “My husband, Charlie, wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life. Our Savior said, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ I forgive him. I forgive them because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do.”

Charlie Kirk worked tirelessly to reach our lost children! Thank you, Charlie and Erika. Thank you for battling the lies, that took our children captive, with truth.

Lamenting the Lost Boys

Myles/Margot Lewis. Robert/Robin Westman. Tyler Robinson. These names have taken me to the keyboard and brought me to my knees. News of their actions has pierced my heart in ways I’m still searching to describe. And I’m not alone.

We’ve heard much about ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria), especially in girls and in large part due to Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage. But less has been written about the boys. We’ve seen drag queens and images of demented looking men, but the parents of many trans-identified kids have a different perspective.

After our son came out in 2014, it soon became obvious there was a common thread in these boys. As one parent after another shared their story, my heart cried out, “Oh, dear God, are they all autistic?” They were often gamers, artists, highly intelligent, quirky and sensitive boys who stumbled into the darkest places of the internet.

But the most striking and troubling resemblance is that many of them made a radical shift. The people they once loved became despised. Excelling academically, they started failing. Their bright eyes, once filled with affection, became empty. Some of them vanished.

There are parents that went along with every socially and medically advised approach. Some did everything they could to love without compromising truth until this messy middle was not enough for their child. Others couldn’t face the radical changes tainted with rage and told their sons they needed to leave. And a few parents have become prisoners of their own homes, held captive by the demands of their sons and society’s pressure.

I’m not suggesting there was never any fault on the side of the parents. They tried. And unless they were affirming the madness, there was no help. There was no understanding. Those of us in underground support groups eventually found it in one another and shared resources but the shame, and challenges in finding one another, left many of these parents isolated.

I must not fail to mention, some of these kids have been abused. Sometimes by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them. It is not a stretch for them to claim a trans identity and seek these communities as an escape and a place of safety. Tragically, many of these kids fall into further abuse.

I’m not suggesting that our son or anyone else’s is desiring another’s death but we know they have already chosen death to themselves. We know because we dare not use their “dead name.” With our son’s 10-year absence, I know next to nothing. I can only draw conclusions from the growing number who have escaped this madness, trying to find their way back to reality as best they can with the damage done. And I’m not suggesting these young men all have the potential to be shooters, but often parents have no idea what they are capable of because of the unrecognizable changes that have taken place. And this worries us.

I know only God is able to fully rescue them but I share this in hopes that I can help prevent all the quirky, sensitive sons out there from becoming one of these lost boys. And I beg you to pray. Pray for these lost boys (and girls) and pray for their parents. They need it now more than ever.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” 1 Timothy 1:15

That could be my son. This thought has been stabbing at me for the past two days since they identified Charlie Kirk’s killer. And, if I’m being honest, it’s been niggling at me for the last three years with every senseless shooting perpetrated by a lone, white, young male.

That could be my son. It’s not just that Tyler Robinson looks a little like my 19-year-old. It’s also not that he, too was raised in a loving, conservative home. No, it’s that Tyler Robinson, like my son, went from being a highly intelligent and well-adjusted (albeit slightly socially awkward) boy with a promising future to a radicalized young adult—and seemingly overnight.

Three and a half years ago, my son chose trans. Tyler Robinson chose murder. It is my belief that these young men (and all the other lone, white young male shooters) have a common starting point.

Let me begin by saying they are all culpable. Whether it’s invading women’s spaces or assassinating innocent souls, only they themselves are to blame for their actions. With that out of the way, I’d like to talk about what got them there. Because if we can begin to understand, perhaps things can begin to change.

When people throw the label “monster” on them, and the rad-fems dismiss all trans-identified boys as AGP creeps, and the ignorant paint them all as sexual perverts, I want to scream “BUT WE SET THEM UP FOR FAILURE!”

We have been telling boys for well over 20 years now that their base instincts are primitive and disgusting. We have told them again and again that their mere presence is a threat to women. Not their actions—their presence. I support the good that came from the #metoo movement (it was a needed correction, for sure), but a lot of damage came with the fallout.

Our boys became hyper-aware that every interaction they have can be misinterpreted and cast as suspicious. That it can lead to being cast out of friend groups, ostracized at school, labeled a misogynist. So when pubertal urges began in their teenage years, they were not only adjusting to these new feelings, they became terrified of them.

And that's just the male part of their identity! They also absorbed and internalized the message that their whiteness carried with it a history of grave harm. In the last three decades, in a mostly well-intentioned effort to correct the wrongs of the past, our educators have taught a message loud and clear: white supremacy and patriarchal systems have harmed millions of people throughout history.

How could our boys not begin to hate what they saw in the mirror? They were born with two immutable traits that the rest of the world defines as threatening, two traits that put them at great risk for social rejection. For most boys, they find safety in a like-minded group of friends through sports or clubs or a music group at their school. They are safe because they are known (and there is strength in numbers). Their real-life interactions tell them they are okay, they are decent human beings, they are wanted. They are not a threat. But for our boys—our highly intelligent, sensitive, slightly awkward ASD trait boys—most didn’t have that safety net. Making friends “IRL” was never easy. And so maybe they scratched that itch online. They found their people in the virtual world. Some found it on Discord, others on gaming platforms, and still others in very dark recesses of the internet.

And here is where the problem begins to bear rotten fruit. Unlike their well-adjusted male counterparts, their real-life exposure to peer groups begins to stand more and more in sharp contrast to their online spaces of full acceptance. Virtually, they are able to tweak and massage whatever image they want to project. They cultivate the person they wish they really were. And so that internalized self-hatred? That deep shame over being white and male? It morphs into something extremely sinister. They stand at the crossroads of three radicalized paths: rejecting their maleness, fighting as a radical ally, or becoming the very threat the world says they are.

But let’s pause for a moment and remind ourselves of what else was going on during this era. At the same time that being white and male was increasingly becoming a social liability, the world began to lie about the mutability of one of those traits. Since 2010, there has been a massive spike in transgender-identification among late teens and young adults. While the largest increase was seen with transgender-identified females, the boys quickly followed—since 2011, the UK alone saw a 1,200% rise in transgender-identified males.

And it is no wonder! Back to our crossroads: these boys now had a choice to opt-out of their maleness. I am here writing in PITT because that is exactly what my boy chose. Four years ago, when our son was 15, our family experienced a deeply traumatic event that ended with the truly brutal loss of our closest community and a move across the country.

So how does this connect to Tyler Robinson?

It is my belief that these intelligent and sensitive boys, without a healthy way to reinforce a stable sense of self through peer interaction, had to find a way to survive their own existence. Whether it was a burning need to explain their suffering (brought on by social isolation or trauma), a desperate desire to literally rid themselves of those unwanted traits, or a fierce and tormented longing to belong somewhere . . . they did what they had to do.

“Becoming a woman” was my boy’s escape from self-hatred. With that choice came instant acceptance (and not just online). It also offered a ready-made explanation for his pain (bonus: no need to confront the trauma he had just endured!). For others, adopting the role of a “warrior ally” is their ticket out of self-shame. They fuse their identity so tightly with the cause against white supremacy and patriarchy that it tips into radicalization. And still others, in a huge, defiant f-you, throw themselves into the alt-right corners of the manosphere.

We all loved our boys well. We did not over-love them (one of the many accusations hurled at us parents). We saw their social isolation and stepped in, building them up as best we knew how. We sent them off to college, unaware of the depth of their insecurities, the intensity of their pain, or the fierceness with which they craved acceptance at any cost. How easily their minds could twist logic through mental gymnastics, bending reasoning around narratives that explained their suffering while shifting blame onto someone else.

And then they made their choices. Some “became women,” rewriting themselves to escape self-hatred. Some dove headfirst into alt-right white supremacy, lashing out in defiance. Some donned the armor of radicalized leftist warrior identities, fighting the very world that never fully accepted them. Different paths, same root. That’s the conversation we desperately need to have.

There’s something deeply comforting about routine, especially when everything else feels uncertain or formidable. Routine has become my anchor for getting through the day.

Waking before anyone else. Saying a prayer. Making the same breakfast. Walking the same route. Checking emails at the same time.

These small acts create a rhythm that helps quiet the turmoil I feel inside. It’s not that the pain disappears, but within the structure of routine, I feel safe. In that repetition—even when done on autopilot—there’s reassurance: life is still moving forward, and somehow, so am I.

But one part of my routine breaks that sense of safety: a daily email from OneDrive prompting me to “look back at your memories from this day.” Photos taken the same day from previous years are randomly selected, summarized, and sent to my inbox every morning.

I always hesitate before opening. I can’t predict whether I’ll feel a wave of sadness, nostalgia, or something in between. The unpredictability is what makes me pause. How will I feel looking back today? Am I strong enough? Am I alone, so if the tears come, my loved ones will not have to watch me fall apart again?

That uncertainty can be paralyzing. Most times, the images that once brought joy in reminiscence are now reminders of what’s been lost.

Pictures of my sweet boy at all stages of life. I never know which version of him will appear: my beautiful baby, my wide-eyed toddler, my curious little boy, or the handsome young man he has grown to be.

In them, he is always smiling—a bright, beautiful smile. He was a happy kid, even when life threw challenges. He was perfect just as he was.

I open the emails, searching the pictures for something I missed—a hint of struggle, a shadow of sadness, a tinge of nonconformity. But I see none. Only joy and self-assuredness. A happy child surrounded by a loving family.

When my son left for college, I had some feelings of trepidation about sending him out into the world. I felt that I raised him with a good foundation of a belief in God and in himself. He was grounded, I believed. He will be just fine, I told myself. He is launching, Mom, I reminded my heart. Let him go.

Then the pandemic hit.

He seemed to be navigating through the challenges of lockdown and its aftermath—a time that took a toll on all of us in different ways. A toll, I fear, that will be collected throughout our lifetimes. He said he was fine. He seemed fine. He excelled academically and held down a job. He graduated and had plans for the future.

I didn’t see this coming.

The announcement came out of the blue. He now says it was all wrong. That he was born in the wrong body. All of the memories and pictures full of confident smiles and happiness are false, counterfeit.

The secure, happy young man I sent off to college is now someone I do not recognize. We are not estranged, but the connection now feels strange. There are whispers and flashes of my son as he used to be—but his personality has changed so drastically, I feel like I’m speaking to a stranger.

A bond that once was so strong is now fragile.

He is so deeply entrenched in his new identity that it is difficult to hold onto hope. A hope that he will come back to reality and try to explore his sense of self without believing he can change his biology through harmful medicalization.

The headwinds feel so strong. This is an ideology that contradicts truth and science—and it has woven itself into our schools, our healthcare, our government, our media, and even our places of worship. The very institutions I once turned to for information, counsel, and support now feel distant or unsafe.

I feel lost. I feel betrayed.

I don’t know the answer—or if he will even be receptive to anything I say. Because I am upset and non-affirming, he considers me toxic and hurtful. I pray to say the right things, to find the right help, and most of all, that he will turn and see:

I was always here.
The one who set boundaries within reality.
The one who said, “Let’s find you real help.”
The one who said, “I love you always and forever, no matter what.”

Most days, it’s hard to muster the strength to rise and get out of bed. The fear of what lies ahead for him—and the worry that he’s not facing the underlying cause and pain that led to such a drastic change—can debilitate me. But I take a deep breath, and then autopilot kicks in. I start my day just as I did the day before.

First to rise. A prayer. Breakfast. A walk. Emails—with a quick look back at memories to view life as it was before.

Looking back to hold onto hope.

Then I dry my tears and lift my head, just as the rest of my family wakes and greets me with a smile.

Life is going on. And somehow, so am I.

When NPR aired the “How to Raise a Girl” podcast in 2017 on gender transition (think Jazz Jennings, but over the radio), I told my family that I doubted that there were any long-term studies of the effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Gender transition seemed a mad experiment. Years later, when my son began taking cross-sex hormones, I tried to learn about estrogen’s effects on males.

Estrogen is prescribed to trans-identified males off-label to feminize the body through breast growth, fat redistribution, and softening of the skin – cosmetic enhancements of secondary sex characteristics. Because estrogen is prescribed off-label, it has not been subject to FDA approval, nor are outcomes closely monitored. Informed consent forms list some adverse effects, but the risks are quickly minimized by statements like “The risks are rare”, which appears in Planned Parenthood’s informed consent form. The following sentence on the form, “There may be long-term risks we don’t know about,” is truer, albeit because medicine has not asked the question, monitored patient outcomes, or does not want to know the answer.

In my research, I came across ML’s Substack article "Estrogen is really bad for men," where ML summarizes observational studies reporting the adverse effects of estradiol, the synthetic form of the hormone, in men. Two years later, Discover Mental Health published the peer-reviewed Emerging and accumulating safety signals for the use of estrogen among transgender women by Schwartz et. al.

Science is slow. WPATH did not do science, so they move fast.

Listening to DIAG’s interview with the paper’s authors, I became discouraged as Dr. Carrie Mendoza outlined the road ahead to educate doctors and change medical practice, as was done to combat the opioid crisis.

This is taking too long! My son is having symptoms now, and the medical community and patients need to understand the adverse side effects before his next ER visit.

Are doctors too arrogant, lazy, or ideologically captured to learn about estrogen’s adverse effects on males? Who will educate our brilliant sons, who are naïve and believe that doctors know best?

How could I tell the story of the harms in a succinct way, so that doctors and patients can’t look away without escaping the truth of the medical harms of estrogen? I summarized the study in this visual, and before I finished writing it, a new study came out on the increased risk of kidney stones.

Note: I use the language of the article, so transgender women mean trans-identified males or natal males.

Please share.

We did not affirm our son’s trans identity. He later detransitioned and then took his own life. The parents of the recent school shooting in Minnesota may have affirmed their son and he took his life after killing two children and wounding 18 others. Can it still be argued that affirming is the best route for children?

When the police came to my place of work, I feared the worst. I knew it was about my son. I had always worried the other shoe could drop and his detransition was too good to be true. I worried my son had done something awful. He did, but only to himself, and left his family devastated. He did not take anyone with him. My son was never violent but cross-sex hormones mess with kids’ brains. Social transition also messes with their brains.

It has been reported that Minnesota has the highest number of trans-identifying kids/young adults. According to How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States?, “Three-quarters of people aged 13 and older who identify as transgender are under 35”. The AAP argues that there is no evidence of social contagion among trans-identified youths, although it is so obvious to all of us non-affirming parents. Why would this trend be immune to social contagion among the young? What makes it different from anorexia, cutting or even hysterical fits of the 19th century? Pediatrician Johanna Olsen-Kennedy admitted that doctors and therapists lie when they ask parents, “Would you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?” Were the parents of this trans shooter bullied into affirming?

We did not affirm our son but everyone around him did behind our backs, and at 18 he was able to get hormones. At our son’s funeral his best friend blamed us for his death because we did not affirm. His friend wanted the girl name on our son’s tombstone even though our son had gone back to using his birth name. This friend made the tragic loss of our son even worse, if that is possible. He claimed to know what our son would want, but he was wrong. He did not really know our son. His own mother told me that our son told her son that he was no longer trans. Her son did not believe this. Our son’s friend failed to support his detransition. I’m done blaming myself for the loss of my son. I did everything I could to help him. But I don’t blame his friend either. His friend was misled by adults who are pushing the trans narrative.

After detransitioning, our son was having a hard time taking back the trans identity with his friends. After he died, they did not believe us that he had detransitioned, although we had proof. They said that our son lied to us about it and posted terrible things about us on social media. He did not tell them about his decision to detransition, but then he didn’t tell them for a long time about his decision to trans either. We had a good relationship with him and he told us first that he thought he was trans. We questioned him and listened to him without affirming. After finally telling his friends, everything changed and he believed he was trans since all his friends and other adults affirmed.

This kid in Minnesota did not know how to take it all back either. It is reported he said, “I regret being trans, I wish I never brainwashed myself.” Instead, he used violence because he did not know how to cope with the harm that was done to him. Why is it so difficult for young adults who finally wake up to the trans lie? Maybe because of things like the chant, “Death before Detransition”.

It’s time we help kids by ending the affirmation of the trans delusion. How many more kids need to take their lives and, perhaps, innocent children with them? It’s time to stop believing there are trans people. No one is trans. It is a mental illness and a huge medical scandal pushed on the vulnerable.

I am in a couple of online groups where parents of ROGD boys meet. We say that we are different as parents but we all have the same son. This boy is typically very intelligent, nerdy, non-athletic, and as a child was interested, no… obsessed with specific “boy” toys and interests. Surveys of ~ 300 parents indicate that almost 92% of our sons fit in this category.

I know that there is a risk of being accused of equating gender conformity or having interests that are typically found in boys with “being a boy”. That is not my intention. A boy is 100% a boy regardless of whether he is obsessed with trains or tiaras. Likewise, a girl is 100% a girl regardless of whether she is a ballerina or a tomboy who plays rugby. This post is not about how gender conformity or non-conformity makes one more of a boy or a girl. This is about challenging our sons’ false post-trans identification narrative that they always knew that they were girls because they never liked boy things and their interests were more aligned with stereotypically girl behavior.

As toddlers, our boys were fascinated with wheels (cars, trains, Tonka trucks, etc.) and toys with buttons that would light up and make noises. Our son loved for us to ride along the train track when the trains were going by. He stayed glued to the train exhibit at the museum for hours watching the model trains go round and round the village. We took a vacation when he was 18 months old and visited the city’s children’s museum. Unfortunately, the train exhibit wasn’t working on that day. He proceeded to have a 30-minute screaming meltdown because he wanted the choo-choo to run. His favorite TV shows were Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder. He loved reading old comic books. His favorite was the Donald Duck comic and his favorite character was Uncle Scrooge. As he got older, he became fixated on building elaborate Lego and K-nex structures which he would complete in a couple of hours. His favorite outdoor adventure was riding his battery-powered jeep.

When he was seven years old, his best friend had a DSI, which they played when they spent time together. Our son begged to get one too. We gifted him one for Christmas and he became instantly hooked on Mario Bros and Minecraft. In hindsight, it was a mistake putting an electronic device in his hands at that age. He also played with circuit boards and started coding when he was a pre-teen. When he hit middle school, he joined the Robotics team and in high school he competed in Science and Engineering competitions. On the weekend, he and his nerdy friends from the Engineering magnet school would meet in the country to create elaborate tools and devices to destroy the villainous vegetables and fruits, have triple-dog-dares such as eating ghost peppers, riding three wheelers, shooting guns in the forest and generally behaving like wild boys. Every Halloween they had an epic smashing of the pumpkins’ event. In his late teens he got into playing Dungeons and Dragons. He had a wild imagination and spent hours crafting story lines for the game. He wasn’t into organized sports but he and his dad would go to the gym to lift weights. He was stronger and could lift heavier weights than many grown men at the gym.

So, when my son came out to me at 19 and told me that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body, I nearly fainted from shock. What happened since that initial declaration, was that my son, like many of our boys, changed the narrative about his life, his story and the interests he had as a boy and teenager. He started acting differently to try to force himself into fitting into his new “female” identity.

Last week, I decided that it was time to go through the items my son left behind when he moved out of our home and changed his identity as our son. There were containers full of toys, videos and video games, all attesting to the fact that his interests were always those of a typical boy. I found thousands of Legos and K-nex pieces, dozens of Ben Ten and superhero figurines, piles of superhero DVDs, car racing video games (he took all the Mario games!), train, trucks and matchbox car collections, strategy-based board games, etc. I texted my mom friends, “I have receipts!” while sending them photos of the items. We had a funny exchange where we found out that our kids had the exact same toys and many of the same interests when they were growing up. Several of us still have Thomas the Tank train collections, Legos and circuit boards. I am hanging on to those toys. I can’t bear to part with them. Those are receipts that I plan to keep, just in case…

Sons, we have not only the memories but also the receipts of who you were as you were growing up. Deep inside you are still the boys who loved going to construction sites to watch excavators digging dirt, who built computers from scratch and who went to the movie theater with Dad to watch the latest Marvel movie. You may fool the whole world, but you can’t fool us.

It’s like Deja-vu all over again.

When I first found out inadvertently that my then-25-year-old son was trans-identifying, in 2018, I was all alone on the island. Nobody in my life could empathize. Nobody in my life was going through it.

I had the support of people in my life whose love and caring have helped me when I have needed to vent.

But none of them could empathize.

So, when I was doubled over in actual physical anguish, nobody could truly understand.

When the tears flowed anytime my mind went there, nobody really knew how that felt.

I could obsessively comb through the Internet looking for a way out, a way to stop this, a way to deal, a way to cope and share what I found with people in my life, but nobody walked in my shoes.

Two years ago, I was blessed to find a community of like-minded, non-affirming parents, who have become friends.

But nobody I had known from before truly understood.

Until now.

A very dear friend revealed to me yesterday that his daughter - 31 years old now, just a year younger than my son - dropped the bombshell that she’s on testosterone. Her way of avoiding the word “trans” but implicit in her revelation.

When he told me, my emotions (never dormant, never far) flooded forth. Tears for him. Tears of shock. Tears in reliving my own experience of finding out. Tears of despair and fear for the future of our children, globally.

I went into “helper mode.” In my journey these past seven years I have amassed a plethora of links to articles and videos and groups and books and websites and podcasts, any medium in which this topic is discussed.

Immediately, I began to take notes for him. Questions for him to ask his daughter, to ask her counselor - stopping short at questions he may need to ask himself (those questions haven’t even hit my own waterline).

I put tons of links into an email for him, not wanting to overwhelm him, even knowing he was already overwhelmed. He said, “send them all.” So, I did; at least, the Beginner’s Pack.

He’s indescribably capable. Strong, knowledgeable, wise, genius-level intelligence. His wisdom has helped me enormously these past seven years.

But none of us who are hit with this Mack truck find our feet. We are all rendered, even temporarily, mute and lost and incapable.

The enormity of the revelation from our beloved children (no matter the age, they are still our children) knocks the ground out from under us. We feel bewildered, dumbfounded, paralyzed.

I will help my friend as much as I can. I have a seven-year jump on his journey; one I never wanted to share with him as a commonality.

But now that he’s joined the ranks nobody wishes to join, I will fight with him side-by-side, hand-in-hand. To help him in hope. To help him in coping. To help him when the storm hits so hard, nothing alleviates it but the kind, loving, caring words of someone close. I will do that for him; because he did it for me, albeit from the more distant perspective.

In doing so I relive my anguish. Truly, it’s never subsided. It’s a pain that is never healed, never lessened, never vanquished.

I have found myself remembering how my son’s words - as he read from his trans-script - didn’t seem to make sense, as though the English language had suddenly become one filled with foreign words and sounds. How I wanted to ask, “what are you saying?” Over and over throughout his speech.

I found myself remembering the pounding of my heart even as I tried to listen passively.

I found myself back in that moment when he finally came out to me in May 2021, when - ambushed in my own home by my son and his “support person” (my nephew who is 5 months older than my son, and gay) - I listened to the words I had expected but dreaded, and how all I wanted to do was go into my den where I could cocoon and cry.

Perhaps remembering the vivid, blurred moments of that day will better help me to help my friend. A necessary evil to be there for someone who - like the rest of us - does not deserve this emotional turmoil.

It just makes me wonder: how many more of my friends will become victims of this evil ideology that takes our children and harms them physically, emotionally, and ruins their futures?

I dread finding out.

I wrote this piece imagining that my son might feel this way some day, if he ever comes to realize what’s happened in his life and how far he’s been pulled away from who he truly was.

It’s not his story yet but my prayer is that he will come to see the truth and come back to us. Perhaps this gives words to what some of us are feeling but can’t express. Maybe it will help one of us feel a little less alone.

If he could see the truth, my son might say……

My parents were always by my side - attentive, present, affectionate. I was never an abandoned or forgotten child. On the contrary, I received more hugs than many ever heard words. I got kisses, advice, breakfast in bed on my birthday. I grew up surrounded by care.

While many of my friends were dealing with the absence of a parent, I was growing up under a roof filled with laughter, shared meals, bedtime stories, protection, and principles. My family taught me right from wrong, not by force, but with love and truth. My father, my mother, my grandparents, my uncles… they all truly loved me.

I grew up as a Star Wars fan, fascinated by superheroes. My eyes lit up with every new adventure of Spider-Man or Batman. I also loved medieval stories about knights, monsters, and enchanted swords. My friends and I used to pretend we were warriors in a magical world. And in our minds, it was real.

Then came a time when I started walking on my own. I began opening doors of my own choosing. And even though I had been warned since childhood that there are paths best left alone, choices that can disconnect us from who we are, I didn’t listen. I thought I knew better. I thought I could play with danger and remain untouched.

And I opened doors that should have stayed shut.

I began getting close to people and environments that promised freedom, acceptance, identity, pleasure. Slowly, I was pulled in. I got involved with thoughts and behaviors that seemed harmless at first, but they took over my mind, clouded my vision. And without realizing, I began to forget who I was.

I started seeing my family as enemies. The people who had loved me the most, who gave me everything, suddenly felt oppressive, outdated, “against me.” Lies began replacing truth. And the worst part? I convinced myself that this new version of me was the real one. But deep down, it was all confusion.

I’m not trying to play the victim. I made these choices. But I was also deceived by a world that knows exactly how to seduce, especially when the soul is exposed and vulnerable. I gave in. I got lost.

Maybe today I still can’t see all of this. Maybe I’m far from recognizing the depth of the love I received or the depth of the fall I experienced. But somewhere inside, there’s a thread thin that still connects me to the boy who was so deeply loved. And if that thread isn’t cut, maybe one day… it could pull me back.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

In September, we dropped our son off at university. It was a huge city, miles away from our quiet, rural home and a massive shift for someone who had always been surrounded by open space and familiar faces. He seemed so vulnerable as we left him in his student room. That evening, when we took him out for dinner, he was distant and sulky. I cried on the way home.

Still, we stayed in regular contact. We called him every week to check in, and he told us he was making an effort socially, he started to crochet again. We were encouraged, he seemed to be coping. We managed to visit before Christmas, and soon after, he came home for the holidays. He even returned to his old job. It was a lovely time, he seemed relaxed, even cheerful. He had started to buy himself clothes, and we took that as a positive sign. A few months in he finally received his autism diagnosis. It came back positive. We hoped this might bring him some clarity, a framework to help him understand why social situations had always felt so difficult.

After Christmas, we kept in touch, though he grew less responsive. Messages often went unanswered. About a week before the Easter holidays, he told us he wanted to stay at university to revise. I was a little suspicious but gave him the benefit of the doubt. His course was intense, and maybe he genuinely needed the time.

We visited during the Easter break. He seemed upbeat, came out with us for the day, and had dinner with us. I was so happy to see him engaging, being part of the family again, even if just briefly.

But not long after, I called him and he dropped a bombshell: he wanted to leave university. He said the course was too demanding and that he was struggling to make friends, he couldn’t imagine managing the year abroad. I didn’t panic. I thought: he can come home, we’ll regroup and help him grow into whatever comes next.

We arranged to pick him up, but he casually mentioned he’d be visiting a friend in a nearby city first. It was meant to be three nights. Then it became eight. My gut told me something wasn’t right.

That’s when I found it, a link to his Bluesky account and a blog, after he’d told me about a thread he’d joined there.

What I read made me feel physically sick.

On his profile, he described himself as a trans lesbian, now on estrogen. I kept scrolling, my heart sinking with each post. There were repeated cries for help: “I want to kill myself,” “I’m so lonely.” Post after post radiated despair.

Then I saw a photo of vials of estrogen. He had been buying hormones online and injecting himself.

There were links to music he’d made - dark, noise music. The titles told a story of despair and loneliness. In some, he could be heard crying, whispering pleas. There were photos of self-harm on his legs. There were even nude images of him, images nobody should feel the need to share publicly.

Then the final blow: he wasn’t just visiting a nearby city. He was flying to a foreign country to meet someone he called his “wife.”

I was horrified. Panicked. I picked up the phone and called him immediately, desperate to understand what was happening, and how we had gotten here.

He was angry when he found out I had seen his profile, but he agreed, reluctantly, to share his flight details and put me in touch with the parents of the boy he was going to visit. I was slightly reassured that his story checked out. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. At that point, I was imagining the worst.

He’s now back home. We’ve talked. I’ve cried a lot. This shouldn’t be happening to vulnerable children. When I see people publicly celebrating “trans pride,” I feel a deep anger. How can we tell children that they are something they are not, and then encourage them to alter their bodies in ways that can never be undone?

He says he wants to have a normal relationship with us, and I want that too, but I’ve told him I won’t lie to him. I’m hurt. Hurt that he felt he had to hide so much, hurt that he lied to us.

On my better days, I try to see this as part of his journey, one that may ultimately shine a light on something much darker in our society. But that only happens if stories like his, and ours, are allowed to be heard, if they aren’t silenced by those who claim that trans ideology is all about love and acceptance.

Because if “love and acceptance” means destroying your body and escaping from reality, then something has gone very wrong in the world we’re building. That’s why I feel compelled to tell our story. It matters. And I know we’re not alone.

Republished with permission from ML’s Substack.

I was talking to a parent the other day. They were trying to explain what goes through their mind when they think of their trans-identified child. Lately, I have been trying to understand very similar themes — trying to unpack what I mean when I say that I am mourning for my son. There are different levels:

1. There’s the abstract, macro level — I mourn that our son (to paraphrase Brando in On the Waterfront) could’ve been somebody. But that mourning fades quickly. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of us are going to die in obscurity. Only the (very) rare get “touched by God,” and even that act seems like a random toss of the dice. (Salieri’s famous oath comes to mind). You can’t meaningfully grieve the cosmic irrelevance of thwarted greatness — not when that greatness was always an illusion.

2. Then there’s the practical level of mourning — I mourn that he is not a functional adult, and that my wife and I may have to carry his weight for the rest of our lives. Unless, by some miracle—or more likely, through the sheer blunt force of life—he chooses to face the world as it is, not as he wishes it were. As Dostoevsky said, taking umbrage at others is easy. It takes true spiritual growth and moral development to confront one’s own flaws and truths.

3. But what I mourn the most is at the micro level — I mourn the loss of the relationship. How he and I used to sit in the car in a parking spot by a shrub and carry on an elaborate, surreal, and silly conversation with the shrub as the third participant. Or how we decided that a llama in Peru should be spelled with three L's, because it was, you know, a lazy llama. (Lazy Llama - -> L. Llama - - > Lllama. Yeah very silly.) Or when one day, when coming back from school (this was in eleventh grade), he explained that concept of the integral did not make sense to him from the formulas, but did when he looked it up online and understood the Riemann sum.

That’s the part I can’t stop grieving: the magic of our connection. Talking to that other parent made me remember when and how it all crumbled. Gone was that whimsy. Gone was that sense of mischief and play when he was around me. In its place came distance, snarls, accusations and confusion. A regression into adolescence—without the innocence.

Usually, mourning has a finality to it: the person is gone. Dead. And so, after a period of grief, there is a funeral, a ritual. You remember the person at their best. You don’t dwell on the pain of their final days. Over time, those sharp edges dull, and warm memory fills the space where agony once lived.

But here, we are denied that mercy. The relationship doesn’t die. Not physically. He is still here and so hope lingers — that maybe, one day, things might return. And so, you endure the drip, drip, drip of fresh disappointment, new ruptures, unexpected cruelty. You watch him wither — not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually. You cannot begin to heal, because the wounds are never left alone long enough to scar. Like bedsores that multiply across your body, you can’t even shift positions for a moment of solace.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

One morning, just before my son left for sixth form college, a letter was pushed under my home office door. By the time I picked it up and began to read, he had already left to catch the bus.

The letter was a confusing, emotional jumble of thoughts. He wrote about how he had been living under a different name online, one that reflected a female identity. He mentioned a recent conflict within one of his online groups, and then, buried within the paragraphs, he revealed that he had attempted to take his own life as a result of it. The letter ended with “your daughter,” followed by the female name he had been using online.

I was in shock. My heart broke as I reread his words, trying to make sense of everything he was carrying alone.

Soon after, I found a box hidden under his bed. Inside it was fetish gear, along with strips of knotted-up t-shirts. Alarmed, I did some research and realised it was linked to auto-asphyxiation, a dangerous and potentially deadly form of self-stimulation. I was terrified. I had no idea how deep his pain had gone, or what he might do to himself next.

We sat down to talk. He opened up, at least a little. Most of his distress seemed to center on how isolated he felt at college, how impossible it was for him to make friends in real life, and how much he had come to depend on online communities for his sense of identity and self-worth. We spoke about the dangers of auto-asphyxiation, but he brushed off my concern, insisting that we didn’t need to worry.

But I was worried. Desperately. He must have been visiting some very dark corners of the internet to be exposed to this. I tried to restrict his access, to pull him back into something safer, more stable, but by then, it already felt too late.

I took him back to the GP, and once again, he was referred to CAMHS. In the meantime, I had started searching for support myself. I found online parent groups and other families who were facing the same confusion and concerns. I joined them, listened to podcasts, and read the stories of detransitioners. We watched some of these together, I was desperate to help him see that rushing into a new identity might be a response to loneliness and trauma, rather than a true reflection of who he was. I could feel it, I knew this was coming from a deeper pain.

By the time we finally received another appointment with CAMHS, I no longer trusted the system. The session was held online. The woman conducting the interview had no background on my son, no history, no context. And yet, within minutes, she asked him if he wanted to actively transition and told him that, now he was 17, he could self-refer for treatment.

I was stunned.

After everything we’d been through, after all the confusion, the withdrawal, the self-harm, the online influences, that was the takeaway? A pathway forward without any exploration of the why?

After speaking with my husband, we made the decision to pull him out of the system. We couldn’t trust it to protect or understand him. We agreed to pursue private therapy somewhere he might be truly heard, rather than rushed toward a solution that didn’t feel grounded in who he really was.

We found a wonderful therapist, someone he met with once a week throughout that year. It felt like a small step in the right direction. He was making plans to go to university, and we wanted to help him prepare for that next chapter. We supported him in finding a part-time job, and for a while, he seemed to be doing well, more stable, more focused. In parallel, we also put him on a waiting list for an autism assessment. We had long suspected that some of his challenges might be rooted there, and we hoped that a proper diagnosis could bring clarity not just for us, but for him too.

The therapist told us she thought he might be “kicking it down the line” that he wasn’t ready to take action but also might not be fully honest in their sessions. Still, we felt reassured. She believed he wouldn’t make any major decisions in the near future, and at the time, that was all we were hoping for: time. Time for him to grow, to reflect, to heal. Time for things to change.

His university course involved two years abroad. In our minds, that built in even more time, more distance from immediate medical interventions, more opportunity to mature before making irreversible choices.

But we were wrong. So wrong.

Republished with permission from Mercatornet.com

I didn’t appreciate how important bonds with other moms were until I had a child. I learned then that it really does take a village to raise a child. This was especially true for me, as I was living in a big city, far away from my family. I grew up looking forward to being a mom. It’s hard to admit this in today’s climate but it was all I ever wanted. Although I also wanted to be independent, I never really cared about a career. The career came while I was waiting to have my children. In the end, I’ve had a successful career and I wouldn’t change anything. My husband and I met when we were both in our late 20s. I was crazy about him. He said children were the furthest thing from his mind. Children were the only thing on my mind. I figured he would want to be a dad someday. He never worried about the future. I worried. In my mid-30s, we were ready to get pregnant, or at least I was. When I didn’t get pregnant after two years, I started to panic. My husband wondered if it was not meant to be. I knew it was meant to be. So, I took control and I went to the doctor to make sure everything was working properly. They scheduled exploratory surgery, but a few days before the surgery I found out I was pregnant. We were so happy. But I miscarried eight weeks later. I wasn’t going to give up; I never give up on anything. But after a while I started panicking -- to the point that motherhood was all I thought about. I was ruminating about it. Everywhere I went I saw pregnant women.

Companions in expectancy

I heard about a mind and body class for infertile women and I joined it. There were 20 couples plus the teacher. She was unable to produce eggs so she decided to teach this class. The ages of the women ranged from under 30 to 45. Just like me, every woman was distraught and had deep anxiety. Just like mine, their husbands were more relaxed. The teacher believed in mind over matter. She taught us to relax, meditate and change our way of thinking. We did learn to relax. So much so, 18 of the 20 moms got pregnant -- even the teacher, who had been told she could never have children. It seemed miraculous. Week by week, woman after woman announced that she was pregnant. We were thrilled --but we couldn’t help feeling our own pain. I was about the third of the success stories. Some women got angry and couldn’t bear to look at the women who were pregnant. It started to become uncomfortable. I formed a bond with the other pregnant mothers. We did outings and had lunch. One by one we gave birth and we would continue the outings with babies in tow. It was a unique experience and although we rarely see each other nowadays, we still exchange holiday cards. Then my next mom bond was formed. I was struggling with nursing and I went to a place that supports nursing mothers. A nurse suggested a weekly meet-up class. I gave it a go. I was there in a room full of nursing moms. We sat around in a circle and talked about sleep deprivation and shared tips. It was exactly what I needed since I had no idea what I was doing. To help us cope with the sleep deprivation, the group leader suggested that when we were feeding our babies in the middle of the night, that we should think about the other moms who were doing the same thing. It helped me to realize that I wasn’t alone. My next bond was with a baby group we formed through this group. Our children had all been born within a few weeks of each other and we started meeting at each other’s houses. We traded tips and laughter. We saw our children grow and develop personalities. My son seemed to be a lot more active than the other babies. He learned to crawl and walk at a faster pace. The group decided my son would grow up to do extreme sports. This group continued to meet until a few of the families moved away and the children went to different schools. We still exchange holiday cards.

My son’s bewildering choice

My son loved sports -- not extreme sports -- but he was a daredevil. He especially took to skiing. He was fearless and an excellent skier at an early age. At five he would insist on double diamonds and ski straight down without flinching. In elementary school, I formed bonds with some moms who had like-minded ideas and we would do park dates and meet in each other’s homes. The kids were very close and my son thrived. Everything changed when my son went to middle school. There was no bonding with parents and my son felt lost in a big school. Eventually he did make friendships and then he was off to high school. He started with a bang. He made the sports team and scored a spot in the orchestra. He was on track for a happy and successful life. But then something happened. He was cut from the sports team and stopped hanging around with his friends from middle school. He lost his confidence. Why? He explained that he was really female. This was a shock for me and my husband. My son was a 150 percent rough and tough boy. In middle school he didn’t make the top orchestra, not because he lacked ability but because he would wrestle with the other boys. He was also always pulled out in elementary school because he was so active and disruptive. Being trans made no sense. He had only hung out with boys; he didn’t even know any girls. You might be interested in other articles in MercatorNet

I believe in the end they will all desist or detransition

I formed another mom bond. I joined a support group for trans identifying boys. This bond has saved my life. There are hundreds of parents from all over the world in this group. They are also confused by their son’s sudden declaration of identifying as trans. We did not know that the medical profession, schools, and government had been captured by this ideology. There has been a 4000 (yes, 4000) percent increase in adolescents and young adults unexpectedly deciding that they have been born in the wrong body. Why don’t more people think this is odd? We are questioning it. We believe a social contagion is at play. We also have learned how many of our children have other comorbidities. We are also concerned about the harm of medicalizing our children. Back to my son. He ruminates about trans as I did about getting pregnant. I was determined and I never gave up. What if my son won’t give up either? Does he look at every female and want to be that, the way I used to look at pregnant women? I worry about his health; I worry about his future. I don’t know what I would have done without all those other moms as I raised my son. It’s painful to look at the holiday cards now since my son is rewriting his past. None of us wanted to be in the current group. But here we are and it is the most important of all since it represents survival: mine, my son’s and my family’s.

I believe things will start to turn around when the lawsuits begin and people start believing in science again. It’s hard for parents to watch their children being harmed by the doctors we used to rely on. How hard it will be when, one by one, our boys start desisting or detransitioning. It was hard for those moms who didn’t get pregnant. I learned later they all eventually had children.

I don’t want to leave any moms behind; I believe that just as almost all the moms had children, all our kids will desist. Now when I lie awake in the middle of the night, instead of thinking about all those moms breastfeeding, I think about all those moms lying awake trying to figure out how to save their sons or daughters. It doesn’t give me the same solace -- but it does help me to know that I’m not alone.

Republished with permission from Mercatornet.com.