147 Comments

The trauma the parents (of the children who succumb to the gender ideology) experience is a silent unrecognized pandemic in itself. What angers me most of all is that the malicious perpetrators who devised and spread the rainbow fairy tails and propaganda protect their offspring in private schools and prearranged marriages.

Expand full comment

This resonated with me so much. Since 2020, everything has been a nightmare. Our daughter got caught up in gender ideology and hasn't talked to the family in a year. It all fell apart when she moved to Seattle and went to UW. She changed her name to a male name and blocked us on social media. She received free gender care from WA state. My husband and I feel like the world is against us. We recently moved to Idaho to save our 2 younger boys and our mental health. Of course there is more to my story but that is enough for now....

Expand full comment

Our daughter also moved to Seattle, to be near the “more inclusive” crowd. 😕

Sending you love!

Expand full comment

There are a lot of children and young adults and adults that need parents. Be those parents. There are orphans everywhere.

Expand full comment

We did. We became foster parents for a few years in our youth; but after this, I don’t know if I could ever invest myself fully into another human being again. I don’t think there enough of me left.

Expand full comment

I was crying through this whole read. You spoke directly to my heart. I am a mom to a daughter who became FTM, and now is an angry young man. He has been estranged from our loving family since February. I grieved the loss of my quirky funny daughter, accepted the young man he became. Then a couple years later he states “we never learned our role” as a family with a queer member. I do not recognize this person who abandoned us.

Expand full comment

I’m so sorry. We all feel that pain here. It’s the cult, it can’t tolerate even tolerant parents. Praying for all of our children to be delivered and set free from this cruel and horrible bondage!!

Expand full comment

…they are so lost…

Expand full comment

❤️ sorry for your pain & I wish I didn’t share it. It’s changed my personality & none of my relationships are the same

Expand full comment

It’s changed everything about us. Personality, cognition, health, resiliency, just the ability to look at strangers and not feel repulsed by all the evil we see in this world that’s so greedy to devour our children….

Expand full comment

Hallelujah sister!!

Expand full comment

Keep praying and keep hope alive. You've said it all in this post. Thanks for your heartfelt reliving of your history and how you tried to stop generational sin. I did the same with the same results you are experiencing but our hope is not built on our human efforts but on God's victory over the world, the flesh and the devil. All are a work to bring down a generation or two or three.

Expand full comment

Amen! The victory is not ours, but the Lord’s!

Expand full comment

There is a song in Toy Story 2 that I listen to and cry every once in a while. It could be the theme song for your story and mine. It is “When She Loved Me” by Sarah McGloughlan. I listen to it and let myself feel sad for a bit and then pick up and do my best to move on. I’m so sorry for your pain. You don’t deserve this. None of us do.

Expand full comment

I’m very familiar with the song. 💔 It is, in part, what makes me feel like a toy my child has outgrown and lost interest in. An object, a thing. Not a person, not a mother with a heart. Just a doll, a plaything to be discarded without care.

Expand full comment

Thank you author. My wife and I have been foster parents for about 10 years now and we are adopting a baby girl soon we have had her since she was 5 days old, no family or relative or friend of family wanted her so we will love her, she is beautiful. Our biological daughter has been estranged for a few years now, we only have any contact with her through her grandmother she still see's occasionally and an email address. Our 30 year old bio daughter is now breastless and bearded, and absolutely hates her parents because we would never affirm. My wife and I discussed last night what should we do with all the pictures and trinkets we have. It is a very painful time capsule. How will we handle our new youngest daughter asking questions of who this person is? We both had a good cry about it last night as we are both just so crushed about how these last many years have gone. This is all coming to an end I hope, the Olympics really tried to prop it up, we are so sick of it. Sick of the trannyism, sick of the destruction, sick of the torment, these are such terrible ideas that have infected too many. We will still stand for Truth and Christ. We will fight and pushback on all this nonsense as best we can and help the youth and families around us navigate these treacherous waters. Vengeance is the Lord's, we are here to help those around us.

Expand full comment

My husband and I were foster parents for several years early in our marriage, and I want to commend you for stepping into that arena. In my mind, there is nothing on this earth more worthwhile that we could do with our time than to nurture and protect the innocent and fragile. May God richly bless you and your expanding family!!

I recommend that when the day comes, you simply tell your adopted child, the truth as plainly and factually as you can. Hopefully they will have eyes that see and ears that hear truth. Praying for it to be so!

Expand full comment

Amen brother!

Expand full comment

Your family’s multigenerational “hurting love” (my phrase) echos my maternal line as well. Just this in itself is fascinating. What I mean by asking what you think lies underneath her pain is most frequently, children (under 25) who “choose” to transition are vulnerable beyond developmentally appropriate. The list is exhaustive in terms of what the majority of these children experienced prior to “coming out as trans”. The ripple effects of the “pandemic” continue to spread wide & far. As we know, “trans kids” often also present with depressive, anxious, dissociative, & disordered symptoms. Not sure how many of us recognize the layers of loss created by the “pandemic” protocols…particularly for children (under 25) who were shut in, cut off, literally disembodied from their most crucial others (friends & peers). Four & a half years later, we see, watch, hear, & listen to the speech delays, the cognitive dulling, the social awkwardness, the near merging with smartphones/Ipads. Not that this marked the beginning of children’s increased distress. Sure seems to have thrown the 1st world nations into warped speed.

Expand full comment

She didn’t choose to transition, her boyfriend did. And she was about 25 when that happened, but he was only 23. And yes, he was absolutely disembodied from his most crucial support structures. Both of his parents divorced and remarried other people when he was young, and both had another child with their new spouses. So he was left in between, not belonging anywhere really. His little sisters got all of his parent’s attention, and he had nowhere to live, nowhere to be, nowhere to belong. Until he became trans, and the whole world seem to rally along behind him. So my daughter did, too.

Expand full comment

So, you think the boyfriend had that much control over your daughter? Even with her intact support system?

Expand full comment

He is her first and only boyfriend. They have been together for seven years. She is in a coercive controlling relationship, so yes, he has a lot of power over her. But I also think the university she was at when this was happening to him had a bit to do with it as well. There was a lot of pressure on her to affirm and accept her boyfriend’s transition by her peers.

Expand full comment

Your story is very close to mine. My daughter lives with her boyfriend, who cross dresses, but as far as I know hasn't transitioned yet. I also had a rough growing up but would never ever think of doing this to my parents. I tried to give my daughter the best of life and we were also very close. In her salutatorian speech she praised me over and over. Two years ago she sent me the cancel text, which broke my heart. My prayers are that she comes to her senses some day and realizes how much I love her and want our family back together.

Expand full comment

I’m so sorry. In our case, I suspect our daughter’s boyfriend is an autogynophile. After this many years on estrogen, it’s fair to assume he’s likely sterile by now. They once spoke of having children, then of adopting children, but their cat is their only child. I wish I understood how to help, but there are some darker corners to it all that I’d really rather not look too closely at. I do pray for them a lot, though.

Expand full comment

Not having children might be a blessing for them, he doesn't seem too mentally stable, and I feel the same way about my daughter's relationship. Heartbreaking, I always wanted to see her married in the church and having children. Only the Lord can change this situation, so I give it to Him.

Expand full comment

My heart…I haven’t been reading these posts for a while because they are so painful. I find some solace in prayer, particularly the rosary of the seven sorrows of Mary. May God bless you and comfort you. Oh Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.❤️

Expand full comment

I have to take breaks from reading the essays here from time to time as well. It’s very heavy, and it takes a toll. It’s both a comfort and a terrible misery to know that there are so many other parents like us, suffering mostly in silence, alone, feeling forgotten.

But I’m so grateful for all of the people here that are willing to share their stories, listen to others, sympathize, commiserate, and even pray for us. Because anytime I mention that I’m estranged online, the vultures start to circle and the hyenas cackle about how I must be some abusive narcissistic transphobe bigot.

Expand full comment

Someone left a question (that I can’t find now) about whether or not I was a military kid (as a reason for moving so many times in my youth.) The answer is no, it was nothing that straightforward. My parents divorced when I was 2, and the courts split custody so that I had to go back and forth every six months, but my dad drank a lot and the abuse got so bad that my grandma and I went across the country to get away from them both. When she passed (I was 10,) my mother came back into my life, but dragged me in and out of various cults and other bad circumstances, so I ran away a lot. I started living with friends in fifth grade and never stopped. I even lived in a friend’s treehouse for a few months. I only ever went back to where ever my mother was when I had no other choices.

Expand full comment

What do you think lies beneath her pain & suffering?

Expand full comment

I recognize it as an echo, or ripple, of the same ancestral rift I observed as I child when I listened to one of many episodes of shouting between my grandmother and my mother, where they each concluded that the other was going to hell. My grandmother was devout, my mother quite deviant. I became devout myself, our daughter, more like her own grandmother. We don’t shout at one another over which of us is going to hell, but our foundational beliefs about what is right and good and true are absolutely every bit as much at odds as if we were.

Here’s my understanding of what lies at the core of her pain and suffering:

She wants me to accept what she knows I cannot, to profess belief in what we both know is a lie, to celebrate something I know is harmful to her and her boyfriend, hurtful, destructive, devastating, and outright evil, as though it were good for her and the man she professes to love. Because she thinks that going along with his destruction is the loving thing to do, and therefore, by not agreeing with it, I am hateful towards the man she calls her “wife,” (not married, another lie.)

But it’s because of my great love for them both that I suffer this terrible anguish. It’s like watching your child light themselves on fire while you stand by, holding a hose, but the water pressure won’t quite reach them.

Expand full comment

So true. My daughter claims to be bi-sexual because her bf cross dresses. She always liked boys before and has never been with a girl, but to join the cult she had fit in.

Expand full comment

Same here. Our daughter identifies as a lesbian… not because she has ever been attracted to women, (she hasn’t,) but merely because her boyfriend identifies as a woman and a lesbian. She had to wear the appropriate labels to fit in as well.

Expand full comment

Oh, how I would love to send such a box of formerly cherished mementos to our daughter! There are plenty of them stashed away in our attic. They have been patiently awaiting her return to us, but will be soon unceremoniously removed from our home and deposited in the dump. Twelve years of estrangement - letting go is a continuous mental action, but this physical action will be a great mental relief for us. We have lived in this home for 27 years, so you can imagine how many 'life accumulations' there are. But none so poignant as the treasures of our daughter's life. I am now 70 years old. I cannot let our daughter's brother be the one to have to face her belongings when my time comes to pass.

Expand full comment

Keep a few momentos and take photos of the rest in case and in hopes that she will return.

Expand full comment

I have a trunk of momentos, books and clothes and toys and trinkets, that I’ve kept, that I’ll always keep. Some I’ll pass down, if I ever have grandchildren to pass them to.

Expand full comment

My heart truly goes out to you. That’s a long time to carry that kind of weight, and I can imagine the toll it’s taken on you. But I believe you, about letting go in stages. I’m just sorry it’s dragged on so long for you.

We are planning to downsize to a place 1/4 of what we are in now, and I’ve kept everything they didn’t take (when you live in a big house, it’s easy to stash something and forget it.) It’s painful to decide to let go of the simplest things, her schoolwork, for example. And as a homeschooler, we kept everything. All of it. I’m trying to sort mindfully, but it’s painful to let things go when she’s forced us to let her go in a way that feels unnatural. It’s like an episode of Black Mirror, where she has made us invisible to one another. It’s a weird thing to be forced to accept. Like a death that never really happened.

Expand full comment

It really is so hard to comprehend, the cruel and heartless way our beloved children can simply toss us aside and not look back. At least we have each other’s stories to remind us that it’s not us, the “horrible parents”.

Thank you for writing.

Expand full comment