What do you call a loss that is unresolved, enigmatic? A loss that is lacking in clarity, in certainty, in resolution. One that doesn’t allow for the typical markers and rituals that help a person process a loss, delaying and complicating their grief. Though I have a Ph.D. in Psychology, my experience lies outside the realm of the clinical and counseling professions, so I did not have a name for this type of loss. That is, until I came across the concept of
This post really spoke to me. I have had that same Twilight Zone feeling ever since my daughter suddenly declared she was trans 2 years ago. I feel your pain.
How old is your daughter? I spent over a year in full blown grief. My daughter was a 21 year old “adult.” If she had been younger, I like to imagine that I would have taken extreme and creative steps to save her, because my daughter, like yours, with no sign of being uncomfortable with her female body for 21 years, changed SUDDENLY. Given what you CAN’T DO, focus on what you CAN DO to remove her from this social contagion. Go on an extended family trip in a natural setting, under the guise of doing something adventurous. Home school. Take her out of her current school and remove access to phone/computers, on which she is likely being exposed to pornography and “social influencers.” This is extreme but this calls for extreme measures. The important thing, and why removing from school is necessary, is to cut off ALL OUTSIDE INFLUENCES. Also, removing her from school removes the possibility of her obtaining hormones without your consent. It IS like being in the Twilight Zone. You have suffered an unimaginable loss, but realize, this is not about you. It is about your daughter. You and your husband must do everything possible to prevent any more damage. She will not be happy losing her phone and computer, but it might prevent her from doing irreparable harm. God bless you and your family.
I completely understand your pain and that weird way it is a phase but one which will leave scars and have far-reaching effects. For what it’s worth, my brother is mid-30s and every word you’ve written rings true. He seems to have regressed in maturity. My mother and I don’t know what to do. My other brother has had the Stonewall training so cheers along like the good ally he has been told to be.
The word ‘inchoate’ comes to mind when I think of my grief - something not fully formed - but also, when will it end? When do we get to put this behind us and move on?
And I’m also now thinking of the Midwych Cuckoos, those unwelcome invaders of a peaceful village, with their single consciousness who plot and destroy anything in their way. The collective organisation and brainwashing of people who fall into this world is astonishing. How apparently easy and quickly this idea has taken hold? What if something even more nefarious came along? There are some pretty far fetched political ideas wrapped up in this ideology.
Thank you for giving it a name. I, too, am struggling with the ambiguous loss of and grief for my son. He is 18 so I cannot stop him, but I am throwing every bit of science and research and information I can at him to try to convince him to let his teenage mind settle before he permanently changes his body. I am trying to support him and let him know that I hear him expressing pain and discomfort with himself. I am praying that he will let me find him appropriate help to get to the bottom of that pain and discomfort before he takes it out on his body with medication and surgeries. May we all come through this and find some peace and happiness on the other side. I hope sharing your silent grief here brought a little of that peace to you.
One point to mention: VERY small percentages of normal people are willing to have a partner of a trannie. 1% of males are willing, 1-2% of females. They think that they are being more attractive to someone, but that group is actually non-existent who finds the trannie attractive.
Gotta read them publications before you cite them, buckaroo.
"Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences."
And since gay men are MAYBE 5% of the population on a really gay day, .115*.05 = .00575. That's the proportion of the population. You get it by multiplying proportions. Lesbian counts are about the same. WAYYYYYY under 1%.
In your favor, of the 7 trans people in the study, 6 of the 7 would be willing to date a trannie. NOT EVEN ALL TRANNIES WILL DATE TRANNIES.
It's important to read something before using it as an argument.
The word “trannie” and “transgender” are equally bad. As a parent I do not consider slurs significant in the great scheme of these painful, evil happenings.
I do not use either word, but have heard people use the word “ trannie” as an affectionate term. I prefer the word “biophobe” as it better describes the condition.
It's not a slur. It's a term. Those who are offended by words need to ask "How tall is my horse?" and "How do I descend from my horse without looking like a moron?"
We don't have many SJW language police here. Why are you here?
Since you are Canadian, you seem to share the Canadian attitude that prigs, SJWs, and other language fascists get to run the situation. Do you have a license in "language fascism"?
If you have help and support to examine everything that has brought you to this discomfort with your own body, then perhaps you are one of those who need the transition to be healthy. My son struggles with many things that make him unhappy in himself and is not yet willing to look at those other very probable realities that have brought him to this point. You don't cut off a limb unless you know the final outcome is the best possible result.
Every body that has ever grown through teenage years struggles with a maelstrom of changing body chemistry and that includes influence of that body chemistry on the brain. Every person on earth is unhappy in their body at some points in their lives - or we wouldn't have a diet industry, or pumping iron, or colored contacts, etc.
I hope you find resilience and perseverance to fight your way through the dysphoria to find what is truly the right path for you once your, I assume, teenage brain has grown past this difficult stage. Perhaps the final conclusion for you will be that transition is the correct choice. It may be for my son as well - but jumping into medical treatments without first having pursued a full examination and understanding of the roots of the problem - that's just self harm.
A Ph.D. in Psychology? This surprises me. I understand that these circumstances can get out of control quickly and that every single family is doing the best they can here. Our eldest child- the ally- was standing next to her new trans sibling coaching my husband and I from the moment the announcement was made. We were so blindsided by both of them - the Twilight Zone analogy rings so true. This experience is like walking a tight rope. So much to balance and so much dissonance. Trying to maintain a connection, seeking places where reality still reigns so you can breathe for a minute.
Always feeling unsure what to say and when. Losing your parental agency, being afraid to lose your family. It is the hardest on the momma heart.
May I live to see this finally come to be common knowledge that we have all been gaslit.
How do we begin to build them all the off ramp they need? Will the next generation be bored with this and move on?? Will their scars one day give them away as “that generation”- the first ones with free reign on the internet - how an ideology damaged them…. So many brilliant minds? So many unanswered questions.
"If Teachers in Government Schools can secretly change your child's name and gender in class & their databases without your knowledge, they are no longer your child. They are now the property of the state."
And, this comment:
“Mind molesters” is a label that should be more widely used.
I'm about 4 years in and have a daughter in this so I cannot speak for the boys. But, I think that once your girl comes to you and says she's somehow always been a boy and suddenly has weird mannerisms - she has been psychologically battered for some time. That is where the Lisa Littman working definition of "ROGD" is not exactly right. I have been reading some disturbing narratives of very bright, accomplished autogynohile married-to-women grown men who consider themselves "lesbians" and this seems to be their cover: that it is not that they have an adult sexual fetish - it is that they have always been women (even though they are fathers). Our naive daughters are all reciting what they say. These men are not maternal. They do not care what happens to kids and young people. I also think that many adults are trained to "accept" and "go along" with what they do not actually believe. This has the effect that the parents get psychologically battered as well and their children get gas lighted. By the time an adult figures it out the kids have made it to the "magic age" of 18 where it turns out that it does all matter and they get the "liberating" drugs and surgeries which feel like such a rush until it doesn't. IMO
This has to stop.
The homosexual transexual who dreams of dating straight men are another matter - sad but not the issue here.
The Littman ROGD group is one type. She is not describing the general situation, but a subgroup. So your child may not fit the subgroup. The "social contagion" aspect may STILL be operating, in that one person "coming out" may be the trigger for others to do so as well - giving them license.
I completely think the girl subgroup is from social contagion. And, it is largely the fault of adults for promoting an ideology and gas lighting the kids - or it might not be so persistent. What I was trying to express is that it is not quite as "rapid" as it initially appears to parents who had no clue about the indoctrination going on in the peer group and by the teachers or speaker grifters who are brought in for DEI talks. The kids bathe in the stuff for some time before they "suddenly" spring it on parents once it is firmly in their minds.
There are 2 things going on: 1) the sex/gender issue and 2) the public "reveal" issue. I think that 1) can be private or within a subgroup for a while. When a child decides to "reveal", this is the moment that the social contagion occurs. I have contact with Lisa - I will ask her.
It seems like there has been a lot of parent connection on social media and with specific parent support organizations since I was in my greatest depths of despair a few years ago. After meeting with an unsupportive therapist for several weeks and trying a couple of others for 1 or 2 visits (my radar was honed by this point), I gave up and buried my feelings in daily life. I feel blessed that my husband and I are on the same page, although we only occasionally talk about our loss. Thank you for the Genspect resource. I will be doing a lot of reading (and cathartic crying) in the the coming days.
I have been lurking here for a couple of weeks. This is exactly where we are as a family - ambiguous loss and unimaginable pain that is almost entirely hidden from the rest of the world. Our younger daughter began spiraling down into gender dysphoria and deep resistant depression around 2016 when she was terrorized by a bully at her school and in the aftermath decided she was trans male. We have experienced almost all of the things many of you have shared here - anger and rage, withdrawal, breast binding, rejection of loving and supportive family, unfounded accusations, damaged and destroyed social relationships, behavioral changes, a Merry Go Round of powerful psychiatric drugs, two hospitalizations (one for suicidality) and massive changes in weight and appearance. We do use the name she prefers (which is really just a nickname, not an actual name) but we generally try to avoid pronouns altogether. She is now 22 and too old for me to be able to be involved much in her healthcare. I have forbidden her from using my insurance to get hormones or surgeries and she has abided by my wishes. She does hold down a part time job and lives in an apartment with her partner (a straight heterosexual male how weird is that?). She's enrolled in welding school and seems to find it interesting and challenging. But she remains so distant from us - unreachable compared to the person she was before. And there is an edge that is always there in our interactions, like having a gun to our heads, that we best not ever attempt to discuss her identity. She isn't "out" to anyone but us (nuclear family) and a small friend group. Otherwise, it is all unspoken and invisible, but of course her alarmingly changed appearance gives some clue to outsiders that she is unwell or struggling. We are almost 7 years in at this point and I still don't know what the future holds. I hope that as the years go by and more adult life pursuits take up more of her mental energy and broaden her horizons beyond her own mind, perhaps she the gender obsession will fall by the wayside. Or maybe it will persist forever and we will be permanently stuck with this limited, stilted and damaged shell of a relationship. It is so breathtakingly tragic to see my beautiful loving artistic child spiral down into someone so unrecognizable - and in hindsight I am not really sure I could have done anything to prevent it. Anyway, thanks for listening and I'm glad to have found this group and others who have experienced this loss that is so akin to a death.
Thanks for trusting us with your story. It struck me that you’re 7 years into this. For me it’s been 5+, and I get the feeling we were the vanguard, if that’s the right word. Not quite patient zero, but when I looked around, at the beginning, for sources of objective sanity, they weren’t there yet! That was the truly destabilizing thing for me. I could process the idea of my middle school girl going a little nuts, but to have the whole adult world, including the medical societies and the news media — and her teachers, who I loved??— join her in lockstep before there was even any online skepticism? That was terrifying: pure Twilight Zone. And your sentence started more than a year before mine, so I just want to reach out in solidarity and say that you have done a very hard thing for a very long time, which tells me you’re exceptional, and strong. One day, I do think we will be vindicated, and maybe even recognized for maintaining our grip on objective reality while the whole world was denying it.
Thank you so much for the solidarity and the affirmation. I've thought about your kind comment all weekend long. No one ever tells us we are doing a good job or working hard or being strong or anything when you are stuck in this gender hell. It is so isolating and lonely and frightening and has been for SOOOO long. I do agree we are part of the very earliest wave of this. My overall strategy has been one of mostly refusing to engage with her about gender at all (we are NOT gonna have that fight no matter how badly she wants to pick at it) while at the same time insisting that she get some form of education to prepare her for a career, that she earn some money and do her best to participate in paying her own bills, that she keep in regular contact with us as her parents, and that she not pursue hormones or surgeries while on my insurance. It's a very long game that mostly feels like a stalemate - but I also think that by refusing to be drawn into fights over gender with her, I have largely avoided the total destruction of our relationship - which I have told her many times that I will not allow. She will not destroy our mother child relationship just because SHE is unhappy with her identity right now. Maybe by the time she is 30 I'll have a firm idea of how likely it is that she will emerge from all this. I am still hopeful. Thanks again for recognizing how much strength this requires. Kudos to you, too, for persevering. It's a pleasure to "meet" you. :-)
It’s a pleasure for me too, and I’d welcome your contact through email. My address is jen.poyerack@gmail.com (I’m not too worried about my privacy on this forum).
Our instincts have been very similar and I absolutely believe they’re what keep the mother/daughter relationship afloat. We too use the nickname but avoid pronouns altogether, and have drawn a firm line at medicalization. I’ve read or heard somewhere that 5-7 years is thought to be the point at which desistance begins. Have you heard anything like this? I’m noticing small things that support the idea: when someone calls her “she,” it doesn’t trigger her as much, and she’s more focused on other interests. One thing I know about desistance is that trans goes out “like a lamb,” so I’m not waiting for a big announcement that it’s over now, just biding time, being careful not to rock the boat. God, I want that announcement though!!
"Please understand, I know better than to assume my grief is comparable to that of losing a child to death. To do so would be to draw a cruel false equivalency."
Is it?
We've been estranged for nearly four years (his choice). How is that different than dead?
Not only did I lose him, I lost all family and friends. If his body had died and not just his
identity, we would have had a funeral, grieved and moved on. I could have held on to the
good memories and pure love I had for him. All those feelings are some combination of
lost and/or muddied. Now I live with not only the grief, but also the constant, soul-crushing shame.
Maybe we do need to start having a funeral, for their old self, let them see how much pain we are in. It sometimes feels like there has been a suicide but the deceased is still hanging around like a spirit. I miss my brother; I don’t need or want this new creature in my life who looks a lot like him. (Then other days I want someone to draw me a diagram of the ‘off-ramp’ mentioned above - there must be a route out of this, if only we can show them the way.)
and had your son died, your friends would be supporting you in your loss. sounds like you don't have that. i am sorry you are experiencing this relational trauma. it is painful. surround yourself with people that understand.
I agree. A sick child is a clear loss. There is no ambiguity. Society understands, society supports the family, period. And if the child dies, society offers mechanisms to grieve. Society has had thousands of years to practice.
With trans there is none of that. The loss is ambiguous. And if your community of "friends" is like ours, there will even be some cheerleaders for it. Imagine fellow parents saying "hooray for the cancer" or "what a stunning brave car accident" :(
it is bizarro world. sad and ridiculous bizarro world. Painful, unfathomable bizarro world. one day it won't be this way. That is my hope. that is my heart's desire.
Thank you. I am there with you in ambiguous loss and reading this makes me feel a little bit less alone there… My daughter is the same age and I feel as if I could have written this myself. 💔
We all share in the same nightmare. Thank you for writing. You mention how your daughter displayed "even different mannerisms." For me that was the biggest shocker when this hit us. She had 100% different mannerisms and they were not the mannerisms of any normal healthy person. It was so incredibly weird. And, it was supposed to represent how she had always been? These days, several years later, that part is mostly gone. She sometimes has "guy like" mannerisms but when she is focused on something else (instead of performing a true self) or relaxed she is so incredibly feminine in all her mannerisms - just as she always was before.
I saw this happening with other girls in our town (never thought it would be us) before it happened to our daughter and I was struck by their odd mannerisms - having known them before. I have to say my daughter had the oddest. We parents didn't affirm and she has not done anything to herself. Cross fingers. The others are on "T".
Today's world is "One where, at best, I was expected to carry on as if nothing had changed." Right away my daughter told me how this wouldn't change anything. These kids are so naive and taught to say this. It's part of the one step at a time path to a terrible, destructive place. It is part of what makes it such a grooming cult.
I Agree 100% on the pain Ambiguous Loss, it truly is like the death of a child. We decided to support but not affirm because we will not lie about who she really is. We will be nice and cordial but we can no longer fellowship with our daughter. We see her fool the waitstaff at restaurants and strangers on the street and new friends to a point, and we just are deer in headlights in these situations grasping for sanity. Testosterone has been taken for nearly 10 years now, breasts removed a few years ago, that was absolutely crushing. She is such a beautiful person, so gifted, talented, smart, funny. To wake up everyday and lie 1st thing out of bed and last thing at night about who you really are is astonishing to me. It has destroyed our family, we are in perpetual grief/Ambiguous Loss. She is soon to be 28 and is a teacher of little children in school nearby. There is so much good in her. She sings in a very liberal Methodist Church that endlessly affirms homosexuality and social justice with no mention of personal responsibility or the 10 commandments. Honor your father and mother gone long ago. We carry on and miss her and reach out to her praying for a miracle and sanity. Bashing oneself against nature never ends well especially on such a deep level as this. We love and miss the beautiful daughter we raised and nurtured, and gave the best years of our lives to. We know who you are, to demand that we lie about that to the world....sorry kiddo I won't do it. Abigail Shrier used our story in her book "Irreversible Damage" among others. And we regularly support all people renouncing this Trans craze to a return to reality. But I love and miss you terribly my beautiful daughter. Dad and Mom.
"She is soon to be 28 and is a teacher of little children in school nearby. There is so much good in her."
Little children, eh?
Whose sons and daughters is she [ahem] teaching? How many of their children will be flipped because of your daughter? Which of them have no idea yet about the avoidable grief to come? What are the upper limits of the tranny population? What happens in about 20 yrs from now when a huge number of them are able to lay their hands on the levers and pulleys of the state?
It is complicated. Many of these confused young women are good people. But, I don't think they should work as teachers or in the mental health and therapy professions. But, many many of them do.
I've allowed anything non-permanent, non-harmful as a minor. Affirm the distress and not the "identity". Connect with your kid. Also my idea of harmful is buying binders, and using opposite sex pronouns and language as this affirms the opposite sex identity. Avoiding the sex based language works for us.
I am brokenhearted, and devastated for the loss of my daughter to the trans ideology. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in this post
This post really spoke to me. I have had that same Twilight Zone feeling ever since my daughter suddenly declared she was trans 2 years ago. I feel your pain.
It is a "loss" but it is a loss with hope. We hope that things get better. There is also the fear that things can get worse.
How old is your daughter? I spent over a year in full blown grief. My daughter was a 21 year old “adult.” If she had been younger, I like to imagine that I would have taken extreme and creative steps to save her, because my daughter, like yours, with no sign of being uncomfortable with her female body for 21 years, changed SUDDENLY. Given what you CAN’T DO, focus on what you CAN DO to remove her from this social contagion. Go on an extended family trip in a natural setting, under the guise of doing something adventurous. Home school. Take her out of her current school and remove access to phone/computers, on which she is likely being exposed to pornography and “social influencers.” This is extreme but this calls for extreme measures. The important thing, and why removing from school is necessary, is to cut off ALL OUTSIDE INFLUENCES. Also, removing her from school removes the possibility of her obtaining hormones without your consent. It IS like being in the Twilight Zone. You have suffered an unimaginable loss, but realize, this is not about you. It is about your daughter. You and your husband must do everything possible to prevent any more damage. She will not be happy losing her phone and computer, but it might prevent her from doing irreparable harm. God bless you and your family.
I completely understand your pain and that weird way it is a phase but one which will leave scars and have far-reaching effects. For what it’s worth, my brother is mid-30s and every word you’ve written rings true. He seems to have regressed in maturity. My mother and I don’t know what to do. My other brother has had the Stonewall training so cheers along like the good ally he has been told to be.
The word ‘inchoate’ comes to mind when I think of my grief - something not fully formed - but also, when will it end? When do we get to put this behind us and move on?
And I’m also now thinking of the Midwych Cuckoos, those unwelcome invaders of a peaceful village, with their single consciousness who plot and destroy anything in their way. The collective organisation and brainwashing of people who fall into this world is astonishing. How apparently easy and quickly this idea has taken hold? What if something even more nefarious came along? There are some pretty far fetched political ideas wrapped up in this ideology.
Thank you for giving it a name. I, too, am struggling with the ambiguous loss of and grief for my son. He is 18 so I cannot stop him, but I am throwing every bit of science and research and information I can at him to try to convince him to let his teenage mind settle before he permanently changes his body. I am trying to support him and let him know that I hear him expressing pain and discomfort with himself. I am praying that he will let me find him appropriate help to get to the bottom of that pain and discomfort before he takes it out on his body with medication and surgeries. May we all come through this and find some peace and happiness on the other side. I hope sharing your silent grief here brought a little of that peace to you.
One point to mention: VERY small percentages of normal people are willing to have a partner of a trannie. 1% of males are willing, 1-2% of females. They think that they are being more attractive to someone, but that group is actually non-existent who finds the trannie attractive.
Yes. They are not thinking practically though. It's all cult fantasy - which they need time to outgrow.
What's your agenda here, my Canadian cowpoke? You sound like you are here to pimp the trannie lifestyle. Or am I wrong?
Been trying to find your blog "A bit more detail". You mention that you are starting it on Dec 3, 2020. That's 26 months ago. Any progress?
Gotta read them publications before you cite them, buckaroo.
"Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences."
And since gay men are MAYBE 5% of the population on a really gay day, .115*.05 = .00575. That's the proportion of the population. You get it by multiplying proportions. Lesbian counts are about the same. WAYYYYYY under 1%.
In your favor, of the 7 trans people in the study, 6 of the 7 would be willing to date a trannie. NOT EVEN ALL TRANNIES WILL DATE TRANNIES.
It's important to read something before using it as an argument.
I'll stick with my 1-2%.
The word “trannie” and “transgender” are equally bad. As a parent I do not consider slurs significant in the great scheme of these painful, evil happenings.
I do not use either word, but have heard people use the word “ trannie” as an affectionate term. I prefer the word “biophobe” as it better describes the condition.
It's not a slur. It's a term. Those who are offended by words need to ask "How tall is my horse?" and "How do I descend from my horse without looking like a moron?"
We don't have many SJW language police here. Why are you here?
Since you are Canadian, you seem to share the Canadian attitude that prigs, SJWs, and other language fascists get to run the situation. Do you have a license in "language fascism"?
If you have help and support to examine everything that has brought you to this discomfort with your own body, then perhaps you are one of those who need the transition to be healthy. My son struggles with many things that make him unhappy in himself and is not yet willing to look at those other very probable realities that have brought him to this point. You don't cut off a limb unless you know the final outcome is the best possible result.
Every body that has ever grown through teenage years struggles with a maelstrom of changing body chemistry and that includes influence of that body chemistry on the brain. Every person on earth is unhappy in their body at some points in their lives - or we wouldn't have a diet industry, or pumping iron, or colored contacts, etc.
I hope you find resilience and perseverance to fight your way through the dysphoria to find what is truly the right path for you once your, I assume, teenage brain has grown past this difficult stage. Perhaps the final conclusion for you will be that transition is the correct choice. It may be for my son as well - but jumping into medical treatments without first having pursued a full examination and understanding of the roots of the problem - that's just self harm.
A Ph.D. in Psychology? This surprises me. I understand that these circumstances can get out of control quickly and that every single family is doing the best they can here. Our eldest child- the ally- was standing next to her new trans sibling coaching my husband and I from the moment the announcement was made. We were so blindsided by both of them - the Twilight Zone analogy rings so true. This experience is like walking a tight rope. So much to balance and so much dissonance. Trying to maintain a connection, seeking places where reality still reigns so you can breathe for a minute.
Always feeling unsure what to say and when. Losing your parental agency, being afraid to lose your family. It is the hardest on the momma heart.
May I live to see this finally come to be common knowledge that we have all been gaslit.
How do we begin to build them all the off ramp they need? Will the next generation be bored with this and move on?? Will their scars one day give them away as “that generation”- the first ones with free reign on the internet - how an ideology damaged them…. So many brilliant minds? So many unanswered questions.
So well expressed - thank you. - LM
I saw this on Twitter today:
James Lindsay, B-2 Spirit
@ConceptualJames
· 23h
8:26 AM · Apr 22, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
"If Teachers in Government Schools can secretly change your child's name and gender in class & their databases without your knowledge, they are no longer your child. They are now the property of the state."
And, this comment:
“Mind molesters” is a label that should be more widely used.
I like "mind molesters." It is fitting.
it is sick and twisted mind control. it's shocking how many grownups have fallen in line, and lost their minds. so odd.
I'm about 4 years in and have a daughter in this so I cannot speak for the boys. But, I think that once your girl comes to you and says she's somehow always been a boy and suddenly has weird mannerisms - she has been psychologically battered for some time. That is where the Lisa Littman working definition of "ROGD" is not exactly right. I have been reading some disturbing narratives of very bright, accomplished autogynohile married-to-women grown men who consider themselves "lesbians" and this seems to be their cover: that it is not that they have an adult sexual fetish - it is that they have always been women (even though they are fathers). Our naive daughters are all reciting what they say. These men are not maternal. They do not care what happens to kids and young people. I also think that many adults are trained to "accept" and "go along" with what they do not actually believe. This has the effect that the parents get psychologically battered as well and their children get gas lighted. By the time an adult figures it out the kids have made it to the "magic age" of 18 where it turns out that it does all matter and they get the "liberating" drugs and surgeries which feel like such a rush until it doesn't. IMO
This has to stop.
The homosexual transexual who dreams of dating straight men are another matter - sad but not the issue here.
The Littman ROGD group is one type. She is not describing the general situation, but a subgroup. So your child may not fit the subgroup. The "social contagion" aspect may STILL be operating, in that one person "coming out" may be the trigger for others to do so as well - giving them license.
I completely think the girl subgroup is from social contagion. And, it is largely the fault of adults for promoting an ideology and gas lighting the kids - or it might not be so persistent. What I was trying to express is that it is not quite as "rapid" as it initially appears to parents who had no clue about the indoctrination going on in the peer group and by the teachers or speaker grifters who are brought in for DEI talks. The kids bathe in the stuff for some time before they "suddenly" spring it on parents once it is firmly in their minds.
Agree completely.
I blame adults too. Lots of schools and teachers.
https://christopherrufo.com/radical-gender-lessons-for-young-children/?mc_cid=d38ae03611
https://cbradleythompson.substack.com/p/sex-and-the-schools-or-an-essay-you?s=r
Agree
There are 2 things going on: 1) the sex/gender issue and 2) the public "reveal" issue. I think that 1) can be private or within a subgroup for a while. When a child decides to "reveal", this is the moment that the social contagion occurs. I have contact with Lisa - I will ask her.
agreed
That literally stood the hair up on my arms!
It seems like there has been a lot of parent connection on social media and with specific parent support organizations since I was in my greatest depths of despair a few years ago. After meeting with an unsupportive therapist for several weeks and trying a couple of others for 1 or 2 visits (my radar was honed by this point), I gave up and buried my feelings in daily life. I feel blessed that my husband and I are on the same page, although we only occasionally talk about our loss. Thank you for the Genspect resource. I will be doing a lot of reading (and cathartic crying) in the the coming days.
I have been lurking here for a couple of weeks. This is exactly where we are as a family - ambiguous loss and unimaginable pain that is almost entirely hidden from the rest of the world. Our younger daughter began spiraling down into gender dysphoria and deep resistant depression around 2016 when she was terrorized by a bully at her school and in the aftermath decided she was trans male. We have experienced almost all of the things many of you have shared here - anger and rage, withdrawal, breast binding, rejection of loving and supportive family, unfounded accusations, damaged and destroyed social relationships, behavioral changes, a Merry Go Round of powerful psychiatric drugs, two hospitalizations (one for suicidality) and massive changes in weight and appearance. We do use the name she prefers (which is really just a nickname, not an actual name) but we generally try to avoid pronouns altogether. She is now 22 and too old for me to be able to be involved much in her healthcare. I have forbidden her from using my insurance to get hormones or surgeries and she has abided by my wishes. She does hold down a part time job and lives in an apartment with her partner (a straight heterosexual male how weird is that?). She's enrolled in welding school and seems to find it interesting and challenging. But she remains so distant from us - unreachable compared to the person she was before. And there is an edge that is always there in our interactions, like having a gun to our heads, that we best not ever attempt to discuss her identity. She isn't "out" to anyone but us (nuclear family) and a small friend group. Otherwise, it is all unspoken and invisible, but of course her alarmingly changed appearance gives some clue to outsiders that she is unwell or struggling. We are almost 7 years in at this point and I still don't know what the future holds. I hope that as the years go by and more adult life pursuits take up more of her mental energy and broaden her horizons beyond her own mind, perhaps she the gender obsession will fall by the wayside. Or maybe it will persist forever and we will be permanently stuck with this limited, stilted and damaged shell of a relationship. It is so breathtakingly tragic to see my beautiful loving artistic child spiral down into someone so unrecognizable - and in hindsight I am not really sure I could have done anything to prevent it. Anyway, thanks for listening and I'm glad to have found this group and others who have experienced this loss that is so akin to a death.
Thanks for trusting us with your story. It struck me that you’re 7 years into this. For me it’s been 5+, and I get the feeling we were the vanguard, if that’s the right word. Not quite patient zero, but when I looked around, at the beginning, for sources of objective sanity, they weren’t there yet! That was the truly destabilizing thing for me. I could process the idea of my middle school girl going a little nuts, but to have the whole adult world, including the medical societies and the news media — and her teachers, who I loved??— join her in lockstep before there was even any online skepticism? That was terrifying: pure Twilight Zone. And your sentence started more than a year before mine, so I just want to reach out in solidarity and say that you have done a very hard thing for a very long time, which tells me you’re exceptional, and strong. One day, I do think we will be vindicated, and maybe even recognized for maintaining our grip on objective reality while the whole world was denying it.
Thank you so much for the solidarity and the affirmation. I've thought about your kind comment all weekend long. No one ever tells us we are doing a good job or working hard or being strong or anything when you are stuck in this gender hell. It is so isolating and lonely and frightening and has been for SOOOO long. I do agree we are part of the very earliest wave of this. My overall strategy has been one of mostly refusing to engage with her about gender at all (we are NOT gonna have that fight no matter how badly she wants to pick at it) while at the same time insisting that she get some form of education to prepare her for a career, that she earn some money and do her best to participate in paying her own bills, that she keep in regular contact with us as her parents, and that she not pursue hormones or surgeries while on my insurance. It's a very long game that mostly feels like a stalemate - but I also think that by refusing to be drawn into fights over gender with her, I have largely avoided the total destruction of our relationship - which I have told her many times that I will not allow. She will not destroy our mother child relationship just because SHE is unhappy with her identity right now. Maybe by the time she is 30 I'll have a firm idea of how likely it is that she will emerge from all this. I am still hopeful. Thanks again for recognizing how much strength this requires. Kudos to you, too, for persevering. It's a pleasure to "meet" you. :-)
It’s a pleasure for me too, and I’d welcome your contact through email. My address is jen.poyerack@gmail.com (I’m not too worried about my privacy on this forum).
Our instincts have been very similar and I absolutely believe they’re what keep the mother/daughter relationship afloat. We too use the nickname but avoid pronouns altogether, and have drawn a firm line at medicalization. I’ve read or heard somewhere that 5-7 years is thought to be the point at which desistance begins. Have you heard anything like this? I’m noticing small things that support the idea: when someone calls her “she,” it doesn’t trigger her as much, and she’s more focused on other interests. One thing I know about desistance is that trans goes out “like a lamb,” so I’m not waiting for a big announcement that it’s over now, just biding time, being careful not to rock the boat. God, I want that announcement though!!
prayers to you and your family🙏
"Please understand, I know better than to assume my grief is comparable to that of losing a child to death. To do so would be to draw a cruel false equivalency."
Is it?
We've been estranged for nearly four years (his choice). How is that different than dead?
Not only did I lose him, I lost all family and friends. If his body had died and not just his
identity, we would have had a funeral, grieved and moved on. I could have held on to the
good memories and pure love I had for him. All those feelings are some combination of
lost and/or muddied. Now I live with not only the grief, but also the constant, soul-crushing shame.
So, I suppose it is a cruel false equivalency.
Maybe we do need to start having a funeral, for their old self, let them see how much pain we are in. It sometimes feels like there has been a suicide but the deceased is still hanging around like a spirit. I miss my brother; I don’t need or want this new creature in my life who looks a lot like him. (Then other days I want someone to draw me a diagram of the ‘off-ramp’ mentioned above - there must be a route out of this, if only we can show them the way.)
Real psychotherapy?
and had your son died, your friends would be supporting you in your loss. sounds like you don't have that. i am sorry you are experiencing this relational trauma. it is painful. surround yourself with people that understand.
I agree. A sick child is a clear loss. There is no ambiguity. Society understands, society supports the family, period. And if the child dies, society offers mechanisms to grieve. Society has had thousands of years to practice.
With trans there is none of that. The loss is ambiguous. And if your community of "friends" is like ours, there will even be some cheerleaders for it. Imagine fellow parents saying "hooray for the cancer" or "what a stunning brave car accident" :(
it is bizarro world. sad and ridiculous bizarro world. Painful, unfathomable bizarro world. one day it won't be this way. That is my hope. that is my heart's desire.
Thank you. I am there with you in ambiguous loss and reading this makes me feel a little bit less alone there… My daughter is the same age and I feel as if I could have written this myself. 💔
We all share in the same nightmare. Thank you for writing. You mention how your daughter displayed "even different mannerisms." For me that was the biggest shocker when this hit us. She had 100% different mannerisms and they were not the mannerisms of any normal healthy person. It was so incredibly weird. And, it was supposed to represent how she had always been? These days, several years later, that part is mostly gone. She sometimes has "guy like" mannerisms but when she is focused on something else (instead of performing a true self) or relaxed she is so incredibly feminine in all her mannerisms - just as she always was before.
I saw this happening with other girls in our town (never thought it would be us) before it happened to our daughter and I was struck by their odd mannerisms - having known them before. I have to say my daughter had the oddest. We parents didn't affirm and she has not done anything to herself. Cross fingers. The others are on "T".
Today's world is "One where, at best, I was expected to carry on as if nothing had changed." Right away my daughter told me how this wouldn't change anything. These kids are so naive and taught to say this. It's part of the one step at a time path to a terrible, destructive place. It is part of what makes it such a grooming cult.
I Agree 100% on the pain Ambiguous Loss, it truly is like the death of a child. We decided to support but not affirm because we will not lie about who she really is. We will be nice and cordial but we can no longer fellowship with our daughter. We see her fool the waitstaff at restaurants and strangers on the street and new friends to a point, and we just are deer in headlights in these situations grasping for sanity. Testosterone has been taken for nearly 10 years now, breasts removed a few years ago, that was absolutely crushing. She is such a beautiful person, so gifted, talented, smart, funny. To wake up everyday and lie 1st thing out of bed and last thing at night about who you really are is astonishing to me. It has destroyed our family, we are in perpetual grief/Ambiguous Loss. She is soon to be 28 and is a teacher of little children in school nearby. There is so much good in her. She sings in a very liberal Methodist Church that endlessly affirms homosexuality and social justice with no mention of personal responsibility or the 10 commandments. Honor your father and mother gone long ago. We carry on and miss her and reach out to her praying for a miracle and sanity. Bashing oneself against nature never ends well especially on such a deep level as this. We love and miss the beautiful daughter we raised and nurtured, and gave the best years of our lives to. We know who you are, to demand that we lie about that to the world....sorry kiddo I won't do it. Abigail Shrier used our story in her book "Irreversible Damage" among others. And we regularly support all people renouncing this Trans craze to a return to reality. But I love and miss you terribly my beautiful daughter. Dad and Mom.
"She is soon to be 28 and is a teacher of little children in school nearby. There is so much good in her."
Little children, eh?
Whose sons and daughters is she [ahem] teaching? How many of their children will be flipped because of your daughter? Which of them have no idea yet about the avoidable grief to come? What are the upper limits of the tranny population? What happens in about 20 yrs from now when a huge number of them are able to lay their hands on the levers and pulleys of the state?
It is complicated. Many of these confused young women are good people. But, I don't think they should work as teachers or in the mental health and therapy professions. But, many many of them do.
heartbreaking
I've allowed anything non-permanent, non-harmful as a minor. Affirm the distress and not the "identity". Connect with your kid. Also my idea of harmful is buying binders, and using opposite sex pronouns and language as this affirms the opposite sex identity. Avoiding the sex based language works for us.
Haunting article. Stay strong, momma.