As a Mother Fighting for My ROGD Kid, I Fear a Mental Breakdown
Parenting a child caught in ideological thinking, drastically changing social tones and manipulative language cast over the truth requires one to hold on tight to their sanity, with both hands.
Since my fourteen year old daughter has taken the path of trans-identification, I have walked, jogged and ran on a parallel path of my own, full of reading, research, podcasts, YouTube watching, information gathering, support seeking, hate receiving, attempted indoctrination, blatant dismissal as a parent and endlessly heedful conversation with my child. To say that this is stressful is a gross understatement.
To imply that peaked parents of otherwise ‘affirmed’, love-bombed and pedestalled kids might be having a hard time is an enormous underestimation. We are not okay! I am not okay but I have decided to take the hurt and anger, the disrespect and negation, and the insults and unjustified reprimand that I receive on a daily basis and use them to fuel the fire that will keep me pressing forward in my efforts to help derail this dangerously fast-moving train.
Through the commitment I have made to the preservation of my child’s mental and physical health, I have been showered with hostility and disapproval. In trying to keep my daughter grounded in reality and open to thoughts and ideas other than those provided to her by the irrational ideology she has adopted, I have been peppered with ridicule and censure. Because I refuse to get my daughter a place in line for her share of the puberty blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and amputations being actively introduced to all children, I have been called unloving, unsupportive and unfit as her mother.
I have received more negativity and attacks on my character in the short time my daughter has been saying she’s a boy than I have at any other time in my life, from those who know me and from those who don’t. These insults and barrages have not been in response to her neglect or abuse, but to my lack of the instructed celebration of my kid’s perceived transgenderism, my refusal to boast about her stunning bravery specifically for being a trans kid, and my hesitance to medically transition a minor. Further animosity has been thrown in my direction for my noncompliance with the doctrine of a religion that I don’t believe in.
I have been vilified to both of my children by their all affirming father—but to my credit, and by my luck, this has not been enough to break the bonds we share. I have been undermined by my ‘concerned’ sister for expressing to her my worry over the medical and mental health issues that my child may be facing and forced for the first time to feel like I needed to protect my child from her aunt. I have been placed in the category of ‘potentially unsafe parents’ by my child’s school while they hide details about her, details that I am fully aware of, in a misguided and underhanded effort to ‘protect’ her or out of fear for their livelihoods.
There have been times that I have felt like giving up, calling her ‘he’ and letting the mystified individuals and the delusory sect that have surrounded my daughter win. I have had moments of anguish over the thought that others suddenly consider me villainous in my otherwise reputable story. While I have never had reason to question my mental health, the steep uphill battle toward my child's emancipation from a cunning club that would like to see her drug addicted and surgically modified as soon as possible has given me one. But it is not enough to knock me down completely and every time I get back up it is with a rejuvenated passion to see the walls around a fallacious fad fall.
This heap of hatred, this pile of perpetual reproach, is not big enough to smother my spirit or to quiet my voice. I will take ill founded comments like ‘do you want a live son or a dead daughter’ and wrap them in the reality that I want a healthy, happy and whole child instead. I’ll drown the threats of losing my child to social services or to her father in the knowledge that Gender Ideology will eventually be exposed for its widespread mindwash and its mass medical malpractice. The people who have turned against me will receive easy forgiveness upon waking up from the nightmare they had deemed a progressive and inclusive dream.
As parents who can see the wolf inside the proverbial sheep’s clothing, we are faced with the daily struggle to do right by our children while deflecting the poison arrows that are constantly flying toward them and ourselves. With jobs and responsibilities, brave faces and exhaustion, we continue to work toward the common goal of abolishing a noxious ideology and helping to save the remainder of a battered generation of youths.
Parents are drawing from their diminished wells of energy and their depleting emotional reservoirs to hold on to the truth and our sanity with both hands. Tired fingers return change affecting emails, send out important tweets and posts over social media, and write truthful accounts of the damaging effects of gender ideology on their children and our society. Wary eyes read unnerving and astonishing articles and books that they would rather not read to build an informed arsenal that may help save our children from the inevitable mental and physical decay of experimental medical transition.
As the social and political tables begin to turn, ever so slightly, we can pull the strength we need to finish this fight from the awareness that we have already made a difference. We can gain much needed confidence through the knowledge that lawsuits against butcherous gender clinics and devious school boards are beginning to create a wave of redress. The time is coming that our children will begin to hear whispers of truth in their social circles and start to shed the shackles of their ‘gender’ indoctrination. The ever growing community of vocal and determined detransitioners are purposefully serving as living proof of the devastating effects of youth transition, blowing the whistle on rushed affirmation by mental health and medical professionals, and sounding the alarm to end this maiming practice.
I will not come through this battle for child protection, the restoration of parental rights and the return to rationality unscathed—but if my daughter does because I wouldn’t quit, I will be okay.
I wanted to respond as the mom of a now desisted daughter. Very slowly we are able to talk about it and I am learning a lot about what went on with her during those two hellish years of trans identification. She really believed that the gender clinics were benign places where experts will tell you you’re not really trans if you aren’t and send you to a therapist to figure it out. At the time, she wasn’t able to hear or believe that the exact opposite was true. All this to say that you, mom, need to hold that rudder steady because truly, these kids know not what they do. Thanks for telling your story.
We’re some badass parents. We all keep going knowing we have truth and reality on our side. In the end, proving our stance on the right side of history. Excellent writing. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼