Thank you for this insight. I have pushed my son out of my mind for the last several months. Even though I pray for him daily I gave him to God. I can no longer spend all my hours trying to make him come back. I often wonder if I will ever see him again and then the heartbreak starts all over again and I become reclusive and feeling sorry for myself in this immense grief of losing my son who is still alive. Alive i think my daughter won’t talk about him although she calls him a her and by the name he chose to go by and she keeps in touch with him her, so at least I have that. I even wonder if he got seriously sick if I would be notified? I truly don’t know how I got here. I got divorced maybe that did it. I tried to be a great mother but obviously I failed. My life was filled with so much past childhood trauma and then my daughter has type 1 diabetes since age 3 so then maybe I neglected him? I don’t know what happened. All I know is now I spend too much time ruminating and crying when I think of him. That’s why I don’t come on here that much. All of our stories are heartbreaking and I am suspended in grief but no one knows it. 🙏💔
Thanks for writing this article. I came to this conclusion at the beginning of the year when my son and daughter in law stopped communicating with me. Nothing I did with letters, phone calls or texts was helping. I’d stop by and he and his wife won’t open the door.
So I said to myself through a lot of prayers, Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. I will carry this cross and pray daily for them.
I do not know why this is happening to my family, I’m so sad it’s broken from this evil cult and it took my son away, but I’m going to trust you and pray in time you can bring us back together.
I miss them a lot but I’m also not letting my life stop due to them being mean to me. So every single day I offer them up in prayer and move forward.
"You don’t get over this. You grow around it. The loss stays, but so does your life." Wow! These are such powerful words. The pain of this type of loss (because of the trans ideology lies) is unbearable, coupled with the worry and the fear of the unknown. Having your child suddenly disappear out of your life by their choice is haunting and cruel. I would not wish this on any mother, yet it happened to my dear sister, and now it has happened to my sweet friend. Their sons fell down the trans rabbit hole. I grieve for them both every day, I try to support them the best way I can, and I pray daily. Not being able to fully grieve this type of loss is so difficult and extremely painful. To all of you parents out there who are experiencing this type of loss, you are not alone, and you are supported. I will continue to pray for all of you.
My heart goes out to parents experiencing estrangement. I can add that, even when the trans-identifying child is still in your life, there are feelings of grief and loss. The person sitting at the dinner table may be the child you bore, or adopted, and brought up, but the effects of cross-sex hormones can make it all but impossible to "recognize" him as your child. The shape of the face is different, the body is transformed, and perhaps worst of all, she has a different voice. You have the feeling that body snatchers have taken your child and replaced her with this other creature.
This is why human beings developed rituals: because life can be so excruciatingly painful, and we need psychological ways to move beyond extreme pain if we're going to survive.
Parents with children in the Trans panic need rituals. They need steps specifically designed beforehand, which they can go through, alongside others who are also suffering, so they can come out the other end.
Ambiguous loss is about loss with no threshold, no ending. But humans can't live with endless extreme pain. We need a way to accept the reality of the pain--to give it its due--while re-entering our normal daily lives.
When someone dies, we do this with funerals and wakes. When our children leave our lifelong shelter and create new primary families for themselves, we do it with weddings (where parents tend to cry!). When our children leave the educational systems in which they've still relied on us for their primary support, we do it with graduations. Some of the world's biggest religions are specifically designed to give us these rituals at the end of the ups and downs of every week.
These intensely emotional rituals help us move through change without being destroyed by it.
Perhaps the parents of PITT can design their own rituals to share with each other: something simple and straight-forward to speak clearly to the deepest parts of the psyche, but with specific elements of profound meaning, to trigger the mental processes that signal to the subconscious:
"This complete disruption of reality has now been moved into the past. We will always feel the void of what we've lost. And if we ever regain it--what joy! But, meanwhile, the world and the rest of our lives are waiting for us."
Dads feel it too, remember? It's not exclusively Mothers. Fathers who support their wives and desperately miss their estranged daughters. I've been in this hellhole for 8 years now, alongside my wife and my son. It's true that we've worked hard to live with those huge paradoxes and dissonances: about finding joy in life while enduring the most devastating psychic attack, about all that stuff, about letting go through learning and self growth. But nothing NOTHING brings home that sense of betrayal more than other affirming family; those who show no curiosity or compassion about our situation and visit our estranged daughter in secret. Or drip-feed us little nuggets of information about her while they big themselves up as little messiahs or champions of the underdog and saviour to the oppressed. They say things like "Well, she seems happy enough" as if implying that maybe we really don't care. They say things like "What's it like, now that your son has a brother?" without a trace of self-awareness. I don't think I've ever encountered anything quite as cruel as the force of < other affirming family >.
They have to block any self-awareness from their minds. If they let it in, their whole house of cards will fall down. And yes, fathers deserve as much compassion.
I have often thought how very sad this is. In death they have no choice, and they still loved you, but this is a choice they made on purpose. They choose not to even acknowledge you, which to me, is worse, and there is no closure.
Wise words here about dealing with ambiguous grief, and finding a path to holding both profound loss and joy in life. I just want to say (as the parent of a decade-long estranged kid), that there is so much to this. There is the never-ending worry of how your child is doing, both physically and mentally (my kid is jobless and struggling w serious mental health issues, which is not uncommon). There is the pall cast upon your entire family past — it is almost too difficult to look at photos, videos, keepsakes bc of this deep pain. There is that sad, detached feeling during the holidays, bc there is a big gaping hole in your family. There is the isolation of not being able to talk about it, even with people who are sympathetic. (You’re supposed to ‘heal’ and get over it. ) There’s the pain of hearing happy stories of other parent’s kids growing up into beautiful lives. To name just a few.
This grief - yes, it is a terrible pain, an open wound, that takes Herculean effort to come to terms with. Every time I think I have, I find I haven’t. It is so relentless.
Thanks for this and my deepest condolences to those with estranged children. Mine is not estranged, but I feel so far away from her I don’t even know what to say anymore. I heart her texts and photos that she sends. But I’m afraid to talk to her and hear that beautiful voice eaten away by testosterone. I’m afraid to see that beautiful smooth skin growing stubble. I probably sound so superficial. Of course she is more than a voice and long hair and skin.
But yeah, I feel like I’m thinking about her in the past tense. I feel like she’s gone but she isn’t. It aches. I don’t even know what to do. I’d love to text and ask how she’s doing but I’m so hurt and angry.
The icing on the cake is that I raised her. Me and my poor boundaries, my moodiness, my inconsistency, undermining her stepdad, the awful sugary and processed foods I gave her because I didn’t know how to meal prep until I was well into my 30’s, having her in daycare before and after work, farming her out to Minnesota public schools and relying on screens as her babysitter and pacifier.
Please don't blame yourself. All the things you list are well within normal parenting! This is not of your making; you did not cause this.
Also it is not superficial to feel upset by the changes caused by wrong sex hormones. This is so painful for a parent to watch. We cared for them and made sure they were healthy. The destruction as well as the cognitive dissonance is hard to take.
P.S., please cut yourself some slack. Give yourself the grace that I’m certain you grant others. There are children seduced by this madness from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds and parenting styles.
They come from depressed parents, religious parents, “perfect parents,” firmly boundaried parents, Swiss cheese boundaried parents, vegan organic foods, processed food…. I could go on.
Thank you for putting into words what I am feeling. It’s been almost 5 years since our daughter was caught up in this cult. After trying to reach out but not affirming, we have been shunned and lied about on social media. Of course not a day goes by without prayers that she will be restored to us. However I refuse to to let this pain suck the joy out of our lives. It’s a decision every day, but one that has to be made
This was a good description of how I am feeling. Though I try to move on and enjoy my life, my son has created an enormous hole for our family. As a father with two small sons, he has chosen a narcissistic delusion over family. That is not how he and his wife see it, but that is how I view it. He would happily be a part of our lives, but only if I support his delusion. Since I will not, we effectively do not see each other much. It is heartbreaking and completely contrary to how he was raised. It feels like a dark cloud settled over you and stayed. But, I am trying to move on with my life and I keep the hope that he may come back to us.
Thank you, thank you, for putting words to the grief my husband I are experiencing. (And maybe to a lesser degree what my kids and my parents experience. )
My son has chosen estrangement over our once strong family bonds. He has turned his back on his parents and his first best friends (his brothers). He’s rejected an entire family (including our family name) because we won’t affirm him in his delusion/fantasy. Attempts to talk about anything, anything at all, are rejected unless we affirm. Meaning affirmation comes first before any kind of conversation. It’s impossible. I’ve written the letters, the texts, looking to understand, attempting to make amends where I need to, hoping for reconciliation. All in vain.
It’s terribly sad to think of all the losses.
We have chosen to adopt the advice of our wise and compassionate pastor. He reminded us, that as horrible as this estrangement and grief is, we must learn to hold it in tension with the joys of this life. We grieve with those who grieve and we rejoice with those who rejoice. We hold grief in one hand and joy in the other. He reminded us that life is for the living and in response we have been intentional in our living, in our choosing life. That’s because I could not possibly survive this grief if I didn’t choose to find joy in living.
And so we take our quiet moments to cry and talk about our sadness and losses and grief. We pray for our son daily. We miss him horribly.
We also celebrate the many wonderful things in our lives, our other kids and their spouses, our new granddaughter, a beautiful fall day, the many things we are thankful for. This is how it is for now. We hold onto hope that one day our son will return. Until then we watch and pray and live.
Yes, there is grief in losing the connection, family life and relationship. Her physical presence. Her smile.
And separately there is the feeling of betrayal by the entire world. Every person and institution you trusted. Friends. Family. The President. The doctors. The teachers. Everyone.
I have not begun to heal yet. I kind of fake like i am normal. I tried a therapist in my darkest days when my husband couldn’t take it anymore and she just shamed me. I will never go to another. They destroyed my daughter, why would I?
Thank you for this insight. I have pushed my son out of my mind for the last several months. Even though I pray for him daily I gave him to God. I can no longer spend all my hours trying to make him come back. I often wonder if I will ever see him again and then the heartbreak starts all over again and I become reclusive and feeling sorry for myself in this immense grief of losing my son who is still alive. Alive i think my daughter won’t talk about him although she calls him a her and by the name he chose to go by and she keeps in touch with him her, so at least I have that. I even wonder if he got seriously sick if I would be notified? I truly don’t know how I got here. I got divorced maybe that did it. I tried to be a great mother but obviously I failed. My life was filled with so much past childhood trauma and then my daughter has type 1 diabetes since age 3 so then maybe I neglected him? I don’t know what happened. All I know is now I spend too much time ruminating and crying when I think of him. That’s why I don’t come on here that much. All of our stories are heartbreaking and I am suspended in grief but no one knows it. 🙏💔
Thank you for giving this a name. I feel this everyday. Some days are better than others, but I do keep moving forward one day at a time.
❤️
Thanks for writing this article. I came to this conclusion at the beginning of the year when my son and daughter in law stopped communicating with me. Nothing I did with letters, phone calls or texts was helping. I’d stop by and he and his wife won’t open the door.
So I said to myself through a lot of prayers, Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. I will carry this cross and pray daily for them.
I do not know why this is happening to my family, I’m so sad it’s broken from this evil cult and it took my son away, but I’m going to trust you and pray in time you can bring us back together.
I miss them a lot but I’m also not letting my life stop due to them being mean to me. So every single day I offer them up in prayer and move forward.
"You don’t get over this. You grow around it. The loss stays, but so does your life." Wow! These are such powerful words. The pain of this type of loss (because of the trans ideology lies) is unbearable, coupled with the worry and the fear of the unknown. Having your child suddenly disappear out of your life by their choice is haunting and cruel. I would not wish this on any mother, yet it happened to my dear sister, and now it has happened to my sweet friend. Their sons fell down the trans rabbit hole. I grieve for them both every day, I try to support them the best way I can, and I pray daily. Not being able to fully grieve this type of loss is so difficult and extremely painful. To all of you parents out there who are experiencing this type of loss, you are not alone, and you are supported. I will continue to pray for all of you.
Thank you. I pray the trans cult can stop and they get the mental help they need.
My heart goes out to parents experiencing estrangement. I can add that, even when the trans-identifying child is still in your life, there are feelings of grief and loss. The person sitting at the dinner table may be the child you bore, or adopted, and brought up, but the effects of cross-sex hormones can make it all but impossible to "recognize" him as your child. The shape of the face is different, the body is transformed, and perhaps worst of all, she has a different voice. You have the feeling that body snatchers have taken your child and replaced her with this other creature.
This is why human beings developed rituals: because life can be so excruciatingly painful, and we need psychological ways to move beyond extreme pain if we're going to survive.
Parents with children in the Trans panic need rituals. They need steps specifically designed beforehand, which they can go through, alongside others who are also suffering, so they can come out the other end.
Ambiguous loss is about loss with no threshold, no ending. But humans can't live with endless extreme pain. We need a way to accept the reality of the pain--to give it its due--while re-entering our normal daily lives.
When someone dies, we do this with funerals and wakes. When our children leave our lifelong shelter and create new primary families for themselves, we do it with weddings (where parents tend to cry!). When our children leave the educational systems in which they've still relied on us for their primary support, we do it with graduations. Some of the world's biggest religions are specifically designed to give us these rituals at the end of the ups and downs of every week.
These intensely emotional rituals help us move through change without being destroyed by it.
Perhaps the parents of PITT can design their own rituals to share with each other: something simple and straight-forward to speak clearly to the deepest parts of the psyche, but with specific elements of profound meaning, to trigger the mental processes that signal to the subconscious:
"This complete disruption of reality has now been moved into the past. We will always feel the void of what we've lost. And if we ever regain it--what joy! But, meanwhile, the world and the rest of our lives are waiting for us."
😢
Dads feel it too, remember? It's not exclusively Mothers. Fathers who support their wives and desperately miss their estranged daughters. I've been in this hellhole for 8 years now, alongside my wife and my son. It's true that we've worked hard to live with those huge paradoxes and dissonances: about finding joy in life while enduring the most devastating psychic attack, about all that stuff, about letting go through learning and self growth. But nothing NOTHING brings home that sense of betrayal more than other affirming family; those who show no curiosity or compassion about our situation and visit our estranged daughter in secret. Or drip-feed us little nuggets of information about her while they big themselves up as little messiahs or champions of the underdog and saviour to the oppressed. They say things like "Well, she seems happy enough" as if implying that maybe we really don't care. They say things like "What's it like, now that your son has a brother?" without a trace of self-awareness. I don't think I've ever encountered anything quite as cruel as the force of < other affirming family >.
They have to block any self-awareness from their minds. If they let it in, their whole house of cards will fall down. And yes, fathers deserve as much compassion.
I have often thought how very sad this is. In death they have no choice, and they still loved you, but this is a choice they made on purpose. They choose not to even acknowledge you, which to me, is worse, and there is no closure.
Wise words here about dealing with ambiguous grief, and finding a path to holding both profound loss and joy in life. I just want to say (as the parent of a decade-long estranged kid), that there is so much to this. There is the never-ending worry of how your child is doing, both physically and mentally (my kid is jobless and struggling w serious mental health issues, which is not uncommon). There is the pall cast upon your entire family past — it is almost too difficult to look at photos, videos, keepsakes bc of this deep pain. There is that sad, detached feeling during the holidays, bc there is a big gaping hole in your family. There is the isolation of not being able to talk about it, even with people who are sympathetic. (You’re supposed to ‘heal’ and get over it. ) There’s the pain of hearing happy stories of other parent’s kids growing up into beautiful lives. To name just a few.
This grief - yes, it is a terrible pain, an open wound, that takes Herculean effort to come to terms with. Every time I think I have, I find I haven’t. It is so relentless.
Thanks for this and my deepest condolences to those with estranged children. Mine is not estranged, but I feel so far away from her I don’t even know what to say anymore. I heart her texts and photos that she sends. But I’m afraid to talk to her and hear that beautiful voice eaten away by testosterone. I’m afraid to see that beautiful smooth skin growing stubble. I probably sound so superficial. Of course she is more than a voice and long hair and skin.
But yeah, I feel like I’m thinking about her in the past tense. I feel like she’s gone but she isn’t. It aches. I don’t even know what to do. I’d love to text and ask how she’s doing but I’m so hurt and angry.
The icing on the cake is that I raised her. Me and my poor boundaries, my moodiness, my inconsistency, undermining her stepdad, the awful sugary and processed foods I gave her because I didn’t know how to meal prep until I was well into my 30’s, having her in daycare before and after work, farming her out to Minnesota public schools and relying on screens as her babysitter and pacifier.
Please don't blame yourself. All the things you list are well within normal parenting! This is not of your making; you did not cause this.
Also it is not superficial to feel upset by the changes caused by wrong sex hormones. This is so painful for a parent to watch. We cared for them and made sure they were healthy. The destruction as well as the cognitive dissonance is hard to take.
You don't sound superficial. I am so sorry for your pain, I hope your daughter wakes up soon.
P.S., please cut yourself some slack. Give yourself the grace that I’m certain you grant others. There are children seduced by this madness from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds and parenting styles.
They come from depressed parents, religious parents, “perfect parents,” firmly boundaried parents, Swiss cheese boundaried parents, vegan organic foods, processed food…. I could go on.
Be good to yourself. ❤️
Thank you for putting into words what I am feeling. It’s been almost 5 years since our daughter was caught up in this cult. After trying to reach out but not affirming, we have been shunned and lied about on social media. Of course not a day goes by without prayers that she will be restored to us. However I refuse to to let this pain suck the joy out of our lives. It’s a decision every day, but one that has to be made
Thank you.
This was a good description of how I am feeling. Though I try to move on and enjoy my life, my son has created an enormous hole for our family. As a father with two small sons, he has chosen a narcissistic delusion over family. That is not how he and his wife see it, but that is how I view it. He would happily be a part of our lives, but only if I support his delusion. Since I will not, we effectively do not see each other much. It is heartbreaking and completely contrary to how he was raised. It feels like a dark cloud settled over you and stayed. But, I am trying to move on with my life and I keep the hope that he may come back to us.
Thank you, thank you, for putting words to the grief my husband I are experiencing. (And maybe to a lesser degree what my kids and my parents experience. )
My son has chosen estrangement over our once strong family bonds. He has turned his back on his parents and his first best friends (his brothers). He’s rejected an entire family (including our family name) because we won’t affirm him in his delusion/fantasy. Attempts to talk about anything, anything at all, are rejected unless we affirm. Meaning affirmation comes first before any kind of conversation. It’s impossible. I’ve written the letters, the texts, looking to understand, attempting to make amends where I need to, hoping for reconciliation. All in vain.
It’s terribly sad to think of all the losses.
We have chosen to adopt the advice of our wise and compassionate pastor. He reminded us, that as horrible as this estrangement and grief is, we must learn to hold it in tension with the joys of this life. We grieve with those who grieve and we rejoice with those who rejoice. We hold grief in one hand and joy in the other. He reminded us that life is for the living and in response we have been intentional in our living, in our choosing life. That’s because I could not possibly survive this grief if I didn’t choose to find joy in living.
And so we take our quiet moments to cry and talk about our sadness and losses and grief. We pray for our son daily. We miss him horribly.
We also celebrate the many wonderful things in our lives, our other kids and their spouses, our new granddaughter, a beautiful fall day, the many things we are thankful for. This is how it is for now. We hold onto hope that one day our son will return. Until then we watch and pray and live.
Praying for each family represented here too.
🙏🏻❤️
‘You don’t get over this, you grow around it’.
Thank you.
Yes, there is grief in losing the connection, family life and relationship. Her physical presence. Her smile.
And separately there is the feeling of betrayal by the entire world. Every person and institution you trusted. Friends. Family. The President. The doctors. The teachers. Everyone.
I have not begun to heal yet. I kind of fake like i am normal. I tried a therapist in my darkest days when my husband couldn’t take it anymore and she just shamed me. I will never go to another. They destroyed my daughter, why would I?
Yes, as you wrote, “
And separately there is the feeling of betrayal by the entire world.“
I feel that betrayal.
Psalm 146 says, “put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help”.