On Mother's Day

Originally run on May 6, 2022, but still true.

In honor of Mother’s Day, today’s post contains two messages of encouragement from PITT parents—a message of support from Gender Apostasy, and a message of love from a mother as a reminder of why we fight for our precious children. We hope you take courage and know that us moms are standing together—and together we are turning the tide!

Reposting from Gender Apostasy…

So Sunday is Mother's Day, here in the US. Another Hallmark holiday, with expectations and sentiments that are impossible to avoid. Open any magazine, open your computer, watch television, or tune in to social media, and you will be wished a Happy Mother's Day. This day is difficult, to say the least, for those of us who have been functionally eliminated from the role of mother, oftentimes against our will.

I would like to wish a very heartfelt and sincere Happy Mother's Day to you.

To all the moms who are living in fear of their daughter's 18th birthday, when she has promised you that she will go to Planned Parenthood for testosterone whether you like it or not, I see you.

To all the moms who are being told they are unsupportive, unkind and unloving for asking questions about gender ideology, who know that their sons are sons, and their daughters are daughters, and are being told this is cruel, I see you. There is nothing more loving than standing for the truth for your child, even when they threaten to walk out of your life for doing it. Because you love your child and don't want her to be harmed, you are refusing to lie in order to make life easier for yourself. The world applauds parents who proudly put their children on display as part of the new civil rights movement for transgender equality, but you have stubbornly refused to comply, even though family and friends mock and deride you for it. They don't understand your pain, and they don't empathize. I see you. I think you are amazingly brave, and I know you love your child.

To the mothers who have been told, sometimes right in front of their child, that they will cause their child to commit suicide if they don't go along with pronouns, I hear you. I see you. This is emotional blackmail of the worst kind, and it's not even true. You don't deserve this. Don't capitulate to it.

To the mothers who weep, because they were not able to stop the hormones, the surgery, the estrangement, I see you. You did everything you could. You were powerless to stop it. The story isn't over yet. Keep hoping, keep loving. Be gentle to yourself. It's not your fault.

To all the moms who walk the tightrope at home every day, who try so hard to say the right things when the right thing is never clear, I see you. I see you struggling to love your child. I see how terrified you are. I know you are walking on eggshells every day. You are tired. It feels like an endless battle, and you are afraid you are losing. Don't give up.

To the mothers who are validating their child's struggle, without validating their choices, I see you. You are demonstrating empathy, and you are listening to your child. You are biting your tongue, until it hurts. Remember, this is your child's struggle. She has to work through this. You are trying to be an ally, and she's viewing you as the enemy. Remember that deep down, she knows you love her. She just can't love herself right now. You are trying to help her do that. But the world is a messy, difficult place, and it might take awhile for her to figure it out. I see you.

To the mothers who have been ghosted by their own kids, who live day after day with the heartache of estrangement, I see you. I know this pain. The days and the weeks and the years tick by. Maybe you get the occasional text, or you see pictures on social media that break your heart. My mother's heart breaks with you. This grief cannot last forever. I do believe it will end, someday. We will hope together, you and I. I can't let go of hope, and neither can you. The path home is there. Keep it open, and wait. They will find their way home.

To all the moms who endlessly replay every mistake, every harsh word ever spoken, I see you. We all make mistakes. Becoming a mother doesn't make you perfect. You don't deserve this. None of us do. It's not your fault.

To the mothers who are sending their children to school, only to learn after the fact that they've been taught at school that they have a gender identity, that they might be a different gender and that sex is different from gender, I see you. It's a betrayal of trust of the worst kind. To the mothers who have learned that their child has been affirmed as a different gender at school, behind your back, I stand with you. You have been painted as the enemy, when in reality you are and have always been your child's biggest advocate.

We wonder sometimes, if anything we say or do will make a difference. I can't guarantee an outcome. But I can tell you with confidence, that one day our children will ask us, why didn't you warn me? We will be able to say, I did. I did everything I could.

I won't get a card this year from my children. I won't get flowers, or even a text. I'm still a mother, and I will celebrate that fact on Mother's Day, with all of you. It was still the most important job I ever had. Happy Mother's Day, to every one of you. Stand tall. You deserve to be celebrated, today and every day.

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A Mothers’ Day Prayer for My Perfect Child

You are a gift from the heavens—and I say that as a staunch atheist. You really were born this way, muscular and active, your bruised knees catching your dresses in your crawling days. You darted across the playground, faster than any boy. You hung on the monkey bars, suspended above the ground, long before the other toddlers could wrap their tiny hands around the metal tubes.

Early on, you separated yourself from those of your sex. When they wanted to play princess, you were the prince. And that was fine. When they wanted to wear princess dresses, you wanted to be Superman, and that was fine, too. You liked short hair and sweatpants, and it was all fine.

Or it was fine for us, anyway. But the other adults couldn’t withstand the disruption to their newly formed worldview about trans kids. They saw what they thought was a unicorn in their midsts, and they tried over and over to fit you into this new paradigm, asking you if you wanted to be someone else, sometimes insisting that you were.

I don’t know why, when so many other kids like you caved, you continued to feel comfortable in your body, in this strange and liminal space you occupied. I don’t know why you continued to be okay—great, really—when the only other girls like you we knew grew increasingly despondent. What I know is that your happiness never convinced anyone to leave you alone. It only made them try harder, push the message with more ferocity that being you—a strong, sweet, kind, masculine, sporty, short-haired and sweat-pantsed girl—was not okay. So far, you are immune, and I pray and I pray and I pray that you will continue to be this way, to love yourself, to be comfortable, to be safe.

Resist, I pray, each night. Resist the message that there is something wrong with you because you are different, that there is something in you that needs fixing. Resist the sickness spreading in your school, that the body must be changed to match the mind. Resist the idea that sex is mutable and gender identity is not. Resist the idea of gender identity itself, and learn what I’ve tried to tell you, what I was told in the 1970s by listening to Free to Be, You and Me on repeat: Your sex doesn’t determine what you like to wear or do or who you’re friends with. It’s your body. It’s beautiful. You will always be a girl, but you don’t have to be like any other girl.

Each night, I tell you that you are a gift from the heavens, that your difference is your strength, that you are perfect just as you are. I can see the words wash over you, and I hope they fortify you for a world gone mad, a world whose gender revolution leaves actual gender nonconforming kids like you more vulnerable than they’ve ever been, prone to chemical castration, to sex changes for kids. What kids like you need is space and acceptance, just like all kids. I see that other children learn from you, that your difference is accepted and acknowledged by them, that it expands their worldview—I see that they understand. And I pray that someday, these adults pushing their ideology onto special and perfect kids like you, will understand, too.