As the father of a young woman who has turned to the transgender movement, I struggle deeply with pain, anger, and sadness as I watch my daughter avoid the challenge of becoming a woman by believing that she can become a man. I struggle to maintain an open and communicative relationship with her while also attempting to control the media and information she is exposed to, to slow her continued descent into the transgender cult.
Thank you for this, just what I needed to read today. I appreciate hearing ways through this, it is so easy to focus on the pain; we need to help each other get through this.
Thank you! You are so brave to share this. I respect you so much. And I hope that your wife and daughter will realize how much you want to protect them. You are a great man!
One other thing: A few other commenters are focusing on the aspect that nature may hold the answer and will help to heal. I agree with this. I’m a desister and I find nature very healing.
I think it’s due to actualizing your physical bodily potential, as you walk, run, jump, touch, and move through the world. When you become confident in your physical abilities, there is little need to question your identity. Being online constantly, playing video games, controlling an avatar, watching films and anime, and being stationary can cause dissociation, in my experience, and can make you feel like your own body is a foreign thing, which can lead you to question whether this is really you, and your identity. The mind and body are one and the same. If one is sick, the answer may lie in caring for the other in order to heal, and caring for the body means giving your body a full range of healthy experiences, like being out in nature.
Thank you for sharing. I also had tears flowing while reading your experience in meditation in the wilderness. I have had similarly healing experiences with ketamine for my intense depression, and can attest that my heart was opened and my mind was at peace. Before ketamine, I had a very secular, scientific mindset, believing that emotions were divorced from material reality, and therefore shouldn’t count in decision-making. I thought only the calculable and measurable should matter, and that faith was useless. But after ketamine therapy, I began to understand the hopeful, loving intentions which those around me were trying to surround me with. My depression has begun to lift, and I now value love, faith, and hope much more. I see how the emotional isn’t at odds with the material; they are inseparable. I will now implement meditation to see how it works. Your story truly made me smile.
May your daughter and entire family be blessed, resilient, and healthy.
My doctor has suggested ketamine to me for depression and retractable chronic pain, but I'm really nervous to try it. How many times do you have to take ketamine? Was it the infusion you had? Ignore my questions if I'm getting too personal. Have a great weekend.
My experience with ketamine was beautiful, but I really wish I had been guided with therapy through my infusions (yes I had them intravenously). I asked for a guided talk therapy during the infusion, and the clinic said they didn’t do that and I would be fine. They recommended calming peaceful music to listen to. I had infusions twice a week for 6 weeks, or so. My last session was on my 29th birthday in 2021.
While I was fine during my trips, I still asked my wife to sit in the room with me, in silence. I nearly had two bad trips but I managed to quickly pull myself out of the negative and turn it into an exploration of empathy. I don’t know that everyone can do that alone. I have lucid dreams almost every time I sleep; I can turn nightmares into peaceful dreams, and I think my mental training played a part in my ability to steer the trips. Also, I wasn’t afraid of ego death and was able to let go very easily, while others say they struggle with that at first. Just know: You will come back to yourself. Let the ketamine work. By my last infusion, I felt I’d made a breakthrough in my depression and my eyes were overflowing with tears of gratitude. They gave me a small birthday cake as well. The clinic was great and very compassionate.
Immediately after a ketamine infusion, you will be very calm and have a feeling of absolute peace. You will also be unsteady on your feet, because it makes you want to sit still and observe everything. It will give you a fresh emotional perspective on everything.
I would recommend it, but only if you will be closely following up with a talk therapist during or after the ketamine. Everyone is different, so maybe my advice will not apply to you. As the original poster said, go in with and intention, and you will gain more benefits. I don’t mind answering any other questions about my own experience.
Thank you so much for your very thoughtful response. I really appreciate your candor. It sounds like your schedule is very similar to what was explained to me, with probable "booster" sessions in months following if needed. It is my understanding that the sessions will be supervised and include a mental health professional during the infusion. I have an appt with my GP next week, who is really advocating for it, and a follow up appt with my pain specialist doc in August, who is also advocating for it. You have given me some very helpful information and food for thought so again, thanks for sharing your experience. I know I have struggles with letting go and control during medical procedures. An anesthesiologist told me that while trying to sedate me for a procedure and it was in the doctor's report sent to my GP that I was very anxious and not willing to give up control to be put under lol. Maybe this is exactly what I need!
I started to cry while reading this, especially during the mother/grandmother laments, as not only have I experienced a similar “enhanced” enlightenment over 30 years ago (a beautiful occurrence I might add), but I’m currently dealing with an all-encompassing excruciating estrangement from my TiF offspring going on 5 years.
Along with prayer, I have found mindfulness meditation very helpful too. It all helps me keep my shit together. I had not previously thought of myself as anxious. But turns out I am. 🤷🏼♀️
Along with prayer, I have found mindfulness meditation very helpful too. It all helps me keep my shit together. I had not previously thought of myself as anxious. But turns out I am. 🤷🏼♀️
Todays Texas Minute From Texas Scorecard!!! My top picks!
After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a ban on child gender mutilation procedures into law last month, the measure is now facing a lawsuit. blast.texasscorecard.com/t/d-l-vgiilk-i… that five families with gender-confused children, three medical professionals, and two LGBT organizations are suing the state to block implementation.
The new law protects children from being chemically castrated by puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and from receiving mutilative surgeries to “transition” them. It also prohibits public money from being indirectly or directly granted, paid, or distributed to any healthcare provider, medical school, or hospital that participates in these procedures.
One mother involved with the lawsuit said that after SB 14 was passed, she moved her 9-year-old son—who she claims “identifies” as a girl—out of Texas and split up her family to ensure the child could receive puberty blockers.
Students in Texas public schools are sitting ducks for sexual predators, claims an attorney focused on Texas education policy. blast.texasscorecard.com/t/d-l-vgiilk-i….
In school districts around the state, victims of sexual abuse and their parents are often isolated as districts work to put their public reputation ahead of notifying the public about predators on the payroll.
Legislation proposed in the Texas House this year to require notification of parents about allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of school employees went nowhere. Education attorney Janelle Davis said that without a mandate from the Legislature to notify parents about potential predators, school districts are able to cover up abuses.
I knew you would get push back for writing this, but I was pleasantly surprised at all the positive comments. After watching 'How to Change Your Mind', a Netflix documentary on the science of psychedelics in modern times, I've been on a quest to learn how the effects of psychedelics can enhance brain connectivity, allowing the different parts of the brain to fire simultaneously, open parts of the brain that may be over stimulating and offer the person freedom from closed off parts of the mind. You and your esssay have reinforced my quest. Meditation has got me through most of the hardest times in my life. But this trans thing with my child, lifted the darkness to unprecedented levels which calls for unprecedented ways of coping. I am lucky. My daughter is desisting. But this in itself takes a skill set I'm learning along the way. She is still anxious, depressed, lonely, confused and questioning. No one understands the desperate situation, the despair, the horror of having a ROGD child, except those with ROGD children. We'll do ANYTHING. Good luck Dad. I believe you are on the right journey.
Thank you for your beautiful and profound description of your meditation practice and the experiences with psychedelics. I have had a similar experience (albeit fleeting) but without using anything as powerful as you describe. I simply sat by the pool in the sun one day many years ago now and the reality around me seemed to meld into energy. Leaves on bushes pulsed with light the air around me was alive with life-force and my little dog walked past pulsing with energy and emanating what I can only describe as warmth, comfort, an almost velvety feeling to everything like floating in warm golden honey like fluid connected to everything. Even hours later that night the stars seemed so much closer and the night sky like a dark velvet cloak filled with wonder and calm and indescribably awesome beauty. One of the most profound experiences of my life which I’ve wanted to touch again ever since. So I get your experience completely!
I will now explore with my recently acquired therapist (due to the misery and fear created by my incredible 18 year old now very recently “Trans” daughter who I am terrified for as you are for your daughter. I am desperate for these delusional people at the Gender Clinic not to hurt her either. I long to help her explore her feelings and emotions and beliefs which have led her down this body and soul destroying path. You’ve helped me!
I am glad you have experienced healing, but I cannot recommend psychadelics whatsoever.
I think I would prefer to focus on a very telling comment about individuation. If this means the child should think of himself as a completely separate entity this is grossly misleading. We are social. We are meant to associate with others. Furthermore, our identity is necessarily wrapped up in our family relationships. This is _why_ troubled families are such a burden! A family should be loving, oriented together toward the good of all as well as the good of every member. If it is not, it becomes a cruel tyranny, where resentment and hatred envelop those on the bottom and self-interest becomes the rule of those at the top. But a parent who loves a child desires what is good for that child and does not desire that the child merely be an extension of his will. This is a fundamental human relationship.
In my mind, marriage really ought to be the first step in creating a new identity. Even then, it is better for everyone if the mother can rely on Grandpa and Grandma downstairs to keep an eye on the kids now and then. We find our identity in loving families. We see this even in that the Church uses the language of a loving family.
But that's not all. This has profound implications for a healthy society. A healthy society is made healthy insofar as it is like a loving family, a commonwealth. Each member serves the good of all, and indeed each other member.
I say all this because the talk of individuation in terms of personal identity (as well as in economic, social, political terms) is part of the cancer that rots away at the sense of self for people in the West. Personal identity, if it means individual identity, is what starves, isolates, and kills our children. If they are not told who they are, or if they are told they can be anything, they will not put down roots but drift---or grab on to whatever floats nearby. Do not just serve yourself, your own identity, your own quest for reality, your own truths and your own emotions. Serve and love those who rely on you, as water serves the acorn. If the water withholds itself from the acorn, the acorn will never grow---such is the power a parent has over a child, or a teacher over a student.
Again, this is not domineering. It should be a kind, gentle love, which earnestly seeks after the good of all and the good of each. We learn these lessons in the crucible of familial love. For healing the ills of our late liberal society, it would be best if we started by loving our families, establishing clans, and then tribes, and then the commonwealth for all.
I think we need to distinguish between individuation - which is a lifelong journey of discovering who we are - and individualism which can be a very selfish focus on 'me and mine' to the exclusion of all else. Let me put it this way: if I deal with my own trauma I can better serve my community.
I appreciate that you're trying to appreciate individuation apart from individualism, but I don't think it works like that. I don't see they are separable. Instead, I believe that we are interdependent upon each other. Just as we are acorns relying on the water given to us by others, we are water for other acorns. For this reason, cutting people off is only allowable in situations of abuse; cutting people off always causes harm---it's just permissible when it causes less harm than continued exposure.
For myself, it is connection which is healing me from my childhood difficulties, specifically the connection I have with my spouse in marriage. I don't think this is individuation. What is real about individuation is found in healthy relationships and what they do for us, and the lifelong relationships we have are all familial.
I think the healthiest relationships are those between people who know and understand themselves, so are not projecting onto the other person. Also, there is something to me about a person having value in themselves; it doesn't make them less available to others, but I am worthy of existence regardless of who I love and who loves me. Does that make sense? Of course we need other people, I wouldn't deny that.
I don't think value can be defined into existence. It is either there or not. Now, I do hold to the intrinsic value of every human being---but this is by religious revelation which posits a divine relationship!
As far as knowing yourself or not, I find that this process is found out, again, in community. I learn my flaws from seeing the look on the faces of others around me, their reactions to my selfishness. I don't see this as a solipsistic walkabout. Part of the reason I'm pushing so back on this idea is because the original post pretty much explicitly valorized that kind of experience. What if his kid is just using hormones and surgery the way he is using mushrooms? Cut off the world, think only of yourself, "actualize" or "manifest" or just plain go self-absorbed.
Basically, I don't know that we disagree all that much, but I do see vast disagreement between myself and the original post.
Thank you, for this opportunity to formulate my thoughts. It seems to me that you're objecting to the original post using drugs. Drugs (whether botanical or synthesised) can be used for many different purposes: to shut down pain, in many cases, but also to courageously confront one's inner demons. I see the poster as using them in the latter sense. In this way he is dealing with his pain from the past and is able to let go of it; and thus is better able to be present for his beloved daughter. I see that as a very positive, unselfish action.
Is this an ad? Is this an AI written ad? I'd be more inclined to consider this genuine, if there were no links to a product. Please consider not allowing links to products and services on this substack. It is an invaluable resource for parents and it is a shame for it to even appear as compromised.
Beautiful sharing ... I'm reminded of an ayahuasca experience I had in 2013. I was living at the time, just for a month, in a communal house in NYC. The young woman in the room next door was about to begin a medical transition into a man. At the time I had no idea what was happening to children, or how destructive, cultlike, ravenous, the trans movement was. It just felt a bit odd to me - she seemed so comfortable in herself, a beautiful woman with long dreadlocks, no makeup, who wore men's baggy clothes that looked so good on her.
But during the ayahuasca journey, I kept thinking of her, with this instinct of "NO .. NO ..." Don't do this to yourself. It seemed so viscerally awful. So opposite of anything natural, when the androgynous looking woman she was seemed so natural.
But I wasn't close enough to her to say anything, and I didn't. I ran into her a year or so later, and she looked more like a man. Actually, she seemed happy. Although who knows where she is now, and if she regrets becoming a medical patient for life. Or if she had a surgery go wrong and now has no ability to orgasm, or pee, or poop normally. She was an adult tho, in her 20's, when she transitioned. Perhaps she was one of the very few who are better off living as the sex they are not. I recognize that people like that do exist, although in this tragic push to medicalize any body discomfort, so many, so many more are being swept up and doing irreversible damage that they would never have chosen on their own if not for intense influence.
I've often thought back to that ayahuasca experience, as a foreshadowing of something I would later understand to be one of the most destructive forces on the planet (not medical transition itself, but the way it is pushed with no informed consent, with coordination between foundations, medical orgs, captured institutions, of course captured media, and tons of mental / emotional manipulation that destroys families and bodies).
There are people who benefit from medical transition. They're just a couple orders of magnitude from the people doing it now. So many of the FTM people I see in the detransition reddit, or celebrities relate sexual assault stories as major influences. The idea that noticing this makes you an evil person is absolute crap.
Dearest all……stress and trauma deplete magnesium in the body. Most people are deficient in magnesium…it can cause depression, anxiety and many other problems Epsom salt baths are life savers and if you do not have the time or do not enjoy baths there are topical magnesium oils….it really helps relax. This little discussed mineral assists in over 300 processes in the body. I also take magnesium Glycinate supplement…..
I will always link my teenage mental health issues to a poor diet and poor sleep regime. Unfortunately, these things plague children nowadays and are contributing to their instability.
Here is a book some may find helpful…it is so helpful that a pamphlet of its info is banned in Germany…. “Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult”
Thank you for this, just what I needed to read today. I appreciate hearing ways through this, it is so easy to focus on the pain; we need to help each other get through this.
Thank you! You are so brave to share this. I respect you so much. And I hope that your wife and daughter will realize how much you want to protect them. You are a great man!
I stumbled upon this cautionary tale, that some might find useful: " Hot Take: Psilocybin was the Biggest Mistake of My Life" https://medium.com/the-shadow/hot-take-psilocybin-was-the-biggest-mistake-of-my-life-f93cf6598974
One other thing: A few other commenters are focusing on the aspect that nature may hold the answer and will help to heal. I agree with this. I’m a desister and I find nature very healing.
I think it’s due to actualizing your physical bodily potential, as you walk, run, jump, touch, and move through the world. When you become confident in your physical abilities, there is little need to question your identity. Being online constantly, playing video games, controlling an avatar, watching films and anime, and being stationary can cause dissociation, in my experience, and can make you feel like your own body is a foreign thing, which can lead you to question whether this is really you, and your identity. The mind and body are one and the same. If one is sick, the answer may lie in caring for the other in order to heal, and caring for the body means giving your body a full range of healthy experiences, like being out in nature.
Thank you for sharing. I also had tears flowing while reading your experience in meditation in the wilderness. I have had similarly healing experiences with ketamine for my intense depression, and can attest that my heart was opened and my mind was at peace. Before ketamine, I had a very secular, scientific mindset, believing that emotions were divorced from material reality, and therefore shouldn’t count in decision-making. I thought only the calculable and measurable should matter, and that faith was useless. But after ketamine therapy, I began to understand the hopeful, loving intentions which those around me were trying to surround me with. My depression has begun to lift, and I now value love, faith, and hope much more. I see how the emotional isn’t at odds with the material; they are inseparable. I will now implement meditation to see how it works. Your story truly made me smile.
May your daughter and entire family be blessed, resilient, and healthy.
My doctor has suggested ketamine to me for depression and retractable chronic pain, but I'm really nervous to try it. How many times do you have to take ketamine? Was it the infusion you had? Ignore my questions if I'm getting too personal. Have a great weekend.
My experience with ketamine was beautiful, but I really wish I had been guided with therapy through my infusions (yes I had them intravenously). I asked for a guided talk therapy during the infusion, and the clinic said they didn’t do that and I would be fine. They recommended calming peaceful music to listen to. I had infusions twice a week for 6 weeks, or so. My last session was on my 29th birthday in 2021.
While I was fine during my trips, I still asked my wife to sit in the room with me, in silence. I nearly had two bad trips but I managed to quickly pull myself out of the negative and turn it into an exploration of empathy. I don’t know that everyone can do that alone. I have lucid dreams almost every time I sleep; I can turn nightmares into peaceful dreams, and I think my mental training played a part in my ability to steer the trips. Also, I wasn’t afraid of ego death and was able to let go very easily, while others say they struggle with that at first. Just know: You will come back to yourself. Let the ketamine work. By my last infusion, I felt I’d made a breakthrough in my depression and my eyes were overflowing with tears of gratitude. They gave me a small birthday cake as well. The clinic was great and very compassionate.
Immediately after a ketamine infusion, you will be very calm and have a feeling of absolute peace. You will also be unsteady on your feet, because it makes you want to sit still and observe everything. It will give you a fresh emotional perspective on everything.
I would recommend it, but only if you will be closely following up with a talk therapist during or after the ketamine. Everyone is different, so maybe my advice will not apply to you. As the original poster said, go in with and intention, and you will gain more benefits. I don’t mind answering any other questions about my own experience.
Thank you so much for your very thoughtful response. I really appreciate your candor. It sounds like your schedule is very similar to what was explained to me, with probable "booster" sessions in months following if needed. It is my understanding that the sessions will be supervised and include a mental health professional during the infusion. I have an appt with my GP next week, who is really advocating for it, and a follow up appt with my pain specialist doc in August, who is also advocating for it. You have given me some very helpful information and food for thought so again, thanks for sharing your experience. I know I have struggles with letting go and control during medical procedures. An anesthesiologist told me that while trying to sedate me for a procedure and it was in the doctor's report sent to my GP that I was very anxious and not willing to give up control to be put under lol. Maybe this is exactly what I need!
I started to cry while reading this, especially during the mother/grandmother laments, as not only have I experienced a similar “enhanced” enlightenment over 30 years ago (a beautiful occurrence I might add), but I’m currently dealing with an all-encompassing excruciating estrangement from my TiF offspring going on 5 years.
Thank you for sharing!!
Along with prayer, I have found mindfulness meditation very helpful too. It all helps me keep my shit together. I had not previously thought of myself as anxious. But turns out I am. 🤷🏼♀️
Along with prayer, I have found mindfulness meditation very helpful too. It all helps me keep my shit together. I had not previously thought of myself as anxious. But turns out I am. 🤷🏼♀️
Todays Texas Minute From Texas Scorecard!!! My top picks!
After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a ban on child gender mutilation procedures into law last month, the measure is now facing a lawsuit. blast.texasscorecard.com/t/d-l-vgiilk-i… that five families with gender-confused children, three medical professionals, and two LGBT organizations are suing the state to block implementation.
The new law protects children from being chemically castrated by puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and from receiving mutilative surgeries to “transition” them. It also prohibits public money from being indirectly or directly granted, paid, or distributed to any healthcare provider, medical school, or hospital that participates in these procedures.
One mother involved with the lawsuit said that after SB 14 was passed, she moved her 9-year-old son—who she claims “identifies” as a girl—out of Texas and split up her family to ensure the child could receive puberty blockers.
Students in Texas public schools are sitting ducks for sexual predators, claims an attorney focused on Texas education policy. blast.texasscorecard.com/t/d-l-vgiilk-i….
In school districts around the state, victims of sexual abuse and their parents are often isolated as districts work to put their public reputation ahead of notifying the public about predators on the payroll.
Legislation proposed in the Texas House this year to require notification of parents about allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of school employees went nowhere. Education attorney Janelle Davis said that without a mandate from the Legislature to notify parents about potential predators, school districts are able to cover up abuses.
I knew you would get push back for writing this, but I was pleasantly surprised at all the positive comments. After watching 'How to Change Your Mind', a Netflix documentary on the science of psychedelics in modern times, I've been on a quest to learn how the effects of psychedelics can enhance brain connectivity, allowing the different parts of the brain to fire simultaneously, open parts of the brain that may be over stimulating and offer the person freedom from closed off parts of the mind. You and your esssay have reinforced my quest. Meditation has got me through most of the hardest times in my life. But this trans thing with my child, lifted the darkness to unprecedented levels which calls for unprecedented ways of coping. I am lucky. My daughter is desisting. But this in itself takes a skill set I'm learning along the way. She is still anxious, depressed, lonely, confused and questioning. No one understands the desperate situation, the despair, the horror of having a ROGD child, except those with ROGD children. We'll do ANYTHING. Good luck Dad. I believe you are on the right journey.
Netflix🤣
Thank you for your beautiful and profound description of your meditation practice and the experiences with psychedelics. I have had a similar experience (albeit fleeting) but without using anything as powerful as you describe. I simply sat by the pool in the sun one day many years ago now and the reality around me seemed to meld into energy. Leaves on bushes pulsed with light the air around me was alive with life-force and my little dog walked past pulsing with energy and emanating what I can only describe as warmth, comfort, an almost velvety feeling to everything like floating in warm golden honey like fluid connected to everything. Even hours later that night the stars seemed so much closer and the night sky like a dark velvet cloak filled with wonder and calm and indescribably awesome beauty. One of the most profound experiences of my life which I’ve wanted to touch again ever since. So I get your experience completely!
I will now explore with my recently acquired therapist (due to the misery and fear created by my incredible 18 year old now very recently “Trans” daughter who I am terrified for as you are for your daughter. I am desperate for these delusional people at the Gender Clinic not to hurt her either. I long to help her explore her feelings and emotions and beliefs which have led her down this body and soul destroying path. You’ve helped me!
I am glad you have experienced healing, but I cannot recommend psychadelics whatsoever.
I think I would prefer to focus on a very telling comment about individuation. If this means the child should think of himself as a completely separate entity this is grossly misleading. We are social. We are meant to associate with others. Furthermore, our identity is necessarily wrapped up in our family relationships. This is _why_ troubled families are such a burden! A family should be loving, oriented together toward the good of all as well as the good of every member. If it is not, it becomes a cruel tyranny, where resentment and hatred envelop those on the bottom and self-interest becomes the rule of those at the top. But a parent who loves a child desires what is good for that child and does not desire that the child merely be an extension of his will. This is a fundamental human relationship.
In my mind, marriage really ought to be the first step in creating a new identity. Even then, it is better for everyone if the mother can rely on Grandpa and Grandma downstairs to keep an eye on the kids now and then. We find our identity in loving families. We see this even in that the Church uses the language of a loving family.
But that's not all. This has profound implications for a healthy society. A healthy society is made healthy insofar as it is like a loving family, a commonwealth. Each member serves the good of all, and indeed each other member.
I say all this because the talk of individuation in terms of personal identity (as well as in economic, social, political terms) is part of the cancer that rots away at the sense of self for people in the West. Personal identity, if it means individual identity, is what starves, isolates, and kills our children. If they are not told who they are, or if they are told they can be anything, they will not put down roots but drift---or grab on to whatever floats nearby. Do not just serve yourself, your own identity, your own quest for reality, your own truths and your own emotions. Serve and love those who rely on you, as water serves the acorn. If the water withholds itself from the acorn, the acorn will never grow---such is the power a parent has over a child, or a teacher over a student.
Again, this is not domineering. It should be a kind, gentle love, which earnestly seeks after the good of all and the good of each. We learn these lessons in the crucible of familial love. For healing the ills of our late liberal society, it would be best if we started by loving our families, establishing clans, and then tribes, and then the commonwealth for all.
I think we need to distinguish between individuation - which is a lifelong journey of discovering who we are - and individualism which can be a very selfish focus on 'me and mine' to the exclusion of all else. Let me put it this way: if I deal with my own trauma I can better serve my community.
I appreciate that you're trying to appreciate individuation apart from individualism, but I don't think it works like that. I don't see they are separable. Instead, I believe that we are interdependent upon each other. Just as we are acorns relying on the water given to us by others, we are water for other acorns. For this reason, cutting people off is only allowable in situations of abuse; cutting people off always causes harm---it's just permissible when it causes less harm than continued exposure.
For myself, it is connection which is healing me from my childhood difficulties, specifically the connection I have with my spouse in marriage. I don't think this is individuation. What is real about individuation is found in healthy relationships and what they do for us, and the lifelong relationships we have are all familial.
I think the healthiest relationships are those between people who know and understand themselves, so are not projecting onto the other person. Also, there is something to me about a person having value in themselves; it doesn't make them less available to others, but I am worthy of existence regardless of who I love and who loves me. Does that make sense? Of course we need other people, I wouldn't deny that.
You are very gracious. Thank you.
I don't think value can be defined into existence. It is either there or not. Now, I do hold to the intrinsic value of every human being---but this is by religious revelation which posits a divine relationship!
As far as knowing yourself or not, I find that this process is found out, again, in community. I learn my flaws from seeing the look on the faces of others around me, their reactions to my selfishness. I don't see this as a solipsistic walkabout. Part of the reason I'm pushing so back on this idea is because the original post pretty much explicitly valorized that kind of experience. What if his kid is just using hormones and surgery the way he is using mushrooms? Cut off the world, think only of yourself, "actualize" or "manifest" or just plain go self-absorbed.
Basically, I don't know that we disagree all that much, but I do see vast disagreement between myself and the original post.
Thank you, for this opportunity to formulate my thoughts. It seems to me that you're objecting to the original post using drugs. Drugs (whether botanical or synthesised) can be used for many different purposes: to shut down pain, in many cases, but also to courageously confront one's inner demons. I see the poster as using them in the latter sense. In this way he is dealing with his pain from the past and is able to let go of it; and thus is better able to be present for his beloved daughter. I see that as a very positive, unselfish action.
Is this an ad? Is this an AI written ad? I'd be more inclined to consider this genuine, if there were no links to a product. Please consider not allowing links to products and services on this substack. It is an invaluable resource for parents and it is a shame for it to even appear as compromised.
Beautiful sharing ... I'm reminded of an ayahuasca experience I had in 2013. I was living at the time, just for a month, in a communal house in NYC. The young woman in the room next door was about to begin a medical transition into a man. At the time I had no idea what was happening to children, or how destructive, cultlike, ravenous, the trans movement was. It just felt a bit odd to me - she seemed so comfortable in herself, a beautiful woman with long dreadlocks, no makeup, who wore men's baggy clothes that looked so good on her.
But during the ayahuasca journey, I kept thinking of her, with this instinct of "NO .. NO ..." Don't do this to yourself. It seemed so viscerally awful. So opposite of anything natural, when the androgynous looking woman she was seemed so natural.
But I wasn't close enough to her to say anything, and I didn't. I ran into her a year or so later, and she looked more like a man. Actually, she seemed happy. Although who knows where she is now, and if she regrets becoming a medical patient for life. Or if she had a surgery go wrong and now has no ability to orgasm, or pee, or poop normally. She was an adult tho, in her 20's, when she transitioned. Perhaps she was one of the very few who are better off living as the sex they are not. I recognize that people like that do exist, although in this tragic push to medicalize any body discomfort, so many, so many more are being swept up and doing irreversible damage that they would never have chosen on their own if not for intense influence.
I've often thought back to that ayahuasca experience, as a foreshadowing of something I would later understand to be one of the most destructive forces on the planet (not medical transition itself, but the way it is pushed with no informed consent, with coordination between foundations, medical orgs, captured institutions, of course captured media, and tons of mental / emotional manipulation that destroys families and bodies).
Thank you for this sharing ...
There are people who benefit from medical transition. They're just a couple orders of magnitude from the people doing it now. So many of the FTM people I see in the detransition reddit, or celebrities relate sexual assault stories as major influences. The idea that noticing this makes you an evil person is absolute crap.
Dearest all……stress and trauma deplete magnesium in the body. Most people are deficient in magnesium…it can cause depression, anxiety and many other problems Epsom salt baths are life savers and if you do not have the time or do not enjoy baths there are topical magnesium oils….it really helps relax. This little discussed mineral assists in over 300 processes in the body. I also take magnesium Glycinate supplement…..
I will always link my teenage mental health issues to a poor diet and poor sleep regime. Unfortunately, these things plague children nowadays and are contributing to their instability.
Yes, much damage can be done with insufficient nutrition.
Here is a book some may find helpful…it is so helpful that a pamphlet of its info is banned in Germany…. “Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult”