Psychotherapists or...Psychics?

About a month ago, just a week before he went back to college for his sophomore year, my handsome, smart, creative son told me and my husband that he was thinking he should "be a girl and consider taking hormones". What can I say? We were, frankly, devastated. How could it be that our perfectly healthy young man was unhappy with his body and was even considering following this cult-like madness? Wasn't he too smart for all of this nonsense? Didn't we raise him to love and value his own body and mind? 

Thinking back on it, the signs were all there—he had grown his hair longer and experimented with adding a few items of “women's” clothing to his wardrobe. But in the context of our artsy musician son, we read all this as attempts to differentiate and express himself creatively, so we hadn’t been too concerned. His interesting fashion choices didn’t strike us as alarming or even out of character. He was still a typical 19-year-old boy in all other respects, with a shockingly messy room, eating like a horse, needing reminders to shower, a line up of past girlfriends...the list goes on.

I also can’t say that I wasn’t warned. They say lightning doesn’t strike twice, but for the past three years I have experienced, alongside my sister, the pain and agony of coping with a trans-identified son. My nephew, thankfully, has been happily desisted for over a year but through my family’s experience I knew firsthand that gender ideology was everywhere and could infect any family, even mine. Somehow, despite all this, my head was firmly in the sand. I wasn’t able to read the tea leaves or to head this off with my own son. Until it happens to your very own child, I don’t think you can truly grasp the gravity of the situation. 

So here I was. I had ignored the signs and neglected the advice of my sister to be on guard. I thought I was different, that logic and reason would prevail for me. But no, I was not that special. My son, under my very nose, had joined a trans-humanist religious movement and was being swept away to self-sacrifice.

I was in a grieving, worried state of mind. I felt all the things: fear, panic, self-doubt, sadness, hopelessness… It. Was. Awful. We had a couple of heart-to-heart talks with him and told him we were greatly concerned about his interest in gender identity, and especially concerned about his stated interest in medicalization. We confronted him with what was, to us, incontrovertible evidence of the non-scientific, pseudo-religious nature of gender ideology.  We pleaded with him not to take hormones. At the end of our cajoling, to our great relief, he agreed to give it some more thought and not to take any immediate steps—but it was obvious that his words were only out of love and respect for us, not because we’d convinced him with our logic.

We spent the next week living our lives; going to work and packing for college and attempting to act like everything was normal while, beneath the surface, my whole world felt like it was crumbling. 

Then he was gone, back at college, and I was left alone with no control and very little ability to influence. I felt lost and untethered—I just didn’t know what to do next. After all what COULD I do? I started with all the expected things—checking on him pretty much every day, telling him how much I love him and support him in all the ways that I think are healthy. And of course, like all PITT parents, I dove headlong down the rabbit hole, researching and learning about gender ideology, and arming myself with resources and knowledge (thank you, PITT!). I talked to my sister, with whom, unfortunately for both of us, I now had something new in common. I meditated and went running. I prayed in accordance with my Jewish faith, and tried praying to the Universe too.  You name it, I tried it. But it was all so… unsatisfying somehow. Where was my closure? Where were my answers? 

That’s when I did something that even I knew was pretty wacky—I went for a psychic reading. 

And you know what? It was kind of awesome.

What I heard sent shivers down my spine—it seemed specific and relevant, even though I told this woman very little. Here’s what I “learned”:

The psychic reader told me that she doesn’t see a long, dark path for my son. She said that things are in chaos now for him and he is like a toddler going through a tantrum, but things will shift for him towards the end of the year, and he will eventually “wake up”. She said he is groggy and needs to detox. He may need to come home to escape something toxic at his school, and that would be a good thing for him. That there may be a person who is influencing him, and that may be the source of his confusion (he does have a trans-friend at school). And that I should be patient and be a supportive anchor that he can find comfort in when he is ready.  She told me he was going to be okay, and this problem would not continue for two years, but could resolve as quickly as two months from now!

Is any of this true? Does it even matter if it’s true or if it isn’t? I can tell you what it did do: It got me through the week and provided me with just a smidge of comfort that I didn’t find anywhere else. The psychic told me that my son is going to be okay—and I’m choosing to believe it. When I think about it, I almost feel like my experiment with the paranormal is like fighting fire with fire. After all, I now know that some people believe with all their hearts and minds that there is a “gender identity” that lives within each of our bodies and that, sometimes, this “gender identity” gets placed (by a higher being?) in a sex-mismatched body. To me, that’s crazy—it’s a non-evidence based belief system. Is it any crazier to go to a psychic and choose to believe that some random lady can see into my future and my son’s and give me magical answers? 

I haven’t yet told my husband about my voyage into the supernatural realm, mainly because I don’t want him to think I’ve gone off the deep-end. I didn’t even admit it to my sister for over a week, and we talk almost every day about our concerns over gender ideology! But now I’m thinking—if it helped me, maybe I should pass the idea along to my fellow-PITTers. Maybe a psychic reading would make you feel better too? Clearly there are crazier ideas out there and many of our children are acting on them!  And—maybe the psychics are more worthy of our money than the doctors and therapists who mostly have made things so much worse. At least the psychics tell us what WE want to hear for a change! To me that was money and time well spent! 

I’m betting you’ve all done some crazy things too that you hoped would bring you some sanity. I’m willing to pull out all the stops to help my son without losing my own mind along the way. Aren’t you?