In this quiet moment, after all the rush and celebration of Christmas, I am allowing myself to grieve the absence of my trans-identifying son today. I grieve every step of the three year trans-pathway he’s been on, from “I’m non-binary, call me new name and they/them or else…” to starting estrogen a year ago, to threats and accusations and going no contact in April. This is our second Christmas without him. We acknowledge his absence and how we miss him, but we don’t dwell there too long. As a family we gather and enjoy each other’s company, and for that I am extremely thankful. I recognize it’s not always this way - siblings and other family members often become allies to the trans-identifying person.
I am also feeling thankful because I have learned to compartmentalize my feelings and grief. I’m so grateful for that ability - I could not remain sane or functional any other way. I have moments of overwhelming grief, early in the morning, when I remember again that I don’t know where he is, that he doesn’t want contact, that he’s harming his body, that he’s so caught up in this identity and cult that he has cut off everyone who has loved him. But I have other kids, I need to function for their sake and for my husband’s sake and I’m so thankful for God’s strength and grace and joy to continue to live my life. I can set aside my grief for periods of time, come out from under the shadows and experience joy with my family.
He’s not forgotten, I pray for my son every day. I do my best to hold onto hope that the prodigal will return. (Sometimes it seems so hopeless.) I do my best to live in a place of gratitude over the good years we had with him and over the present joy of the rest of our kids living their lives.
I do feel angry with him at times, for making agreements with the systems, the people, who have preyed upon him, deceived and recruited him. I do my best to not linger there too long, but to forgive. It’s an active struggle.
We love our son. We miss him - the kind, creative, gifted young man with the beautiful bass voice. We continue to pray for his return. God is my strength, my joy, my only hope.
Praying for all PITT families experiencing this complicated grief, may you be comforted and strengthened, may you continue to hold onto hope. Never give up! Jesus, Light of the world, overcomes the darkness.
Is it because we parents, moms especially, want to love. And our love is being thwarted by a distant, selfish or wayward child? One of my children doesn’t call, doesn’t initiate communication (with parents or siblings). Her siblings call her to keep up, I text to keep up. But she is socially handicapped by choice, focus on herself and selfishness.
I know of friends who have students over during the holidays, I have a friend who rents out rooms in her house and they become like a family. Others volunteer at the homeless program.
I think finding worthy people to love helps. Maybe someday our children will grow up?
An important article from PITT {Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans) that delves into the disenfranchised grief parents of trans identitying children experience. It is a living hell. My daughter has desisted, but we live in a state of hypervigilance, on tenderhooks constantly searching for clues the poison may be seeping back in. I wouldn't wish the mental torture on my worst enemy. I found solace in groups from Our Duty, Bayswater, and with people I've got to know such as the brilliant @EDIJester and the amazing @James Esses who've both helped me more than they will ever know. This Christmas I send love and compassion to all the other parents in our position. You are not alone.
This piece hasn't lost its resonance since first posted a few years ago.
Christianity is a religion for the suffering. Its central symbol is, after all, the cross...an instrument of suffering. Even God's own Son whose birth we celebrate at this time of year was not exempt.
Yet Christianity's central message is that suffering...like the cross...is not the end of the story. In fact, one of the beatitudes preached by Jesus in a famous sermon speaks to this: "Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted."
This was the power of Christianity and why it spread like wildfire throughout the Western world. It was from the first a religion for slaves, outcasts, the lowly, the rejected, the suffering, the despairing. In short, all of us.
There is a catch of course. To belong you need faith...and you need repentance. You don't get to make your own rules. You live by God's rules.
As a father of six who never had to deal with the nightmare of the Gender Cult, which is at its poisonous heart a total inversion of God's rules, my prayers, especially at this time of year, go out to those caught up in this madness. I can understand the emotional and spiritual agony of experiencing the living death of a child.
Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of the best friend of one of my daughters who had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. She was a 39-year old woman, devout Christian, mother of three young children, and very close to my daughter's family whose own children called her Aunt.
Life is good...but it can also be hard...and difficult to understand. Bad things happen. Good people suffer. We don't know why...but our faith tells us there is a reason...and ultimately a happy ending.
As a man without children, my comments are sometimes glib and shallow, for which I apologize. For example, I do wonder sometimes why parents of adult children are so focussed on them -- but that probably comes from my experience with my mother, who wasn't particularly motherly but nonetheless had seven children, enough so that she could regard some of them as expendable -- like me (the gay son) and my sister (the daughter who shaved her head and became a monk).
My response to trans people is mostly anger at their presumptuousness. I sometimes watch those fake court shows on TV (yes, I know they are pretty low-brow), and in just the last week there was one litigant (a trans woman who hadn't had bottom surgery) who was suing a cosmetologist because she wouldn't wax the trans woman's male genitals. This trans woman passed well, and you couldn't tell that she was a man. But her insensitive attitude towards the cosmetologist was inexcusable. Just because you have an unusual personal identity doesn't make you special. Being gay is getting ME absolutely nothing!
Trans people, I've noticed, react to any kind of insensitivity towards their special condition as if we were all cave men. Well, I save my sensitivity for people in wheel chairs, or elderly people with canes; but a man who feels some inner compulsion to dress up like a woman inspires in me the remark, "Why are you pretending to be something you aren't?"
Then there was another trans woman who was getting heat at a woman's spa because her male lump was visible (not the trans woman who recently created a ruckus in California). This trans woman passed fairly well too, but she had gotten her lips plumped up and enlarge, and she looked so odd that I ended up staring at her as if she were a freak. People like that make me think that a lot of trans women are just obsessed with looking glamorous, and it's not enough for them to simply dress up like drag queens.
[I don't want to hear any criticisms for using female pronouns above. If a trans woman passes well, and I am seeing "female", I tend to just write what I see.]
In each of these "court" cases, the fake judge ruled against the trans woman, but still felt compelled to tell her she was a "pioneer" or "ground-breaker". Puke.
They aren't necessarily obsessed with looking glamorous for the sake of looking glamorous - many trans identified men have autogynephilia - they're sexually aroused by the idea of being a woman. That's what drives the overexaggerated, surrealistically feminine appearances, the extreme surgeries, the miniskirts, fishnet stockings and high heels. They're seeking constant arousal, which is why we now understand that it's unsafe for them to be in women's intimate spaces. But yes, they do feel their "special condition" entitles them to be insulated from criticism and to many special rights at the expense of others' rights.
You may not want to hear criticism of your use of wrong-sex pronouns, but you are getting it anyway. It's very hypocritical, a weak and cowardly nod to the "be kind" tribe. (Or some sort of pseudo-intellectuallism, take your pick) Thankfully, my own daughter desisted a while ago but I remember the anger, the rage I felt every time someone referred to her as a "he" when she was still in the throes of it. I am not a spokesperson for this group but I am pretty sure none of the parents here want our children to be referred to with wrong sex pronouns - no matter how well they "pass". It's still wrong and it keeps the lie going.
I'm so sorry, GenderRealistMom, but you are wrong on all points. I told you what my motivation was, but you chose to ignore it. "If a trans woman passes well, and I am seeing 'female', I tend to just write what I see." That's what I'm doing. I am not making "nods" to the "be kind" tribe. I am choosing to be myself, and to react to the world like myself, and I am choosing not to be you because, well, I'm not you and I don't like you.
Debbie Hayton, a trans woman, points out that for thousands of years people simply looked at each other and reacted to what their eyes told them was true. The two trans woman I saw on TV passed very well, though one of them had turned her lips into an eyesore. If they function like women in society, and look like women, who am I to be obvious and point out that they are men when everybody already knows that. I don't need to spell it out to please sticks in the mud like you.
So, off you go. Find someone else that you agree with to criticize. Anti-trans activists like you who want to argue with other anti-trans activists are every bit as bad as the pro-trans activists are. Well, nothing may be worse than a pro-trans activist, but you come close.
Thank you so much for this re-post!
In this quiet moment, after all the rush and celebration of Christmas, I am allowing myself to grieve the absence of my trans-identifying son today. I grieve every step of the three year trans-pathway he’s been on, from “I’m non-binary, call me new name and they/them or else…” to starting estrogen a year ago, to threats and accusations and going no contact in April. This is our second Christmas without him. We acknowledge his absence and how we miss him, but we don’t dwell there too long. As a family we gather and enjoy each other’s company, and for that I am extremely thankful. I recognize it’s not always this way - siblings and other family members often become allies to the trans-identifying person.
I am also feeling thankful because I have learned to compartmentalize my feelings and grief. I’m so grateful for that ability - I could not remain sane or functional any other way. I have moments of overwhelming grief, early in the morning, when I remember again that I don’t know where he is, that he doesn’t want contact, that he’s harming his body, that he’s so caught up in this identity and cult that he has cut off everyone who has loved him. But I have other kids, I need to function for their sake and for my husband’s sake and I’m so thankful for God’s strength and grace and joy to continue to live my life. I can set aside my grief for periods of time, come out from under the shadows and experience joy with my family.
He’s not forgotten, I pray for my son every day. I do my best to hold onto hope that the prodigal will return. (Sometimes it seems so hopeless.) I do my best to live in a place of gratitude over the good years we had with him and over the present joy of the rest of our kids living their lives.
I do feel angry with him at times, for making agreements with the systems, the people, who have preyed upon him, deceived and recruited him. I do my best to not linger there too long, but to forgive. It’s an active struggle.
We love our son. We miss him - the kind, creative, gifted young man with the beautiful bass voice. We continue to pray for his return. God is my strength, my joy, my only hope.
Praying for all PITT families experiencing this complicated grief, may you be comforted and strengthened, may you continue to hold onto hope. Never give up! Jesus, Light of the world, overcomes the darkness.
Is it because we parents, moms especially, want to love. And our love is being thwarted by a distant, selfish or wayward child? One of my children doesn’t call, doesn’t initiate communication (with parents or siblings). Her siblings call her to keep up, I text to keep up. But she is socially handicapped by choice, focus on herself and selfishness.
I know of friends who have students over during the holidays, I have a friend who rents out rooms in her house and they become like a family. Others volunteer at the homeless program.
I think finding worthy people to love helps. Maybe someday our children will grow up?
An important article from PITT {Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans) that delves into the disenfranchised grief parents of trans identitying children experience. It is a living hell. My daughter has desisted, but we live in a state of hypervigilance, on tenderhooks constantly searching for clues the poison may be seeping back in. I wouldn't wish the mental torture on my worst enemy. I found solace in groups from Our Duty, Bayswater, and with people I've got to know such as the brilliant @EDIJester and the amazing @James Esses who've both helped me more than they will ever know. This Christmas I send love and compassion to all the other parents in our position. You are not alone.
This piece hasn't lost its resonance since first posted a few years ago.
Christianity is a religion for the suffering. Its central symbol is, after all, the cross...an instrument of suffering. Even God's own Son whose birth we celebrate at this time of year was not exempt.
Yet Christianity's central message is that suffering...like the cross...is not the end of the story. In fact, one of the beatitudes preached by Jesus in a famous sermon speaks to this: "Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted."
This was the power of Christianity and why it spread like wildfire throughout the Western world. It was from the first a religion for slaves, outcasts, the lowly, the rejected, the suffering, the despairing. In short, all of us.
There is a catch of course. To belong you need faith...and you need repentance. You don't get to make your own rules. You live by God's rules.
As a father of six who never had to deal with the nightmare of the Gender Cult, which is at its poisonous heart a total inversion of God's rules, my prayers, especially at this time of year, go out to those caught up in this madness. I can understand the emotional and spiritual agony of experiencing the living death of a child.
Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of the best friend of one of my daughters who had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. She was a 39-year old woman, devout Christian, mother of three young children, and very close to my daughter's family whose own children called her Aunt.
Life is good...but it can also be hard...and difficult to understand. Bad things happen. Good people suffer. We don't know why...but our faith tells us there is a reason...and ultimately a happy ending.
Beautiful sentiments.
As a man without children, my comments are sometimes glib and shallow, for which I apologize. For example, I do wonder sometimes why parents of adult children are so focussed on them -- but that probably comes from my experience with my mother, who wasn't particularly motherly but nonetheless had seven children, enough so that she could regard some of them as expendable -- like me (the gay son) and my sister (the daughter who shaved her head and became a monk).
My response to trans people is mostly anger at their presumptuousness. I sometimes watch those fake court shows on TV (yes, I know they are pretty low-brow), and in just the last week there was one litigant (a trans woman who hadn't had bottom surgery) who was suing a cosmetologist because she wouldn't wax the trans woman's male genitals. This trans woman passed well, and you couldn't tell that she was a man. But her insensitive attitude towards the cosmetologist was inexcusable. Just because you have an unusual personal identity doesn't make you special. Being gay is getting ME absolutely nothing!
Trans people, I've noticed, react to any kind of insensitivity towards their special condition as if we were all cave men. Well, I save my sensitivity for people in wheel chairs, or elderly people with canes; but a man who feels some inner compulsion to dress up like a woman inspires in me the remark, "Why are you pretending to be something you aren't?"
Then there was another trans woman who was getting heat at a woman's spa because her male lump was visible (not the trans woman who recently created a ruckus in California). This trans woman passed fairly well too, but she had gotten her lips plumped up and enlarge, and she looked so odd that I ended up staring at her as if she were a freak. People like that make me think that a lot of trans women are just obsessed with looking glamorous, and it's not enough for them to simply dress up like drag queens.
[I don't want to hear any criticisms for using female pronouns above. If a trans woman passes well, and I am seeing "female", I tend to just write what I see.]
In each of these "court" cases, the fake judge ruled against the trans woman, but still felt compelled to tell her she was a "pioneer" or "ground-breaker". Puke.
They aren't necessarily obsessed with looking glamorous for the sake of looking glamorous - many trans identified men have autogynephilia - they're sexually aroused by the idea of being a woman. That's what drives the overexaggerated, surrealistically feminine appearances, the extreme surgeries, the miniskirts, fishnet stockings and high heels. They're seeking constant arousal, which is why we now understand that it's unsafe for them to be in women's intimate spaces. But yes, they do feel their "special condition" entitles them to be insulated from criticism and to many special rights at the expense of others' rights.
You may not want to hear criticism of your use of wrong-sex pronouns, but you are getting it anyway. It's very hypocritical, a weak and cowardly nod to the "be kind" tribe. (Or some sort of pseudo-intellectuallism, take your pick) Thankfully, my own daughter desisted a while ago but I remember the anger, the rage I felt every time someone referred to her as a "he" when she was still in the throes of it. I am not a spokesperson for this group but I am pretty sure none of the parents here want our children to be referred to with wrong sex pronouns - no matter how well they "pass". It's still wrong and it keeps the lie going.
I'm so sorry, GenderRealistMom, but you are wrong on all points. I told you what my motivation was, but you chose to ignore it. "If a trans woman passes well, and I am seeing 'female', I tend to just write what I see." That's what I'm doing. I am not making "nods" to the "be kind" tribe. I am choosing to be myself, and to react to the world like myself, and I am choosing not to be you because, well, I'm not you and I don't like you.
Debbie Hayton, a trans woman, points out that for thousands of years people simply looked at each other and reacted to what their eyes told them was true. The two trans woman I saw on TV passed very well, though one of them had turned her lips into an eyesore. If they function like women in society, and look like women, who am I to be obvious and point out that they are men when everybody already knows that. I don't need to spell it out to please sticks in the mud like you.
So, off you go. Find someone else that you agree with to criticize. Anti-trans activists like you who want to argue with other anti-trans activists are every bit as bad as the pro-trans activists are. Well, nothing may be worse than a pro-trans activist, but you come close.