Yes, after six years of not receiving the gift I hoped for, over this past year I finally more or less accepted reality. Don't get me wrong, I did not become an "affirming" parent -- my husband and I continued calling our daughter by her given name and consistently using she/her pronouns. I continued to send her occasional news stories a…
Yes, after six years of not receiving the gift I hoped for, over this past year I finally more or less accepted reality. Don't get me wrong, I did not become an "affirming" parent -- my husband and I continued calling our daughter by her given name and consistently using she/her pronouns. I continued to send her occasional news stories about health risks of testosterone, etc. But we stopped fighting about it, and on the inside, what I was doing was finally leaving the matter in God's hands. And trying to keep on growing as a human being myself. Now, just two days ago, my daughter said she had decided to go off testosterone. She hurried to say she was not abandoning her "trans" identity, and that she still intended to have surgery and change her name someday, so it was still not the gift I wanted with all its bells and whistles, but my husband and I privately celebrated this small this ray of light, this incremental sign of maturation . . .
Yes, after six years of not receiving the gift I hoped for, over this past year I finally more or less accepted reality. Don't get me wrong, I did not become an "affirming" parent -- my husband and I continued calling our daughter by her given name and consistently using she/her pronouns. I continued to send her occasional news stories about health risks of testosterone, etc. But we stopped fighting about it, and on the inside, what I was doing was finally leaving the matter in God's hands. And trying to keep on growing as a human being myself. Now, just two days ago, my daughter said she had decided to go off testosterone. She hurried to say she was not abandoning her "trans" identity, and that she still intended to have surgery and change her name someday, so it was still not the gift I wanted with all its bells and whistles, but my husband and I privately celebrated this small this ray of light, this incremental sign of maturation . . .