The Third Path: Supporting My Trans Identified Daughter by Focusing on Connection

Republished The Third Path: Supporting My Trans Identified Daughter by Focusing on Connection with permission from The StoicMom Project.

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I am the mother to a 23-year-old daughter who recently adopted a trans identity. She had been hinting at it for a while, so I was not surprised. But I was devastated.

As a mother, I knew I was always going to love my daughter, but I struggled with whether to affirm or reject her new identity. After much difficulty, I realized there is a third path. The path of connection.

I had initially assumed there were only two choices — affirm or reject. Perhaps my assumption grew out of the tendency to see only binaries at first, without seeing more nuanced alternatives. Or perhaps it was the plaintive look in my daughter’s eyes, hoping I would celebrate this new person she was becoming. She actually asked me for a cake and balloons to welcome her new masculine identity, as though she were birthing a new person. But I knew, in my body, that I could not create a party for something that felt inauthentic. And that gut feeling was an important sign from my innermost self that led me toward a third path.

When I did not start using her new name, she started pulling away. I could see that she was sadly resigned to what she saw as my limitations; she didn’t return my calls or my texts, and when we did speak briefly, she was cold and perfunctory. I realized that she was toying with the decision to estrange herself from me; she mentioned boundaries and things she would not tolerate in her life. That started me thinking about my own boundaries, and my values.

I am someone who values authenticity and integrity. For me, being authentic means being truthful to my thoughts and honoring my emotions, while trying to understand them. Integrity, for me, means that I live by a moral compass. And honesty is a lodestar, a value without which there can be no authenticity or integrity. How can we trust ourselves or others if we are not honest in our dealings or relationships? Finally, I value compassion; we are all human beings who suffer, among other experiences, as part of the universal human condition.

So, I faced an impossible choice: my values or my daughter. But it was a false choice.

New possibilities began to open when her living situation changed, and she had to move in with me for a while. That is when I started living and practicing my values.

We started having conversations about gender, the self, and how we show up in the world. Although these conversations were strained and difficult, I found myself being authentic and compassionate. I shared my belief that being a woman is an expansive experience, how we are not locked in by stereotypes, and how we can be authentic to our own sense of self, regardless of what others think. To me, whatever a woman feels is part of being a woman, which I celebrate as ultimately positive and empowering. My daughter shared her sense that the word “woman” does not apply to her. She understands she is female, but she loves that the trans identity is available to her. In a quiet moment, she acknowledged that it might be her mood disorder that makes her feel that she doesn’t have a self, that she is untethered, and she feels the trans identity is a positive way for her to construct a self. She sees the trans identity as beautiful progress for the human experience.

Looking back, I think our willingness to talk honestly and listen respectfully contributed to a sense of trust. We have both come to accept that we live with different sets of ideas. We agree that our relationship does not require a meeting of the minds on these issues. It helps that she wants a connection with me, maybe as much as I want a connection with her.

So, what does the path of connection look like for us? We generally avoid talking about gender. I use her new chosen name, out of respect for her preference, even though it’s painful for me. While I do not use masculine pronouns, I try to avoid feminine pronouns; she tolerates the occasional slip, though sometimes she gets annoyed or angry, depending on her mood. I listen to her thoughts about her future career. I help her look professional by suggesting some new shirts. She sends me pictures of herself in a spiffy new button down. I can tell she is wearing a binder, but I say nothing and share instead how super she looks. I don’t recoil from her new tattoo; instead, I say lightly, “Cool design, though I would never get one.” She calls me for advice on a friend in need. She writes me a heartfelt note on my birthday. She knows I’m doing the best I can. And I think she is doing the best she can too.

It’s important to note that I did not set out on the path of connection knowing what it was. I have been as lost as anyone, and at times, experienced what many call a dark night of the soul. I grew toward this third path mostly through trial and error, trying to be authentic to myself and compassionate to my daughter at the same time.

A key moment for me was discovering StoicMom. Her ideas about re-orienting myself to my situation felt like a window opening to a new world. Her approach validated my experience, and it also offered realistic strategies for managing my experience. Much of this approach has been helpful, and I was most empowered by certain ideas:

• I am not responsible for my adult daughter’s happiness or her experience of life, only my own.

• I have the choice and the opportunity to grow into a fuller version of myself as the mother my daughter needs right now.

• My own despair is an essential part of the challenge that life is presenting to me. It’s up to me to be curious about it, to observe it, and to ask what it can teach me. I’m still working on this. For now, I imagine that despair is my invitation to become a stronger, better mother, which helps lessen its power so I can lean into the kind of life that I want with my daughter.

Of course, this approach is not easy. It takes a ton of discipline, practice, and support. And after sitting deeply with this approach, I decided to join the SMP Community. There, I found like-minded mothers looking for growth-oriented ways to navigate the challenge of parenting a trans-identified child. Knowing I could check in with these mothers provided a kind of anchor during my darkest times; it helped me see not only that I was not alone, but also that there are no easy solutions in this circumstance. That is, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. I recognize now that I needed to understand myself, love myself, and, yes, trust myself, in order to be the mother my daughter needs me to be.

The growth that I experienced, with the help of the SMP, situated me to recognize an alternative to affirming or rejecting my daughter’s trans identity. This third path, the path of connection, requires me to tolerate the choices my daughter makes, even harmful ones, something I previously did not think I could manage. It also requires me to accept that I need to place my own needs (to be persuasive, to be right, to take charge) behind the needs of the relationship. Putting the relationship first means I can hold to my values, including compassion, and it also increases the likelihood that I can maintain some influence on her decisions in the future.

I still experience difficult, sometimes crippling, emotions. Anger that my daughter is rejecting womanhood. Guilt that I caused this circumstance by doing this or that when she was growing up. And grief for her innocence, for who she used to be, for the woman I had hoped she would become. When these negative emotions come up for me now, I observe them, I allow myself to feel them, and then I think of my relationship with my daughter, and I’m grateful.

Focusing on our connection is a way to transcend the pain of this circumstance, to remember daily that nothing in life is guaranteed, and to be true to my daughter and myself. Becoming more sensitive to the needs of the relationship helps bring us closer. And I practice gratitude, knowing that our relationship, like any loving relationship, requires ongoing effort, patience, and generosity, from both of us.

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