The Unfinished Parable

I’m struggling with something I am ashamed to be struggling with, so I am looking for the catharsis of confession.

By way of backstory, my daughter identifies as a man. Christmas was the last time I saw her and she was clearly a mess. She’s still on our insurance so I know that since starting on testosterone she had been prescribed a cascade of medications to manage the side effects. (SSRIs, benzos, sedatives, antipsychotics - the usual dangerous cocktails). Her coping skills were tanked and you could tell at Christmas she could barely handle being out of her house. Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s, she blocked every single member of her family. I texted every day for a month, determined not to give up on her. Then, I joined Substack to connect with other families who were in this same boat.

I changed. I stopped viewing her the same. To protect myself from the sting of her rejection, I stopped seeing her as my daughter and started seeing her as the grotesque ideology that took away my daughter. When people would ask about her, I would no longer lie or protect her - I would say she is doing terribly and the trans cult is ruining her life. And it was true - even by Christmas she was telling us she was “disabled” needed a lifetime of government assistance and hadn’t had a job since spring of 2024. The testosterone was ruining her health and the cascade of side effects was disabling her. This was the story I lived in, to process and grieve my daughter. I thought about it every single day, turning my loss into an angry wall of “Guess it sucks to suck.”

Over the last six months, every other family member has been unblocked except me. I get that. I loom largest. I really was the one closest with her. I was the most vocal about the dangers of this lifestyle. My career is closely involved with de-prescribing medications, so I also intimately understood the side effects of the meds she was taking. The implied “I told you so” would scream in her ears with me.

And I am female. Her female example. I know the exact traumatic event that I experienced that drove her away from ever wanting to be a woman.

But now she wants to come to a family dinner…

….

And I’m not happy. *Exhales*

There is a story in the Bible about the prodigal son. He turns his life to crap and comes back to his father’s house. The older son, heir to everything is hurt because everyone is celebrating and he can’t find it in his heart to celebrate too. His dad rightly points out that the older son has EVERYTHING - competence, an inheritance, a life that’s not a mess, and that the older son needs to celebrate this return. The story is enduring because both sons need to repent.

What the story never says is what happens after the feast. Does the prodigal son really return? Or does he get his belly full and leave again? Does the prodigal ever change? Become a capable functioning human? Or is that never the point of the story?

And the elder brother - how does the elder brother put this wall of hurt down and just celebrate that the brother has returned if even for a time? Or does he stew the whole meal wondering if a bomb is about to go off?

I don’t even know how the elder brother would act. I’m only beginning to realize how awkward that feast truly was.

My daughter is not repentant. She’s just hungry. In past readings of the prodigal son, I always took for granted that the son was repentant. But the narrative never actually says that. He’s just broke and hungry. Yet the father still celebrates the return.

It was easy to see the elder brother as the villain of the story. Stop being so petty! But I am finding it hard to take my own advice here. I’m mad. I’m sad. I’m scared. And I’m repulsed by what she’s done to herself. I’ve not arrived at the happy moment that others have the luxury of feeling, because it’s not as personal for them. Yet, here comes the feast…