We Got Through All the Firsts
We got through all the firsts after our child left. This trans cult leaves so many scars. We got through not being with him on all the holidays and the anniversary of the day he left. The firsts were all hard. He is missed, he is loved, and I hope he knows that.
Today, we have to get through not being with him on his 21st birthday. I’m not sure why this is the hardest of all. Twenty one years ago he gave me the most precious gift, he made me a mother. I had so many dreams for him. I have to give up on what I had hoped and the expectations I had when he was born. It never occurred to me that the happiest, family oriented boy with so many friends and such potential would turn out lonely and hate us. He had such confidence. Why did he let this idea he wasn’t a boy come into his life? Why did he do this to himself? Why did he do this to his family? He was an ambitious, outgoing, go-getter and yet he got sucked in. If it could happen to my kid, anyone is susceptible. It’s a cult.
We have a video from his last day in our home. My husband was able to download it and we watched it a few weeks ago. He was wandering around the house, trying to figure out what to do. It broke my heart. What was going on in his head? What happened to him? What made him leave us?
Thinking he was transgender crushed his dreams and his soul. He stopped living. He stopped everything he used to love and enjoy. He stopped believing in himself and forgot who he was and what he loved. He became miserable and unhappy. He became a stranger. That was not his authentic self. His authentic self was happy. This new self, after the doctors, peers, and school affirmed him, was depressed and miserable.
We live in the upside-down world. Where parents are considered bad and vilified if they try to stop their children from transitioning and harming themselves. Where the parents are considered good and celebrated if they transition and harm their children. Where whistleblowers are ignored, harassed, or prosecuted if they speak out against childhood medical transition. Where girls who don’t want to compete with boys have charges leveled against them.
How do parents keep their children safe? I wish I could have kept my boy safe and seen him on his 21st birthday. Happy birthday, my sweet boy.
You keep asking yourself, "why did he do this to himself and to us?" The question would be a good one if not for the fact that many thousands of kids are doing exactly the same bizarre thing all over the country and many other countries around the globe.
Your question presumes that your son had an internally-generated reason to abandon his loving family and go on a quest that would destroy his body and his mental health; that he had carefully assessed his options and decided that this was the best path for him. But that's not what happened.
The question really is, "who did this to my son and why, despite the loving foundation we gave him? What made him and thousands of other kids susceptible to the same toxic and depraved ideology? Who encouraged and orchestrated this poisoning of the parent-child bond in such a powerful way that they were able to destroy our relationship with our son?"
I have endured four birthdays since my son was seduced by the heinous trans cult at 19. On his twenty-third birthday, my husband was unaware of this special day we shared. I did not remind him about his son's birthday, as I knew it would heighten his daily pain and anger. So for the day that would have been celebratory in a sane world, I shouldered alone my tender grief. The birthday of my son is also my birth - day. Along with my son, my memory has been stolen of the joyous welcoming of my healthy infant son. As this essay elequently expresses, for PITT parents there are jolts of even more pain throughout the years that are visceral markers of our cruel alienation from a precious child with whom we once shared a loving relationship. Our primal ambiguous loss is beyond sad.