The most important thing is making sure that you're still able to be a person who is safe to them – someone who loves them, who supports them, and most importantly, someone they feel they can talk to.
Besides finding the gender ideology insane, your mom may have reacted the way she did because your gender " journey "was the straw that broke the camel's back in her likely difficult life as a single mom providing for you. In her mind, she didn't kick you out. I strongly believe she loves you but in a self preservation instinct and unable to deal with your mental health issues, she sent you to your dad where she knew you would have shelter and food, different from having to fend for yourself as a homeless teen in the street.
I understand your feelings. On many aspects, she could have done a better job and be a better support to you when you needed it most.
I hope you find in yourself to forgive her, reconcile and both accompany each other in your healing process.
Sadly, she actually did. She might believe all sorts of other things, but the fact remains that when her daughter trusted her with a secret, she decided to blow up her child's life and to share her secret with everyone and to kick her out (a minor, I would note) from her home.
Unfortunately, the mother chose to destroy her bond with her daughter. We might wish she did not, but we should not pretend she did not do that.
I don't have all the elements so I put my 2 cents with caution but I stand by my words. Sending your kid to the other parent or a family member or a trusted friend because you can't handle a situation anymore ,, and you know that your kid will have a roof above their head and food on the table is not kicking that kid out. I have seen parents throw their kids in the street with nowhere to go and nobody to turn for help. That IS kicking out. Was sharing her " secret " a terrible choice or a call to others for help ? I can't judge. Mom had her own shit going on that clearly factored in and not all parents are able to deal with the complexity of the trans identification.
As I said, I understand how she feels as I went through similar crap with my parents but now that I'm older, I grasp a bit better the why of life and cut some slack to people I used to condemn with no appeal.
I have learned that forgiveness is a path to personal healing and I wish that upon her.
She didn't send me to live with my dad. I actually hadn't seen my dad at that point for about 4 years because she had turned me against him. I hadn't seen him at all. She simply told me that I was fucked up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help, and that I had 24h to find somewhere else to live. She didn't tell me where to go or offer me any help. She just told me to get out.
Which is fair, but forgiveness is something that does not imply a restoration of the old relationship. A person might be able to forgive someone else while also recognizing that the other person is incapable of sustaining the sort of healthy relationship that the first person needs.
I have forgiven people who have hurt me badly while keeping a safe distance from them. Totally. I have also seen desperately broken relationships being reborn from the ashes. I wish that upon her. Will it be possible? Will her mom rise to the opportunity of mending what has been broken? Will she feel safe enough to do so? She is the only one who can decide.
Why is there a whole conversation about how I should reach out to my mother? It's been 14 years since all of this happened. My mother has harassed me ever since.
Yeah. There is much in this story that has been unsaid and that could be determinative. Why did the author feel a need to call 911 on her stepfather, say? The answer to that alone could settle things.
I would note that some parents here do seem to be demonstrating that, perhaps, the cause for the collapse of their relationship with their children was not their statements about being trans but rather the way the parents dealt with unexpected shocks, with learning things about their children that they did not support and demanding they change back. Some parents are concerned with the well-being of their children, while others are upset that their children challenge their control. For these last, frankly, it could be anything that set them off, their children being gay or lesbian or their children voting differently or their children wanting different career paths or any deviation, really, from what they would accept.
Because hurting parents of hurting kids read those comments, i felt it was important to distinguish between throwing a kid out and moving them to a safe relative or friend, which might be sometimes the best solution for everyone involved as a safeguard against neglect and/ or abuse and before the parent loses their sanity and/or temper and end up saying or doing things that are not accomplishing anything, except making things worse and making it harder on everyone s future ( potential) relationship and healing ( I'm big on that).
When crap hits, there are always 2 victims: the kid AND the parent. And both need support.
And yes I agree, in any story, there is a lot of unsaid. That's why I give my humble opinion but I don't judge because I don't know.
In my experience, the statement “my Mum kicked me out” is a lie. It is commonly used by victims of the trans cult as an attempt to justify showing parents lack of respect. My daughter chose to live with bad company in preference to living with me. I would never have made her homeless. I bought her a house so she would not be homeless. She also did prefer her father to me
I think starting from an assumption that all parents are good parents, however personally convenient, is a mistake. We know that bad parents do exist; we know that otherwise good parents can make terrible choices for whatever reasons. This always, always, needs to be kept in mind, especially when we are talking about minors who are normally legally dependent on their parents. Generalizing from your particular experience to others is a mistake; you might not have made your child homeless, but others in a similar situation might.
No one is all bad. Even "bad" parents probably did something right. They may or may not have had good intentions, but I think the vast majority of parents do love their kids and want to treat them right. Some parents have issues from their own childhood that cloud their judgment, or perhaps they have a mental illness that hasn't been identified or treated. In other words, they're complex, flawed human beings just as we all are, and it's important to recognize that all parents make mistakes, of course some more serious than others. Whether or not they can be forgiven or the relationship healed is up to each individual. For me, it's important to try to reach out to those who have hurt me.
The vast majority may, but there are so many parents in the world that even a small minority can be a very large number.
Beyond that, unless we wanted to argue that children and teenagers are identifying as trans just for the lulz and that their parents have nothing to do with this decision, parents do need to recognize ways in which they failed. They are the parents; they are the ones who created the homes and environments where their children lived. If, as the writer describes, a parent does things that make their daughter think they do not want to be women, this is a failure that needs to be recognized.
Now, if the response to this failure by the parent is not to reflect on where they went wrong but to retaliate against their child while their child is in deep distress and kick them out of their home while they are still a minor, that is bad parenting. That is the culmination of a series of bad choices that demonstrated a systematic failure to parent a child successfully. What good parent wants to cause their child existential distress and then punish them for it? Why would a child who survived that want to reengage with a parent who, pretty demonstrably, does not care about what they have done to them?
Parents “need” to recognize the ways in which they failed? Says who? You know, some people are clueless no matter what, and you can wait a lifetime for them to recognize their failings, but it will never happen. That’s where the need to forgive is so important, because you know you may never get the recognition of wrongdoing or the apology you deserve, but you aren’t going to let it weigh on you. You aren’t going to nurse your feelings of resentment or feel sorry for yourself. It isn’t easy to do, but letting go and forgiving is a gift to yourself. I do speak from experience.
As for the child who is estranged, maybe you’ll never want to repair the relationship or be able to, but you won’t know if it can be done if you don’t try. You don’t know what you might learn in the process either, and it can give you valuable insights. For one thing, the child's side of the story isn’t the only one, and you could benefit from hearing the parent’s perspective. Maybe there was some validity to the parent’s version that you weren’t able to recognize at the time. In most cases there are misunderstandings on both sides. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn your parent had better intentions than you realized, and of course that makes forgiveness easier. Maybe you’ll end up concluding your parent isn’t mentally healthy enough to have a relationship with, but you could still be glad you tried. I know I have.
I asked you to share your experience. We are all parents sharing our thoughts. None of us are perfect. It is judgemental to suggest some of us are “bad”parents and some are good. We have to be tolerant of differing parenting styles, differing cultures. Just wondering what planet you live on
There may be different parenting styles, sure. Some work much better than others. As described here, the parenting style of the writer's mother that began by denigrating her for being a woman and continued by denigrating her when she decided she was trans and in deep mental pain failed catastrophically. Frankly, if her mother was concerned about her daughter self-identifying as trans, starting by harassing her over being trans and then kicking her out of her home is the sort of thing that would normally cement a trans identity. It was just the author's luck that her new home was not one where she would not come under more attack.
Why would you not want to know what approaches work and what approaches do not work?
Still wondering if you live on the same planet earth as us. On this planet humans are male and female. Is the trans cult from another planet? We are working hard trying to protect our children from delusions which damage. What do you do?
My mother told me I was fucked up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help. She laughed in my face when I told her I was cutting myself, and called me an attention seeker. She has continued to harass me for the 14 years since this happened. Lots of things have happened since then. There will be no forgiveness for the hell this narcissistic woman has put me through for my entire life.
This advice is similar to advice to parents of anorexics. That is, to avoid the suject. Do not weigh them. Do not nag them. Do not speak of it. Get out side help. Give hugs. At least that was the advice at one time.
I may be completely wrong, but I cannot and will not participate in the delusion. I will not pretend and I will not lie to my daughter. I have told her to her face this whole thing is a social contagion, an online cult, a phase that she will outgrow. That it is hateful and harmful and full of pedophiles and misogynists. She was in the midst of cutting me out of her life anyway (this is a mere 5 or 6 weeks after she moved out of my house at age 19, after a summer spent doing things together like practicing driving so she could finally get her license, helping her buy her first car, finding her a summer job, helping her find her first apartment, spending thousands of dollars furnishing the apartment, attending a festival together, lots of talking and laughing together). She was slowing becoming less communicative, more distant, then in October sent a "Coming Out" email to the entire extended family spouting ridiculous nonsense about how she is "not 100% a girl," literally copied and pasted from some stupid website. She also thanked her narcissistic, absentee father for raising her! I was so sickened by this that I had to say my piece. After she did not respond to my texts for several days, I went over to her apartment and let everything I wanted to say come out of my mouth. I don't know if I further damaged the relationship but I was not going to leave her that night without her hearing how much she had hurt me. I told her I will always love her and that she is the most important thing in the world to me, the person I think about at every moment of every day. But I was not going to endure the humiliation of that email to the entire family without letting her know what I thought of it. I have raged at times since then, screamed and sobbed for hours at the sudden irrational rejection of her entire life history, our family, our mother-daughter relationship. But when I ask myself if I would have felt better if I had said nothing, if I had played nice, if I had been docile and timid, the answer is No. She deserved to hear what I had to say, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I hadn't spoken up to her in the way that I did. I know this goes against everything this essay suggests, but I was so hurt and so angry by her poor judgment that I couldn't stop myself. No one should be allowed to trample someone else's feelings without being held responsible, no matter what the topic is. The last time I texted her was on New Year's Day and I made a conscious decision to not text her anymore. I don't need the pain of her rejection. She can believe of me what she wants because she is going to anyway, whether I write to her or not. I am not going to bang my head against a brick wall trying to reach her. If/when she shakes off the delusion, I am here for her. But I cannot walk on eggshells, I cannot pussy foot around. She is the one who rejected me, she is the one who fractured our bond. I understand that she is mentally ill and in a cult but at this time I am all about self-preservation and speaking up for myself. Thank you for your essay, I hope it brings hope to other parents.
Thank you Hazel. This aligns with where I’ve landed. My goal is to support my son in reaching his non-trans goals (career, job, etc) and that he feels loved and wanted, just as I would my other children. I neither affirm (but will use ‘she/her’ when the sentence structure simply can’t be rejiggered) or deny (I never use he/him). We do not pay for his health insurance or his hormones, nor do we speak about that or the obvious bodily changes (or the obvious health effects we are seeing after 4 years). We speak or text daily. I have a seat at the table, so-to-speak, and am here if/when he needs me.
Thank you for commenting and sorry for what you're going through. I hope your son manages to come through the other side. Would love to hear updates if you wish to provide them.
Hazel, thank you for so bravely sharing your story and advice. My daughter trans identified at age 13, for about a year and a half. I did the "no pronouns" technique, awkwardly avoiding names and pronouns together. I called her "my love", or "my sweet child" (though she was being anything but sweet at the time lol). I set up gazillions of fun and interesting things to do together - hikes, trips, theater shows, concerts. She says now that was the worst time in her life but also kind of awesome because we did so many fun things. I held her closer rather than push her away, and it made us more bonded.
"Nonbinary" was both a toxic gateway to trans and a gentle path out of it. Experimentation with NB (and bring immersed in that world) led very quickly to a male ID. But when she wanted to go back, it was hard for her to unwind socially. She didn't want to risk her friendships and reputation as a "cool" person (this was 9th grade). So she transitioned from he/him to they/them to she/they, and came back in 10th grade as she/her, complete with makeup, cute dresses, and a crush on a straight boy. Now she jokes with mild embarrassment about her stint as an "emo boy".
Thanks, Hazel. I agree with you on most points but unfortunately, many teens who identify as non-binary do surgeries/hormones as well. (For example https://www.teenvogue.com/story/liv-hewson-profile-nonbinary). So, leading the kids from trans to non-binary is a bit like switching from smoking to vaping. Nonbinary people often feel like it's up to them to customize their bodies as they see fit. Not something we should be encouraging of course.
Yes, I realize she meant it was the lesser of two evils. My point is that it probably isn't since non-binary appear to be as likely to harm their bodies as trans, unfortunately. Non-binary kids don't see themselves as just gender non-conforming kids. I don't have hard data on that, it's just my observation so personally I don't think that non-binary is a helpful stepping stone on the way out of the ideology. (Just my opinion).
Having just read the latest PITT poem from yet another brokenhearted mother of a daughter caught in this deranged and deeply misogynist cult whose daughter's beard scratched her face as she kissed her goodbye, a daughter with a hairy, flat chest that will never breastfeed a child if she has any fertility left at all, I hope you can find it in your still very young heart to empathise just a little with your mother who reacted as she did to an impossible, terrifying and enraging situation, for your sake and your daughter's sake too. TERFs are feminists. Feminists don't blame and punish mothers the way you are doing.
Her mother responded to her daughter sharing a secret by blowing up her life, sharing it with everyone, and kicking her out of her home. All this, mind, when she was still a minor.
It is not punishment to know that someone cannot be trusted and should be avoided. Why would the author share anything remotely sensitive with her mother when she knows how she can react?
You’re correct. I still don’t have a relationship with her due to this, and also abuse before and after the trans thing. This one article doesn’t even come close to telling the entire story.
Years ago I was researching people who got married in their late teens.
Unsurprisingly, few of their parents were thrilled with the idea.
I reached out to a therapist for a comment, and he had a take that has stuck with me:
"Whatever you do, you don't want to voice disapproval of your child's spouse," he said. "If the marriage lasts, the couple is always going to have it in the back of their heads that you didn't want them to get married. And if the marriage doesn't last, you want your child to know that you'll be there for them. So don't burn any bridges."
You can accept your child's right to do things with their life without doing anything to support it. It's a very tricky line, though!
Don't you think you're making a judgement call without knowing all the facts? The mother may not be a good person or mother. Perhaps she was doing the best she could. We only see her through Hazel's perspective.
What about the way her mother reacted indicates that the mother merits sympathy?
One thing that gets overlooked in these narratives is the way in which the behaviour of the parents suggests that, maybe, their child being trans or talking about being trans was not the issue. Maybe the issue was with the way the parents treated other people, not only their child.
I see a woman doing her best in a dire situation with a messed up, disrespectful and precious kid who doesn’t care about anyone but herself. This post is her when she is a self-proclaimed terf and she sounds like extremely hard work. I can only imagine what it was like to be around her 24/7 when she was in the cult.
With respect, if you as a parent do not want to do the hard work necessary when your child has a crisis, it is worth considering whether being a parent is a choice that you should have made. Someone who wants to be in a relationship with anyone—partner, child, friend, anyone—but who wants to exit when things are less than positive is, at best, a fairweather sort unworthy of trust.
That is especially the case when you are talking about children, minors who are normally literally dependent on their parents for everything. They are born trusting their parents. Managing to rupture this trust entirely is an achievement.
Some parents—most parents—do care sincerely about the well-being of their children. Others value unchallenged control more than that. Maybe the mother has legitimate reasons for doing what she did, or maybe the mother was just frustrated by a sign that her daughter was individuating despite all her efforts to make her a mini-me.
I’m going on 2 years of this trans cult with my 27 year old son who thinks he’s a woman.
First year, I was completely in shock, lots of tears and prayers and reading online. Then I found ROGD. Thank God for this group.
I stopped trying to talk about GD to my son and his wife. I never embraced his new name, pronouns, clothes etc.
I just wanted a relationship. It’s been 2 hard years of no talking to some talking. No seeing each other to seeing each other. I never yelled, screamed, at him. I just said we are going to agree to disagree.
I said I Love You and I will never stop. He has hurt me deeply by not attending my dad’s (his favorite grandpas) funeral last year in July. No Thanksgiving or Christmas last year. He went silent and so did his wife.
I told his wife I love him and I’ve known him for 27 years, and he’s not transgender. She hasn’t talked to me since. But I did tell her I love her for standing by him. I love her for loving him. I love them both.
At Christmas mass, I visually placed my son and daughter in law in front of the cross and said Jesus I trust in you, do what you think is right for them. I let go and felt at peace for first time in 2 years.
I do text them every other week or so and I say at the end I love you, Mom. Usually they don’t respond but someday when they realize this cult was a mistake, I want them to see I’m still here and I love them. There will be no judgement, no I told you so, just love.
I pray every day for them. But I’m learning it’s up to the Dear Lord to intervene in their hearts.
Thanks for writing this article and letting me know I’m doing the right thing but not forcing anything on them.
Thank-you for your take on the cult. Unfortunately, many "non-binary" women have their healthy breasts removed. While for some it may be a way out of the cult, for others it clearly is not. My family member says she doesn't want testosterone, because she's non-binary, but talks about having "top surgery". The cult and the gender clinics have led these confused young women to believe they can have some sort of alignment between their sexed bodies and some false idea of gender that lives within them by chopping off their secondary sexual characteristic. WPATH has a chapter on non-binary identities and eunuchs. The perversion is the stuff of nightmares.
Thank you Hazel♥️ it's so important to hear yours and other detransitioners stories to learn frombit also for some comfort.
We are not affirming our15yr old daughter but we have come to a common agreement to call her, B (first initial of her birthname) and try to use they/them (I still slip though) but never use he/him. She is in therapy with someone who is wide awake to this ideology. so thankfully it's all exploratory therapy and she really likes her therapist. so that's a win in my books. We had to arguments early on but we have moved away from addressing the elephant in the room and focus on things like taking archery lessons together. Our relationship with our daughter was rocky for the first few months but we changed course and focus on supporting her in things like band and horse riding. She has shown signs of getting out of this but then goes right back. But I do have hope, I know it takes time. Thanks again ♥️
Thank you for your insights. I am sorry you didn't have a better relationship with your mom, and I am grateful that you've emerged from the confusion. Two points I would like to make and would appreciate your feedback.
First, seeking mental health therapy today is a minefield since the vast, vast majority of therapists promote gender-confusion affirmation rather than seeking the underlying causes of mental discordance. That practice is acerbated by some 20 states that by law force gender-confusion affirmation through things like bans on the distorted claims about "conversion therapy." If my child was having issues with anxiety, depression, social or eating disorders, anything really, I would be petrified that seeking help for her would be going from the frying pan into the fire with the high probability that a therapist would blame whatever issue on was rooted in gender confusion that could only be solved by gender affirmation. I fear that I would have to choose between an anxious, depressed anorexic and trans. I don't know the answer to that where sound, non-agenda-driven therapy is not available.
Second, it seems the communication challenge is to find a way to separate personality traits and preferences that can and do change from the biological realities that do not change. There are countless ways to express personalities that do not fall under stereotypical, societal-formulated binaries and can be described as "non-binary." However, the biological fact is that as mammals (except for a minuscule number of people with chromosomal abnormalities), we are sexually binary. We should never affirm a lie.
I agree about the delusion, but gender roles are still alive and well. More so in some places than others, and in some homes more than others. Some of the edges have been softened for sure. Stereotypes can be stereotypical because of biological propensities, and that's what the trans cult is trying to destroy.
I'm truly happy you saw the light
It takes bravery to get out of a cult
I'm also a detransitioner. Years ago.
Besides finding the gender ideology insane, your mom may have reacted the way she did because your gender " journey "was the straw that broke the camel's back in her likely difficult life as a single mom providing for you. In her mind, she didn't kick you out. I strongly believe she loves you but in a self preservation instinct and unable to deal with your mental health issues, she sent you to your dad where she knew you would have shelter and food, different from having to fend for yourself as a homeless teen in the street.
I understand your feelings. On many aspects, she could have done a better job and be a better support to you when you needed it most.
I hope you find in yourself to forgive her, reconcile and both accompany each other in your healing process.
The trans movement destroys families.
You don't want to give them that satisfaction
I wish you the best
> In her mind, she didn't kick you out.
Sadly, she actually did. She might believe all sorts of other things, but the fact remains that when her daughter trusted her with a secret, she decided to blow up her child's life and to share her secret with everyone and to kick her out (a minor, I would note) from her home.
Unfortunately, the mother chose to destroy her bond with her daughter. We might wish she did not, but we should not pretend she did not do that.
I don't have all the elements so I put my 2 cents with caution but I stand by my words. Sending your kid to the other parent or a family member or a trusted friend because you can't handle a situation anymore ,, and you know that your kid will have a roof above their head and food on the table is not kicking that kid out. I have seen parents throw their kids in the street with nowhere to go and nobody to turn for help. That IS kicking out. Was sharing her " secret " a terrible choice or a call to others for help ? I can't judge. Mom had her own shit going on that clearly factored in and not all parents are able to deal with the complexity of the trans identification.
As I said, I understand how she feels as I went through similar crap with my parents but now that I'm older, I grasp a bit better the why of life and cut some slack to people I used to condemn with no appeal.
I have learned that forgiveness is a path to personal healing and I wish that upon her.
She didn't send me to live with my dad. I actually hadn't seen my dad at that point for about 4 years because she had turned me against him. I hadn't seen him at all. She simply told me that I was fucked up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help, and that I had 24h to find somewhere else to live. She didn't tell me where to go or offer me any help. She just told me to get out.
Which is fair, but forgiveness is something that does not imply a restoration of the old relationship. A person might be able to forgive someone else while also recognizing that the other person is incapable of sustaining the sort of healthy relationship that the first person needs.
I entirely agree with that.
I have forgiven people who have hurt me badly while keeping a safe distance from them. Totally. I have also seen desperately broken relationships being reborn from the ashes. I wish that upon her. Will it be possible? Will her mom rise to the opportunity of mending what has been broken? Will she feel safe enough to do so? She is the only one who can decide.
Why is there a whole conversation about how I should reach out to my mother? It's been 14 years since all of this happened. My mother has harassed me ever since.
Yeah. There is much in this story that has been unsaid and that could be determinative. Why did the author feel a need to call 911 on her stepfather, say? The answer to that alone could settle things.
I would note that some parents here do seem to be demonstrating that, perhaps, the cause for the collapse of their relationship with their children was not their statements about being trans but rather the way the parents dealt with unexpected shocks, with learning things about their children that they did not support and demanding they change back. Some parents are concerned with the well-being of their children, while others are upset that their children challenge their control. For these last, frankly, it could be anything that set them off, their children being gay or lesbian or their children voting differently or their children wanting different career paths or any deviation, really, from what they would accept.
I hear you
Because hurting parents of hurting kids read those comments, i felt it was important to distinguish between throwing a kid out and moving them to a safe relative or friend, which might be sometimes the best solution for everyone involved as a safeguard against neglect and/ or abuse and before the parent loses their sanity and/or temper and end up saying or doing things that are not accomplishing anything, except making things worse and making it harder on everyone s future ( potential) relationship and healing ( I'm big on that).
When crap hits, there are always 2 victims: the kid AND the parent. And both need support.
And yes I agree, in any story, there is a lot of unsaid. That's why I give my humble opinion but I don't judge because I don't know.
Wishing ýou a great day :)
Do you have any personal experience to share with us please?
In my experience, the statement “my Mum kicked me out” is a lie. It is commonly used by victims of the trans cult as an attempt to justify showing parents lack of respect. My daughter chose to live with bad company in preference to living with me. I would never have made her homeless. I bought her a house so she would not be homeless. She also did prefer her father to me
My mother told me I was fucked up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help and that I had 24h to find somewhere else to live.
I think starting from an assumption that all parents are good parents, however personally convenient, is a mistake. We know that bad parents do exist; we know that otherwise good parents can make terrible choices for whatever reasons. This always, always, needs to be kept in mind, especially when we are talking about minors who are normally legally dependent on their parents. Generalizing from your particular experience to others is a mistake; you might not have made your child homeless, but others in a similar situation might.
No one is all bad. Even "bad" parents probably did something right. They may or may not have had good intentions, but I think the vast majority of parents do love their kids and want to treat them right. Some parents have issues from their own childhood that cloud their judgment, or perhaps they have a mental illness that hasn't been identified or treated. In other words, they're complex, flawed human beings just as we all are, and it's important to recognize that all parents make mistakes, of course some more serious than others. Whether or not they can be forgiven or the relationship healed is up to each individual. For me, it's important to try to reach out to those who have hurt me.
The vast majority may, but there are so many parents in the world that even a small minority can be a very large number.
Beyond that, unless we wanted to argue that children and teenagers are identifying as trans just for the lulz and that their parents have nothing to do with this decision, parents do need to recognize ways in which they failed. They are the parents; they are the ones who created the homes and environments where their children lived. If, as the writer describes, a parent does things that make their daughter think they do not want to be women, this is a failure that needs to be recognized.
Now, if the response to this failure by the parent is not to reflect on where they went wrong but to retaliate against their child while their child is in deep distress and kick them out of their home while they are still a minor, that is bad parenting. That is the culmination of a series of bad choices that demonstrated a systematic failure to parent a child successfully. What good parent wants to cause their child existential distress and then punish them for it? Why would a child who survived that want to reengage with a parent who, pretty demonstrably, does not care about what they have done to them?
Parents “need” to recognize the ways in which they failed? Says who? You know, some people are clueless no matter what, and you can wait a lifetime for them to recognize their failings, but it will never happen. That’s where the need to forgive is so important, because you know you may never get the recognition of wrongdoing or the apology you deserve, but you aren’t going to let it weigh on you. You aren’t going to nurse your feelings of resentment or feel sorry for yourself. It isn’t easy to do, but letting go and forgiving is a gift to yourself. I do speak from experience.
As for the child who is estranged, maybe you’ll never want to repair the relationship or be able to, but you won’t know if it can be done if you don’t try. You don’t know what you might learn in the process either, and it can give you valuable insights. For one thing, the child's side of the story isn’t the only one, and you could benefit from hearing the parent’s perspective. Maybe there was some validity to the parent’s version that you weren’t able to recognize at the time. In most cases there are misunderstandings on both sides. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn your parent had better intentions than you realized, and of course that makes forgiveness easier. Maybe you’ll end up concluding your parent isn’t mentally healthy enough to have a relationship with, but you could still be glad you tried. I know I have.
I asked you to share your experience. We are all parents sharing our thoughts. None of us are perfect. It is judgemental to suggest some of us are “bad”parents and some are good. We have to be tolerant of differing parenting styles, differing cultures. Just wondering what planet you live on
There may be different parenting styles, sure. Some work much better than others. As described here, the parenting style of the writer's mother that began by denigrating her for being a woman and continued by denigrating her when she decided she was trans and in deep mental pain failed catastrophically. Frankly, if her mother was concerned about her daughter self-identifying as trans, starting by harassing her over being trans and then kicking her out of her home is the sort of thing that would normally cement a trans identity. It was just the author's luck that her new home was not one where she would not come under more attack.
Why would you not want to know what approaches work and what approaches do not work?
Still wondering if you live on the same planet earth as us. On this planet humans are male and female. Is the trans cult from another planet? We are working hard trying to protect our children from delusions which damage. What do you do?
My mother told me I was fucked up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help. She laughed in my face when I told her I was cutting myself, and called me an attention seeker. She has continued to harass me for the 14 years since this happened. Lots of things have happened since then. There will be no forgiveness for the hell this narcissistic woman has put me through for my entire life.
This advice is similar to advice to parents of anorexics. That is, to avoid the suject. Do not weigh them. Do not nag them. Do not speak of it. Get out side help. Give hugs. At least that was the advice at one time.
But the outside professionals will weigh your child and insist you push her to eat. You can't avoid the subject, much as you would love to.
30+ years ago.
No, just ten years ago.
Very informative. Everything makes sense to me. Unfortunately, when in the grip of fear and disillusionment I could not get it all right.
Thanks Again
I may be completely wrong, but I cannot and will not participate in the delusion. I will not pretend and I will not lie to my daughter. I have told her to her face this whole thing is a social contagion, an online cult, a phase that she will outgrow. That it is hateful and harmful and full of pedophiles and misogynists. She was in the midst of cutting me out of her life anyway (this is a mere 5 or 6 weeks after she moved out of my house at age 19, after a summer spent doing things together like practicing driving so she could finally get her license, helping her buy her first car, finding her a summer job, helping her find her first apartment, spending thousands of dollars furnishing the apartment, attending a festival together, lots of talking and laughing together). She was slowing becoming less communicative, more distant, then in October sent a "Coming Out" email to the entire extended family spouting ridiculous nonsense about how she is "not 100% a girl," literally copied and pasted from some stupid website. She also thanked her narcissistic, absentee father for raising her! I was so sickened by this that I had to say my piece. After she did not respond to my texts for several days, I went over to her apartment and let everything I wanted to say come out of my mouth. I don't know if I further damaged the relationship but I was not going to leave her that night without her hearing how much she had hurt me. I told her I will always love her and that she is the most important thing in the world to me, the person I think about at every moment of every day. But I was not going to endure the humiliation of that email to the entire family without letting her know what I thought of it. I have raged at times since then, screamed and sobbed for hours at the sudden irrational rejection of her entire life history, our family, our mother-daughter relationship. But when I ask myself if I would have felt better if I had said nothing, if I had played nice, if I had been docile and timid, the answer is No. She deserved to hear what I had to say, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I hadn't spoken up to her in the way that I did. I know this goes against everything this essay suggests, but I was so hurt and so angry by her poor judgment that I couldn't stop myself. No one should be allowed to trample someone else's feelings without being held responsible, no matter what the topic is. The last time I texted her was on New Year's Day and I made a conscious decision to not text her anymore. I don't need the pain of her rejection. She can believe of me what she wants because she is going to anyway, whether I write to her or not. I am not going to bang my head against a brick wall trying to reach her. If/when she shakes off the delusion, I am here for her. But I cannot walk on eggshells, I cannot pussy foot around. She is the one who rejected me, she is the one who fractured our bond. I understand that she is mentally ill and in a cult but at this time I am all about self-preservation and speaking up for myself. Thank you for your essay, I hope it brings hope to other parents.
Thank you Hazel. This aligns with where I’ve landed. My goal is to support my son in reaching his non-trans goals (career, job, etc) and that he feels loved and wanted, just as I would my other children. I neither affirm (but will use ‘she/her’ when the sentence structure simply can’t be rejiggered) or deny (I never use he/him). We do not pay for his health insurance or his hormones, nor do we speak about that or the obvious bodily changes (or the obvious health effects we are seeing after 4 years). We speak or text daily. I have a seat at the table, so-to-speak, and am here if/when he needs me.
Thank you for commenting and sorry for what you're going through. I hope your son manages to come through the other side. Would love to hear updates if you wish to provide them.
Thank you! And, only the best to you! Enjoy your 30’s!!! :)
Hazel, thank you for so bravely sharing your story and advice. My daughter trans identified at age 13, for about a year and a half. I did the "no pronouns" technique, awkwardly avoiding names and pronouns together. I called her "my love", or "my sweet child" (though she was being anything but sweet at the time lol). I set up gazillions of fun and interesting things to do together - hikes, trips, theater shows, concerts. She says now that was the worst time in her life but also kind of awesome because we did so many fun things. I held her closer rather than push her away, and it made us more bonded.
"Nonbinary" was both a toxic gateway to trans and a gentle path out of it. Experimentation with NB (and bring immersed in that world) led very quickly to a male ID. But when she wanted to go back, it was hard for her to unwind socially. She didn't want to risk her friendships and reputation as a "cool" person (this was 9th grade). So she transitioned from he/him to they/them to she/they, and came back in 10th grade as she/her, complete with makeup, cute dresses, and a crush on a straight boy. Now she jokes with mild embarrassment about her stint as an "emo boy".
Thanks, Hazel. I agree with you on most points but unfortunately, many teens who identify as non-binary do surgeries/hormones as well. (For example https://www.teenvogue.com/story/liv-hewson-profile-nonbinary). So, leading the kids from trans to non-binary is a bit like switching from smoking to vaping. Nonbinary people often feel like it's up to them to customize their bodies as they see fit. Not something we should be encouraging of course.
I think she just meant it was the lesser of two evils. And vaping is less harmful than smoking, by the way.
Yes, I realize she meant it was the lesser of two evils. My point is that it probably isn't since non-binary appear to be as likely to harm their bodies as trans, unfortunately. Non-binary kids don't see themselves as just gender non-conforming kids. I don't have hard data on that, it's just my observation so personally I don't think that non-binary is a helpful stepping stone on the way out of the ideology. (Just my opinion).
Good advice, Hazel.
This reminds me of a talk that Prisha gave at the November Genspect conference.
She advised, validate feelings--but don't affirm the trans identitiy.
Having just read the latest PITT poem from yet another brokenhearted mother of a daughter caught in this deranged and deeply misogynist cult whose daughter's beard scratched her face as she kissed her goodbye, a daughter with a hairy, flat chest that will never breastfeed a child if she has any fertility left at all, I hope you can find it in your still very young heart to empathise just a little with your mother who reacted as she did to an impossible, terrifying and enraging situation, for your sake and your daughter's sake too. TERFs are feminists. Feminists don't blame and punish mothers the way you are doing.
Her mother responded to her daughter sharing a secret by blowing up her life, sharing it with everyone, and kicking her out of her home. All this, mind, when she was still a minor.
It is not punishment to know that someone cannot be trusted and should be avoided. Why would the author share anything remotely sensitive with her mother when she knows how she can react?
You’re correct. I still don’t have a relationship with her due to this, and also abuse before and after the trans thing. This one article doesn’t even come close to telling the entire story.
I am very sorry. You deserved so much better.
Years ago I was researching people who got married in their late teens.
Unsurprisingly, few of their parents were thrilled with the idea.
I reached out to a therapist for a comment, and he had a take that has stuck with me:
"Whatever you do, you don't want to voice disapproval of your child's spouse," he said. "If the marriage lasts, the couple is always going to have it in the back of their heads that you didn't want them to get married. And if the marriage doesn't last, you want your child to know that you'll be there for them. So don't burn any bridges."
You can accept your child's right to do things with their life without doing anything to support it. It's a very tricky line, though!
I guess I’m supposed to feel sympathetic and supportive, but you know what?
I don’t.
Early in your essay you wrote about how your new friends on social media encouraged you to resist anyone who didn’t affirm your new ... cult.
Your mother should have turned you over to a deprogrammer, taken away your phone and internet.
I’m glad you snapped out of it. Many get carved up before they do.
Agree. All I could think the whole way through that was ‘your poor mother’. I hope she is ok wherever she is.
My 'poor mother' was verbally abusive to me prior to this, and harassed me for a decade after this.
Don't you think you're making a judgement call without knowing all the facts? The mother may not be a good person or mother. Perhaps she was doing the best she could. We only see her through Hazel's perspective.
What about the way her mother reacted indicates that the mother merits sympathy?
One thing that gets overlooked in these narratives is the way in which the behaviour of the parents suggests that, maybe, their child being trans or talking about being trans was not the issue. Maybe the issue was with the way the parents treated other people, not only their child.
I see a woman doing her best in a dire situation with a messed up, disrespectful and precious kid who doesn’t care about anyone but herself. This post is her when she is a self-proclaimed terf and she sounds like extremely hard work. I can only imagine what it was like to be around her 24/7 when she was in the cult.
With respect, if you as a parent do not want to do the hard work necessary when your child has a crisis, it is worth considering whether being a parent is a choice that you should have made. Someone who wants to be in a relationship with anyone—partner, child, friend, anyone—but who wants to exit when things are less than positive is, at best, a fairweather sort unworthy of trust.
That is especially the case when you are talking about children, minors who are normally literally dependent on their parents for everything. They are born trusting their parents. Managing to rupture this trust entirely is an achievement.
Some parents—most parents—do care sincerely about the well-being of their children. Others value unchallenged control more than that. Maybe the mother has legitimate reasons for doing what she did, or maybe the mother was just frustrated by a sign that her daughter was individuating despite all her efforts to make her a mini-me.
Hmm. Maybe it would be better not to comment if this is how you feel. If you can't say anything nice...
I’m going on 2 years of this trans cult with my 27 year old son who thinks he’s a woman.
First year, I was completely in shock, lots of tears and prayers and reading online. Then I found ROGD. Thank God for this group.
I stopped trying to talk about GD to my son and his wife. I never embraced his new name, pronouns, clothes etc.
I just wanted a relationship. It’s been 2 hard years of no talking to some talking. No seeing each other to seeing each other. I never yelled, screamed, at him. I just said we are going to agree to disagree.
I said I Love You and I will never stop. He has hurt me deeply by not attending my dad’s (his favorite grandpas) funeral last year in July. No Thanksgiving or Christmas last year. He went silent and so did his wife.
I told his wife I love him and I’ve known him for 27 years, and he’s not transgender. She hasn’t talked to me since. But I did tell her I love her for standing by him. I love her for loving him. I love them both.
At Christmas mass, I visually placed my son and daughter in law in front of the cross and said Jesus I trust in you, do what you think is right for them. I let go and felt at peace for first time in 2 years.
I do text them every other week or so and I say at the end I love you, Mom. Usually they don’t respond but someday when they realize this cult was a mistake, I want them to see I’m still here and I love them. There will be no judgement, no I told you so, just love.
I pray every day for them. But I’m learning it’s up to the Dear Lord to intervene in their hearts.
Thanks for writing this article and letting me know I’m doing the right thing but not forcing anything on them.
I’m so sorry you have to go through this. Sending you a hug.
Thank-you for your take on the cult. Unfortunately, many "non-binary" women have their healthy breasts removed. While for some it may be a way out of the cult, for others it clearly is not. My family member says she doesn't want testosterone, because she's non-binary, but talks about having "top surgery". The cult and the gender clinics have led these confused young women to believe they can have some sort of alignment between their sexed bodies and some false idea of gender that lives within them by chopping off their secondary sexual characteristic. WPATH has a chapter on non-binary identities and eunuchs. The perversion is the stuff of nightmares.
Thank you Hazel♥️ it's so important to hear yours and other detransitioners stories to learn frombit also for some comfort.
We are not affirming our15yr old daughter but we have come to a common agreement to call her, B (first initial of her birthname) and try to use they/them (I still slip though) but never use he/him. She is in therapy with someone who is wide awake to this ideology. so thankfully it's all exploratory therapy and she really likes her therapist. so that's a win in my books. We had to arguments early on but we have moved away from addressing the elephant in the room and focus on things like taking archery lessons together. Our relationship with our daughter was rocky for the first few months but we changed course and focus on supporting her in things like band and horse riding. She has shown signs of getting out of this but then goes right back. But I do have hope, I know it takes time. Thanks again ♥️
Oh, and “nonbinary” is grotesquely offensive.
Thank you for your insights. I am sorry you didn't have a better relationship with your mom, and I am grateful that you've emerged from the confusion. Two points I would like to make and would appreciate your feedback.
First, seeking mental health therapy today is a minefield since the vast, vast majority of therapists promote gender-confusion affirmation rather than seeking the underlying causes of mental discordance. That practice is acerbated by some 20 states that by law force gender-confusion affirmation through things like bans on the distorted claims about "conversion therapy." If my child was having issues with anxiety, depression, social or eating disorders, anything really, I would be petrified that seeking help for her would be going from the frying pan into the fire with the high probability that a therapist would blame whatever issue on was rooted in gender confusion that could only be solved by gender affirmation. I fear that I would have to choose between an anxious, depressed anorexic and trans. I don't know the answer to that where sound, non-agenda-driven therapy is not available.
Second, it seems the communication challenge is to find a way to separate personality traits and preferences that can and do change from the biological realities that do not change. There are countless ways to express personalities that do not fall under stereotypical, societal-formulated binaries and can be described as "non-binary." However, the biological fact is that as mammals (except for a minuscule number of people with chromosomal abnormalities), we are sexually binary. We should never affirm a lie.
Those “gender roles” have been obsolete for fifty years. The they-thems live in delusion.
I agree about the delusion, but gender roles are still alive and well. More so in some places than others, and in some homes more than others. Some of the edges have been softened for sure. Stereotypes can be stereotypical because of biological propensities, and that's what the trans cult is trying to destroy.