Closer to the Light -with Levana

Content Warning: During this conversation with this incredibly resilient mama, Levana shares about abusive experiences she and her formerly trans-identified daughter have endured including domestic violence and sexual assault/rape. Levana has overcome these experiences to now be living the life of her dreams, with honesty being integral to that process. She uses blunt language during our conversation and in conversations with her daughter.

I first discovered Levana when she joined a panel of three mothers with desisted daughters for Amy Sousa’s YouTube channel: Known Heretic. Throughout this CftT episode, I refer to the Path to Desistance series of The Witness podcast. Levana wrote these episodes (eps 21-24) detailing conversations she had with her daughter, Bella, to encourage letting go of the trans identification. Levana credits the trauma that she and her daughter experienced for creating a uniquely honest relationship and shared language/awareness around abuse that facilitated the shift in Bella who now, at age 15, believes trans ideology is boring and wishes she could just live a normal life where this ideology didn’t exist.

This powerful and beautiful sentence will forever stay with me:

“There has never been a dark moment in my life that didn’t bring me closer to the light.” -Levana Benabe

p.s. Because of the highly sensitive nature of the content, I sent Levana a link to the draft of this episode and show notes to ensure she was comfortable with me publishing the lightly edited conversation. She also gave me permission to share her response:

My daughter gave it the seal of approval this morning. It was a good conversation, thank you again for giving me a voice. I feel good about the episode thank you for asking. I forgot to mention a few things I had meant to about my parenting style and listening to this now I wish I had brought up the fact that I have been using emotion coaching since I read Dr Gottman’s book when Bella was a wee thing. And I also love Drew Bledsoe’s Parenting with Dignity course, it helped me so much with my approach to the trans stuff.