The Freedom to be Fellow Spirits Having a Human Experience

guest story

The new vision for the SMP Substack is to become a collection of transformation stories. A place to house the stories of parents who are moving through or feel they’ve emerged out the other side of “the dark night of the soul” that discovering one or more of our children have assumed trans-identities can plunge us into.

Like each human, each story submitted will be both completely unique and highly resonant to the pain so many parents have endured through this circumstance. The focus of each story that you’ll read here on the SMP is the author’s internal shift that has impacted their external experience in often surprising ways.

Here, it is the growth angle that we’re interested in spreading: discovering how to grow bigger than our problems so we’re able to stretch ourselves in the ways we must to make enough room in our experience for those we love. How else do we keep our families together during these divisive times?

To collect these stories, I’ve created a template with some prompts. The block quotes are the responses submitted by this story’s author.

This particular story is a great example of what we encourage at the SMP; through a blend of self-discovery and reframing strategies, we find a new way to relate to this painful circumstance that allows us more agency while at the same time preserving our relationships. I appreciate how this mama recognizes the psychic inheritance that shaped and limited her sense of self. She describes how she’s learned to let that go, freeing both herself and her daughter of that baggage while intentionally creating a legacy that feels more authentic and expansive.

The Before

What are the relevant context details to your story? What is important for the reader to know about you, your family, and your relationship with your child(ren) for them to understand the impact of your shift?

My daughter’s announcement that she was male occurred at age 13 in 2017 under the influence of a school best friend who had moved here two months after my ex-husband moved away when my daughter was 10. My daughter is a typical gifted ROGD girl — only child, top student, artistic, musical, anxious and very conscientious. She became locked into the formula of transforming herself into a gay man, and she medicalized after she turned 18.

My shift included coming to terms with realizing that I could not rely on outside authority structures to provide safety to my daughter, and ultimately that I could not provide it for her after she turned 18 and commenced on her testosterone injections and surgery journey. She has surrounded herself with peers who support her in her journey and admire her for it. She gets at least as much support and affirmation from older adults for her talents and accomplishments as she would have had she not transitioned.

She is well on her way to earning an advanced degree and employment in her chosen profession, and she is now legally a man. My shift also included realizing that neither can I rescue others nor is it my responsibility to do so. My mother died young, and I had been programmed from my early years that it was my responsibility to live out my mother’s unrealized potential. Navigating through my daughter’s dramatic differentiation from me has compelled me to engage more intentionally with what I need to heal rather than organizing my life around rescuing others.

The Shift

What caused the shift? Was it an "aha" moment? Was it something you learned somewhere? Was it a dream or an awareness that seemed to come from within? For this to be appropriate for the SMP, this shift needs to pertain to your inner world and result in a change in YOU.

The beginning of the shift was before the gender announcement. I was participating in a women’s support/ growth group in the midst of my divorce, and I realized that I was allowed to need other people. This was revolutionary; prior to this I had been conditioned to believe that I had to be self-reliant and to organize my life around taking care of others. My mother’s abandonment of me through death had left me alone to figure things out and to certainly not be vulnerable as she had been. I had attempted to “become my father” with emotional armoring 1) for protection from others disappointing me and 2) from the impossible internal task of fixing other people’s difficulties while not getting my own needs met.

I engaged with this transgender social contagion problem in my usual style: showing up trying to advise others what to do—assuming it was my responsibility to fix it. Ultimately I realized that this phase of cultural psychosis is not something fixable, rather something we all need to ride the waves through together. The internet has exacerbated the confusion of transgender social contagion, and the internet has provided us with content and communities to navigate the confusion and to hopefully emerge a wiser species. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I joined the Stoic Mom Project Community because my old way of being in the world is fading away; cultivating my capacity for awareness and compassionate presence for myself and others is now how I orient to coping with cultural and internal distress and growth. I am a strong role model for my daughter, and I am here for her if and when she needs her mom, potentially for decades to come. If instead my time here is short, I will leave a legacy of a woman who lived a life of service while also cultivating beauty, love, healing, compassion, humility, celebration, and joy.

The Impact

How has your experience changed since "the shift"? Do you feel lighter? Softer? Stronger? All three or would you describe your feelings differently? Are you parenting differently? Are you showing up differently in other relationships? Do you feel you're operating more authentically? Has your fear reduced? Has your focus shifted? These are just a few questions to help you describe the impact but feel free to share anything that you see has changed for you in what feels like healthy ways.

Yes; it’s a journey of spirals like anything else. Grief persists, but the experience of it is part of life rather than ruling my life. I’m learning to be less devastated and more self-confident when obstacles arise. In my daughter’s young adulthood, I’m gradually able to have more authentic connection with her through my own humility. Modeling self-compassion and regret for shortcomings will hopefully help her to be easier on herself, especially if/when awareness that she should stop identifying out of her sexed body arises.

Being on the other side of her medical choices gives us both the freedom to no longer have that as a barrier in our relationship and to instead be fellow spirits having a human experience.

StoicMom’s prompts to encourage self-discovery:

What have you learned about or had to develop in yourself through this painful parenting circumstance? Have you discovered ways of being that are no longer working for you?

What do you feel your child needs you to model most right now? How will modeling in this way challenge you to grow and support your own experience in and of the world?