From surviving to thriving

Parents of transgender kids-I've found some unpublished drafts that I'm adding now.  Many were written when DJ was in crisis and my head and blogging ability were taking a backseat to my heart because of DJ's obvious emotional pain.  Sometimes this shit just plain hurts, but here I am five years later, having survived it because my kid survived it.  Hell, she didn't just survive-she's freaking thriving!!!  So take THAT, you haters out there.  There are more of us non-haters than there are of you.

The Author


It's funny how we want to put each other in boxes to be stored on the appropriate shelf.  One of many things I have learned, just in the past 24 hours, is that we are all complex people.  Why we feel a certain way, or act a certain way, seldom is the result of only one factor.  And furthermore, there is seldom only one solution to any problem.  If only it were that easy....

DJ is struggling in a way I've never seen her struggle before.  We would love to believe that there is an easy fix out there....just put her on an anti-depressant, that will solve the problem, or take her off one of the hormones she's on, that should do it.  Maybe if we scheduled her surgery next week she would be all better.  How about we make sure that she never crosses paths with a single person who used to know her as JD, so she won't have to suffer the indignity of now being "invisible" (DJ's word) to those folks.  We had one healthcare provider ready to assume, after not even meeting DJ, that she's bi-polar because she can spend hours composing music.  A blog reader stated that since she'd transitioned, she should be feeling fine because other trans people who have transitioned have been just fine, post transition, as if transition alone is the answer.

Here's the difficult truth:  there is no single answer or solution to finding lasting peace of mind and happiness for DJ.  It's becoming clear, or as clear as it can be after only 48 hours post-crisis, that DJ has pain she must work through, some of which originated years ago when she realized that how she felt about herself didn't match what the world expected of her because her reproductive organs were on the outside of her body rather than on the inside.  Some of the pain is a result of her "invisibility" at school (every time I think of what that must be like, I swear I feel my guts turn to water), and some a result of her trying to figure out who she is.  I'm 46 years old, and I'm still trying to figure it out.  And there may be other issues that need airing too.

Maybe I hover too much.  Maybe our family dynamic needs to shift a bit.  I don't have the answer and certainly anyone who suggests that his/her one path for happiness should work for everyone doesn't have the answer either.  While Bulldog and I know our daughter pretty well, even we accept that we don't have all the answers.  And as Bulldog has pointed out, none of this was in the parenting manual.

And it's not in a transgender manual, or a depression manual, or a self-esteem manual, or a how-to-not-be-invisible-in-high-school manual.  There is no one clear cut answer anywhere or from any one person.  But when you feel "truth" in your gut…go with it.  When the answer or solution feels right, deep in your gut, trust it.