A must read

Recently I found a blog about a mother with a young girl in transistion (ok, meaning born physically a boy and mentally a girl, and if you can't grasp that, then think of a girl born with a physical condition different than most girls). It's about Jen and her daughter Hope, found here. I can't begin to imagine all the issues being a mother and mom with someone like Hope, just trying to provide a safe environment for her to grow up surrounded by the world we live in today.

She does it with character and courage, for both Hope and herself. The number of families with transchildren isn't really known, and really shouldn't be known so the families can simply be families and not live in fear of public disclosure or being ostracized by friends and neighbor, because in the end, children are who they are. They don't hide themselves, only the truth occasionally when it's not on their side (haven't we all done that?).

It's only the transchildren who are pressured by their parents and siblings into not being themselves. These children learn to hide their innate sense of being in the clothes and behavior of their birth sex because it's expected. The will do this until they can open and express themselves as they've always known and felt. It's the sad reality parents don't see their children to help them than suppress, and some even oppress, them.

Rather than teaching love to their children, they're teaching the opposite, which will be expressed as angry, hate, and so on as they know and fear being discovered and the consequences. Worse so, they're teaching self-hate, which turns into other outlets to hide themselves. And this often leads to depression and all to often suicide, which is several times higher then non-trans children and teens.

But here we find a woman believing in her child to be themselves, and support that as best she knows, and facing all the problems of raising a daughter, an exceptional one at that. Thanks Jen for sharing.