Why Am I Grieving Over a Child I Haven’t Lost?

In 1999 I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, at least that was what the doctors and I thought. But eight years later my child told me they wanted to be a boy. Later as a teenager, they came out as transgender.

Prior to finding the amazing medical and mental health care professionals we now rely on, it was very overwhelming. It has been more than a decade now of navigating social and physical transitioning with the help of therapists, endocrinologists, psychologists, and other medical specialists.

As with many big changes in life, the most difficult for me was the beginning. I had a very hard time wrapping my mind around what being transgender meant. I was terrified that I was losing my child to something I didn’t understand.

Through therapy, I learned this was a common emotional response from parents of trans kids. Being told I was ‘normal’ though was the easy part. Next, I had to sort through all those overwhelming feelings in order to help my son in the best way possible.

Shock

It’s difficult to understand what your kid is dealing with if you yourself are not transgender. When your kid comes out — especially if they wait until they’re a teenager — it can be a big shock to parents. And shock can sometimes give way to denial.

What has helped my entire family over the past decade are the medical and mental health professionals we’ve turned to. If your child has come out as transgender I highly recommend reaching out to professionals that will help them and you through their transition and whatever that may entail.

Fear

Without the proper coping strategies, handling such news as your child being transgender can be riddled with fear. Only understanding can banish fear. So find some resources that can help you better understand what your child may be going through and how you can best help them.

It’s easy to be afraid of something you know nothing about. This is when you need to start doing your own research. Reach out to support groups with other parents that have transgender kids.

The idea of operations, hormones, and societal ridicule can be scary. It might feel impossibly hard to handle all the new information you need to understand in order to support your kid in the best way possible.

It’s scary when you don’t understand how best to support your child. It can feel hopeless at times and overpowering. There are so many additional facets to raising a transgender child. Take it slow and recognize your feelings.

Guilt and Worry

I never felt it was my fault my child was transgender. But at the beginning of my son’s transition, I often felt guilty for the things I had no answers for. I felt it was my responsibility to have all the medical and scientific facts we needed to navigate what it meant to be transgender.

Because I didn’t, I worried constantly — about his physical health, mental health, socializing, public bathrooms, what family and friends thought of us as a family. The idea of numerous surgeries was terrifying to me. I worried about the physical and psychological effects of being transgender would have on my kid as he went through life.

My anxiety rose any time we went out in public. I worried about my son using the men’s bathroom at stores and restaurants. I dreaded confrontation from some maniac.

It’s heartbreaking to think your son or daughter’s childhood was spent inauthentically. I worried my son had been miserable and I hadn’t realized it. That weighed heavily on me.

Focusing on the present has helped me tremendously over the years. It has taken me a lot of practice. But I try not to dwell on the past or allow myself to fall down the rabbit hole of what-ifs regarding the future.

Isolation

It hurts when close family or friends refuse to accept your child as transgender. And it sucks when those closest to you exclude you from social gatherings after your child comes out. It’s easy to feel isolated when there’s a lack of acceptance from family, friends, and peers.

This makes it all the more important to find parent groups where you can ask questions without ridicule, vent about unaccepting family members, and find solidarity in a group of people who know exactly how you feel. Gender Spectrum has groups for parents as well as kids of different ages. There are also Facebook groups for parents of transgender children.

Don’t let your vision of your child’s future dictate their identity.

Once your child comes out, they are no longer the same kid in your parental eyes. They’ve become someone different in a sense. All those dreams you once had of your kid becoming an astronaut, or librarian, or the president have changed in your mind’s eye.

For me, my little girl would no longer become this strong, beautiful feminist who stood up for women everywhere and ran a successful business while rockin’ out in a band on the weekends — you know, a sort of renaissance woman with kickass attitude.

Instead, my son has opened my mind to different dreams. And I’ve realized it’s his dreams that matter, not my own.

Yet, as parents, we want the best for our kids and so we dream big for them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think we grieve more over that dream persona of our child than anything else.

As a supportive parent, it’s easy to get lost in the melee of supporting your transgender child and all that encompasses — explaining terminology to family and friends, guarding your child against unsupportive, and even spiteful people, defending your decision to be supportive of your child. It’s easy to take on the role of educator and start passing out resources to others.

With all your focus and energy behind your child’s well-being, time to think about — let alone act on — your own well-being easily falls by the wayside. And when the time finally comes that we notice our own emotional turmoil over everything that has changed in our lives, the sadness can feel overwhelming.

And so we grieve what we haven’t actually lost — our kids.

The most important takeaway from all this is that it is completely normal to grieve, to feel sad, heartbroken, overwhelmed. Lean on those you love who have offered their support — family, friends, your partner.

After working through the acceptance of our children being transgender, and then processing the mourning over the children we think we’re losing, we’ll realize that our children’s identities haven’t changed at all. Our kids are still here and they are the same kids they always were.

Here are 10 Questions Every Parent Should Ask Their Transgender Teen. Zada Kent is co-founder of LGBTQueer-ies & proud parent to her transgender son.