Of course you love your family… (maybe, with caveats, assuming they aren’t LGBTQ+ if you choose not to “believe in them”…)

I’m quite fond of the words of Khalil Gibran. So much of his poetry has infused and informed my life.

This one (slightly edited) in particular, stuck, it’s called On Children:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

They have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Wow, right?

Kids aren’t possessions?

You don’t form their intrinsic being?

They’re not your malleable product?

They don’t “belong” to you?

They aren’t forever possessions to acquire?

What kinda shit is this?

Why parent at all?

He’s saying there’s no payoff!!!

***

Many of us are driven to procreate.

The urge can be overwhelmingly strong and eclipse everything else. Ask anyone who wants children and can’t have them naturally — they’ll ALL tell you how deep and strong the urge really is.

What about once they’re “yours?”

Nothing I have encountered is more humbling than child rearing. Forget what you think you know, most of what you read up on, and all of what you were told in certainty.

I made parenting my first priority for solidly 16 of 24 years, depending on who you ask.

I’d say it was 24 years, with the last 16 years as a single parent, (even once married a second time) in weekly therapy, trying to get it right and to not permanently fuck up these beings I was responsible for. I was a closeted, compartmentalized, frightened trans woman, living as the “man” it was insisted I was, having been raised by wolves.

When I put it like that, it’s prolly no wonder my kids barely speak to me today.

But Khalil Gibran was STILL Right on the money.

For years I told my kids they could come home and tell Daddy they were ANYTHING — but Republican. I was only partially joking. I’d have made peace with that absurd political decision, because I love them with my entire heart — but I would never have held my tongue over it.

I just wanted to make some generational room for the (10%?) possibility either of my children identified anywhere along the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Neither does, but that’s not the point.

There is literally NO lasting indoctrination. You can influence, expose, set examples, insist on mirrors to your ego — make them memorize the Bible, the Koran, Mein Kampf, Kitty Kelly’s “The Last Star” or every issue of the National Enquirer…. It won’t matter a lick.

They will become who they are, even if it is eventually and over decades.

Or they will DIE trying.

A nuclear family once 5 is now 2. Me, and my sister are still on this plane. She recently cut ties with me over politics. And I won’t further engage. I left a heart wrenching discussion with this, “You need to learn to love yourself.” Because until then, all she will have is battles.

We each stand in the flow of life, believing in it or not. Honoring that Flow, or not. And the truth really will always Out.

The folks who raised me had steadfast rules that countered my Entire Soul. All that I was they saw as Abhorrent. I was an abomination — denominationally, nondenominationally and Otherwise.

I struggle Hard on the daily with all I was taught was wrong with my Being. How do people come to believe they are the arbiters of how others can BE?

WE — trans folk of a certain age, new or not — the entire LGBTQIA+++ community, new or not — have indeed taken up the charge of Harvey Milk to “Come Out.” To be Visible. To Tell Our Truth.

And more kids are doing just that, following our urging.

We need to meet them on the road.

We need to be there with every bit of ugly legislation. Every banned book. Every school board meeting. Every fight over a goddamned bathroom — because We said the grass would be greener with the Truth watering it.

I’m in two current discussions over trans children coming out wherein the parents and loved ones — woke as they claim — have labeled each child as “attention seeking.” In the face of trans elders imploring them to at least allow time-honored puberty blockers to sort who is wrong, who is right, and who is authentic — these parents are still saying, “but I know my child.”

No. The. Fuck. You. Probably. DON’T. Even when trusted with their most sacred “secret” — you refuse to listen while insisting you know them better.

Even when told to choose between a happy son or a dead daughter, they arrogantly scoff. And these are the “Woke” ones. Taking to their beds in depression…for real. While their children suffer alone, met with a silence that has to be experienced to be felt.

“Jesus” didn’t ask us to love when it was easy or expected. “Jesus” told us to love when it was the last fucking thing we wanted to do.

Christianity as I came to understand (and ultimately reject) it was not a call to live within your comfort zone and assume a god who hates those you hate. And if there was a Christ walking today, they’d meet you at the bar, not in church. He hung with the “sinners” and chastised the self-proclaimed “saints.” Read it again. It’s there.

I am a struggling trans woman of a certain age, and I lay claim to little wisdom. But I do know what Love should be. I’m trying it on toward myself for the first time. I’ve lived in service to everyone BUT me for 56 years.

And for now, my children are either not or almost not — in my life.

But they were never “mine” to begin with.

And you, if you are a trans person of any stripe — never belonged to anyone else, either. You showed up Rare, and you likely showed up among people who might never understand You. But the fact that you’re here is all that Does matter.

No matter who rejects us.

No matter who tried and tries to define us.

And no matter who we may parent:

We are the sons and the daughters (and the glorious Non-binary Dear Ones) of Life’s longing for Itself.

Being human comes with more questions than answers. But this life does affirm her children a bit more when we open our hearts to love more abundantly.

Love the inconvenient people in your life now, while they’re here. Take on the charge to Love when it’s the Last thing you want to do. And maybe assume you don’t know Anyone — even if you’re their parent — better than they know themselves.

Peace, Lovelies

-MM