An Archive mash-up for you. Both of these previously published posts mention the Miller family entry into the reality-shattering world of trans, aka Miss Miller’s childhood friend Rowan*, who is currently seventeen like Miss Miller and has been on testosterone for about three years now.
September 6, 2022
The lived experience of a non-affirming mom…
In the beginning I discovered it. Under her mattress. A friend gave it to her. A friend who’s now on puberty blockers and testosterone. A “friend” I will not miss should we ever lose touch. Rowan* is the “friend” who introduced my daughter to the concept of trans, who told her own mother she felt like a boy at the age of ten, back when she used to wear dresses and play with Monster High dolls.
From my 2016 diary:
SEPTEMBER 24 - SATURDAY
Marina* told me last night that she took Rowan* to CHOP and now they are considering using drugs—shots or implant under the skin—to block puberty, “so she can explore her gender issues” without having to go through puberty. I spent the whole night looking for validation on the web. I found it too. For one thing, there is a growing population of detransitioning women (haven’t found men) who switched in their teens, and then later realized it was a mistake. I found a great blog by a mom whose daughter decided very rapidly after watching a spate of YouTube blogs that she was trans. Then after a year she realized she wasn’t.
A part of me wants to dive deep in a separate post about Rowan and her fucked up family—the alcoholism, schizophrenia, the Munchausen by proxy; to write about how, in an effort to escape feeling like a freak, Rowan, now spattered in acne, speaks with a man’s voice and still cuts herself. But another part of me knows I’m just casting blame; Miss Miller would have wound up in the trans cult with or without a “friend” like Rowan. It’s everywhere after all.
So I tried on the binder, woven of thick polyester. I thought I would wear it for the day, as an experiment. That way I’d have the ability to speak from “lived experience” if an argument ensued. I didn’t last twenty-five minutes. I nearly ripped it off in order to breathe properly again. Then I let it sit in my drawer, festering, waiting for Miss Miller to dare ask about it. A month passed. Then two. All the while I stole glances at her chest to make sure she hadn’t acquired another one. She hadn't. Finally I took a pair of sewing scissors to it. Cut it in half and then in quarters. And I threw it in the outdoor trash can where the dog shit goes.
Sometimes I’m so caught up in my fear that I forget to give thanks that my daughter loathes discomfort and confrontation. So today I remember. And I hold hope that she is secretly grateful to have a mom who protects her from self-harm, unlike the ones who bankroll and encourage it. I even thank Marina and Rowan for warning me early on, and for teaching me that little girls who think they’re boys are woefully misguided, and that mothers who follow doctors’ orders rather than their own intuition are lost, perhaps forever.
🙏🏼
Heartbreak, drugs and hugs
Dec 14, 2022
Miss Miller has not allowed me to touch her since around seventh grade, back when she embraced her first gender identity—pansexual. I was half-jokingly called a pedo while she batted me away on numerous occasions. Looking back on it now it reads like a kiddie version of the #metoo movement. I suppose if they let “minor attracted persons” onto the shitstorm of a flag they’ve got now, it will be a complicated matter—would moms who wish to hug their daughters now be celebrated as an oppressed class?
No wonder my head hurts.
In tenth grade, when Miss Miller identified as a lesbian, she took some Delta-8—a gummy given to her by who else? Rowan, who wished to keep secret that she was doing drugs with my child under my roof even though I am a “cool mom” who gets kids and understands their need to explore the edge of appropriate conduct. Plus, my daughter is a lamb compared to me at her age.
But teenagers like to pretend that parents are tyrants. It helps them with their victimhood personas. Miss Miller got way too high and hated it, but was trapped, because that’s how edibles work. Once you eat it, it’s in you. You can’t sip it or smoke it slowly. If the girls had communicated with me I could have helped her avoid this predicament. Honey, start with five milligrams, I would have said. Not twenty-five. Here, let me cut it into quarters for you. And stay hydrated!
The jig was up though, and Rowan was forced to come clean, apologize and stand there in my daughter’s messy room practically shuddering with guilt and discomfort until I told her to go home.
How it unfolded is, I heard Miss Miller calling for me and when I entered her bedroom saw her laying under her covers, sweating and sobbing and asking for a pot to puke in. I ran to get her the pot and when I returned she begged me to stay. She clung to me between bouts of barfing. I held her and cooed that it was okay and Dear Reader, I loved every second of it. She sobbed in my arms until she fell asleep, murmuring that she would never get high again. As far as I know she kept her word. But the point for me was that I got to hold my daughter in my arms for the first time in what felt like forever. I got to play the part of Mother again and she of Daughter.
Once sober, things returned to normal. No more touching of any sort, except right after the school play when it would have been more weird not to. When I left for a weekend getaway recently, I asked permission to hug her goodbye and felt lucky that it was granted. I soaked up the contact and then looked into her eyes, which glimmered with mild and possibly contrived repulsion.
Last night, I got to hold my daughter again. The girl she has a crush on said yes to another girl who asked her out. Miss Miller sobbed again, this time on the living room sofa, and I held her tight in my arms, whispering, “I’m so sorry,” and that it would be okay. Even though I am 99% sure that all three girls in this love triangle are straight and simply performing what the current culture dictates, it doesn’t blunt the sting of rejection. The pain is real and I can access that feeling instantaneously, as I have felt that same rejection so many times, often from her.
I don’t want to look forward to my daughter’s heartbreaks and woes, but I can’t deny that I profit from them. Of course my preference would be for her to enjoy physical contact with me under normal circumstances. But I understand the need to individuate, and so I give her a wide berth, as isolating as it can be.
And yet.
My morbid glee over holding my daughter during her deepest duress reminds me of moms like Marina who agree to their children’s identity delusions. Are they on some subconscious level guaranteeing close physical contact with their children as they undergo emotionally and physically painful treatments? What child after surgery would not want to be held by their mother? To be cast aside as irrelevant is a pain almost unbearable, in direct opposition to the solace of being needed. And yet it’s the very emptiness motherhood inevitably includes that tells us we’re doing something right.
❤️
I love reading your articles. It occurred to me when you wrote about Rowan that becoming trans is such a great way to become dissociative if you have a troublesome family. Then it’s not you feeling anything, it’s the other guy (no pun intended). We used to just have cigarettes, alcohol and pot, then razors, and now have “identity” transformations.
Always rooting for you and Miss Miller.
Please tell me you are working on a fictionalized version of your experiences and everything you have witnessed as an ROGD mom. When the tide turns (and it will) Hollywood will be clamoring for a 'Dopesick' type miniseries that chronicles the lives of the parents and daughters affected by this madness. YOU are the person to write this!