Happy New Year guys and gals. My resolution for 2024 is to learn to shoot. Plans are in the works. My other resolution is to speak my mind more. This might seem like, huh? Doesn’t Mrs. Miller already do that? Yes, but also, sometimes no.
Specifically my aim this year and onward into my wrinkly decrepit future, is to counter spewed stupidities with my disagreement where merited, instead of slinking away rationalizing that it’s better for everyone not to make waves. I’m not talking about starting fights. More like, I’m tired of the resentment I feel when I try to “let go” of antagonism and disrespect. To be clear, I’m not talking about ripping people new butt-holes or racking up “gotcha” points. I’m just talking about standing up for myself with diplomacy, clarity, courage—and appropriate emojis when necessary. 😌
So far this resolution is bearing fruit. I’m fantasizing far less about imaginary showdowns, and that frees my mind to ponder more important things, like which Uggs I will buy this year. Haha, I joke. I have ample room in my mind to resent haters and obsess over spongey, formless boots.
Just the other day I was being mildly piled on the comments section over at PITT. One faction condescendingly opposed my description of the trans craze as Marxist. A far more verbose and annoying segment of readers warned me that Miss Miller will be lost forever to trans ideology if I don’t immediately: Pull her out of school! Take away her phone! Homeschool her! Fly her to a foreign country! And of course: Forbid her to go to college! Four separate moms told me they lost their daughters once they went to college. That is a nightmare. And I get their panic and anguish, I really do. But I also resent being told what to do by anyone who doesn’t know me or my daughter or the relationship we share.
I might be making a terrible mistake by letting her go, but my experience, instincts and hard-earned wisdom tell me that would be an even bigger mistake.
Here’s how I see it. Remember how back in the good old days we judged parents who tried to bubble-wrap the world instead of fortifying their children to be resilient in order to protect them from pain and suffering? Remember how we said, get a little bruised, kid. It’ll build character. Well, trans is completely different. However! The ideology is everywhere. You cannot safeguard a child, let alone an adolescent, from that which she craves. And knowing my kid, I can say with unyielding confidence that it would backfire spectacularly and bite me in the ass.
If I pulled my daughter—who has no plan to medicalize as far as I know and you can call me naive but I know my kid, thank you—out of school, she would hate me and have every right to. If I didn’t let her go to college, THAT’S when she would cut me off. If I took away her phone—at seventeen years old!—I would be communicating not my distrust of the world, but my distrust in her. And let me tell you, that would galvanize her trans identity. She would be like, FUCK YOU, I HATE YOU, where’s the T.
A while back, say a year ago, Miss Miller and I had two conversations. In the first one she explicitly told me—with three examples of desisted friends—that I had to trust her to find out for herself whether she would hold onto to this identity of hers. She said, “If you don’t let me explore this, it will push me further.” In the second conversation, I expressed my terror that when she heads to college, she’ll fall in with a crowd who influences her to hate me, rewrite her family history as “phobic” and abusive, and ultimately cut me out of her life. Her response? “That kind of thing only happens in dysfunctional families.”
How reassuring is that? It almost makes me want to head back over to the comments section and let those busybody moms know—in that tasty passive-aggressive way—that they have dysfunctional families to begin with and that they unwittingly laid the foundation for their kids to fall utterly and completely for the rainbow flag. But I don’t do that. 😇 Those moms have enough pain and extra to spare. Instead I told them that if the worst comes to pass and they were right all along, I will return to apologize and buy them a stiff drink.
I remain sober and hopeful in the meantime, even though! As this debate brewed at PITT—at the very same time!—Mr. Miller told me that Miss Miller asked him to take her to her first choice college next week for a Pride festival. He showed me the advertisement and I crumbled on the spot. It was just as colorful and demoralizing as you’d imagine. 🤮 From there I headed over to the school’s LGBTQIA++ page to see that yes indeed hormone “therapy” is covered for students who have school health insurance. Panic rose in my throat like an Indonesian tsunami. Maybe those four moms were right—and so soon!
I thought I should revisit that old conversation with Miss Miller just to make sure she still believes that only dysfunctional families become estranged.
Talk Mommy down from the ledge, baby!
But then something weird and maybe good happened. I remembered our first conversation, the one where she pleaded with me to trust her. And echos of that line from the Tao soothed my exhausted head:
If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.
It was true two-thousand years ago and it’s true now. Remember, I’m not here to stir the pot. Just to make sense of it. To learn from it. To grow and enlighten myself, regardless of what everyone else is doing in the stew.
Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place. When you handle the master carpenter’s tools, chances are that you’ll cut yourself.
And so we agreed for Mr. Miller to take her to this event. Refusing would be an attempt to control her. Also, it will give my husband the chance to gauge Miss Miller’s current identity and plans in a gentle open way that I am not capable of right now. Which is why she didn’t ask me to take her to that godawful thing. She knows just how I feel.
And still she loves me.
💜
I just love that you heard the cautionary echoes of Miss Miller and the Tao and had the guts to LISTEN to their prompts. That holding back is the hardest path to parse out...so counter-intuitive, especially in the realm of parenting, when so much feels at stake. Three cheers for your brilliant, courageous boundary detection and protection.👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻
Amen Mrs. Miller. I think you are wise and brave. Thanks for your writings, they are very fortifying and have helped me have confidence in my instincts as a mother to know what is best for our family.