Well, my world changed forever about two years ago when my smart, beautiful, self-confident, extraordinary girl crashed and burned in the next room and was “saved” by a transgender identity. Yes, my girl, with no history of issues with being a girl, suddenly decided that her whole life had been a lie, a secret, and that she “had always known but was too afraid to say anything”.

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When she threatened to harm herself to get out of a girl’s soccer game, I told her I would have to take her to the psych ward if she made good on that threat. We went to gender therapists, met with specialists, consulted with cult experts. My husband called twenty psychologists, most of whom told us that she was unlikely to change her mind. I attributed this to the recent passage of a bill in my state that forbade discussion of gender identity with minors.

My husband really wanted to go Full Hungarian (a phrase that came out of a support group for parents like us where one mother, a Hungarian woman, didn’t give into anything and actively badgered her kid until she desisted). Based on all the people we had met with, that was unlikely to work and would very likely strain our relationship
with her. Things kept ramping up and I became overwhelmed with managing my spouse, my younger child and pretending everything was normal to our friends, despite the obvious and sudden change in our daughter's appearance.

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I am not trying to be dramatic or play the victim card. I am just expressing what this experience feels like firsthand, for all of those people who have no idea. It feels like she is edging closer to death every day that her 18th birthday draws nearer. Death by Testosterone. Death by double mastectomy. Death by self-annihilation. It is unbearable to think about the future. It turns out that my prayers were ignored.