Here’s how I am this week, as Mother’s Day approaches again.
I’m exhausted, and frustrated, and scared.
I pulled all of my kids from public school after one announced a transgender identity, and all the teachers, administrators, and counselors began lying to me, using my child’s made-up name and fake pronouns behind my back, and undermining my husband and me to our child with words like “unsupportive” and “inappropriate.”
That child desisted and came back to reality after we cut off all the trans juice flowing from the school and the GSA club and social media and woke neighbors. So I know pulling my kids from public school and homeschooling them was the right decision.
But now I have no fallback position, no Plan B. We’re in Plan D now. I didn’t just deploy the safety net; I am the safety net.
I can’t send them back to public school, because public school is a toxic place where parents are cut out of the equation and kids are taught lies and propaganda about the most basic facts of biology and personhood.
Private schools—even if we could afford them—are also falling en masse to the trans machine’s relentless, well-funded, and politicized dogma. Now the trans-rights militia is targeting religious schools as well. We interviewed at a Catholic school a year ago, though we’re not Catholic. The intake counselor assured me that transgender ideology had not made an entrée at their school. But I already knew of families there who were dealing with it. That counselor was either naively misinformed, or intentionally duplicitous. At this point in our cultural life, I have no idea which it was.
So I’m homeschooling middle and high school. Two weeks are left in the school year and I’m frankly terrified to look at one child’s grades from the teaching service where she takes several classes. It hasn’t been an easy year, with challenging academics and one teacher whose instructional manner makes me wonder why she went into teaching in the first place.
I have a child on the autism spectrum. The special ed teams at public school were a godsend, right up until they weren’t. Those teams got woke in middle school, and led my child straight into the mouth of the trans dragon, refusing to even entertain my question about whether autism might have something to do with this child’s self-discomfort.
So now I’m on my own with this child, and this child’s siblings.
I have to get these kids educated. I have to get them prepared for college and for life. I have to mitigate the arguments and the aggravations of having multiple teenagers in the same living and work space all day, every day. Covid has only exacerbated that overwhelming togetherness.
I’m the last option. I’m the only thing standing between my kids and the gender machine that wants to chew them up, spit them out, and leave them dependent for the rest of their lives on synthetic hormones, anxiety meds, and whatever else the drug companies and plastic surgeons can sell them or hook them on. The gender machine would rob me of my grandchildren before my children are even old enough to fall in love and marry.
I feel the weight of my kids’ futures crushing my back and shoulders as I struggle to stay upright and protect them and keep them growing in a healthy direction.
I’m angry. I want someone to answer for what they’ve put our family through.
I want this to end.
But I’m the mom, and I love my kids, and this is what I have to do, for as long as it takes. I cry more than I should have to. I’ve given up my own life to save my children’s.
But the culture says I’m abusive and hateful and bigoted.
This is how Mother’s Day finds me this year.
Maybe next year will be better.
The above reflection was written by the parent of a formerly transgender-identified child. The parent wishes to remain anonymous to protect her child's and family's privacy.