Love Lives Here

by Amanda Jette Knox

  I was in a parenting situation I had no clue how to handle. I was completely out of my depth. My head was spinning, and I found it hard to breathe.

  I flashed back to the week when my son—or perhaps, my daughter—came home upset after school.

  “They said the game is for girls only,” my heartbroken child cried, pulling off a camouflage-patterned hoodie and slumping into a kitchen chair. It was spring, and the Japanese lilac in the front yard was in full bloom in the window. “I don’t understand why they don’t want to be my friends anymore.”

  “Sweetie, I’m sure they still want to be your friends,” I said, taking a small hand, which was rough and dry from a hard winter. Eczema had always been a problem. Rubbing lotion into the rough spots was an easy way to soothe the pain. But I didn’t know how to soothe this kind of pain. How could I explain that grade three is usually the time when kids who used to play together start to split by gender, and that the line in the sand would only continue to widen? Having nearly all girls as friends, my child was going to feel this division deeply.

  The next day, I got a phone call from a neighbour. “My daughter asked your son if they could just hang out after school and not at recess,” she said. “She wants to play with the other girls, and he keeps trying to join them.” Apparently, it wasn’t going well. “It’s nothing personal,” the neighbour added. “My daughter likes him. It’s just that the other girls are giving her a hard time, and it’s affecting her friendships at school. Maybe he has some other boys he can play with?”

  My heart had hurt that day. Now it hurt even more as I held my son’s—no, my daughter’s—coming-out email in my hand. I was still in shock, running a million thoughts through my head as I tried to sort out what else this stay-at-home, parent-council, motherhood-is-the-one-thing-I-do-well person had missed all these years. And what incomprehensible damage had been done to my child because of it.

  “What are we going to do?” my spouse asked.

  I handed back the phone with the email on it and took a few purposeful breaths to try to steady my thoughts. We looked at each other with concern.

  A transgender child. My head was stuffed so full of questions I couldn’t think. Can kids even be transgender, I wondered, or is it something else? How do you find out? What’s the parenting protocol for this? My anxiety was flaring up and making me physically ill. This was big. Too big.

  Anxiety and I go way back, and I’ve learned a few tricks for when I start feeling overwhelmed. One is to remove all the unknowns causing stress and brain clutter so I can examine what I do know. And here’s what I knew for sure in that moment:

  Our child had just told us something critical.

  Our child needed our support.

  The love we had for our child was unconditional.

  Stripping it down to the bare facts didn’t make the issue any less complicated, but it did make clear what we should do next.

  “We love our child,” I replied. “And we figure the rest out later. Let’s go in there.”

  We got up and walked across the hall to a bedroom containing one very frightened—and very brave—kid.

  “Hey, sweetie,” I said. “Can we come in?”

  The only answer came in sobs.

  We opened the door and crawled into bed with our middle child, who was shaking and inconsolable.

  “We love you no matter what,” we said again and again. And when tears were the only replies, we filled the spaces where words should go with more reassurances. “We don’t care if you’re a boy or a girl,” we said. “All we care about is that you’re happy. We’ll figure this out together, okay? We’re so glad you told us what’s going on.”

  We told our child that things would be okay. That she would be okay.

  EIGHT

  unlearning

  BUT THINGS WERE not okay. I was not okay.

  After a while, I gently excused myself from our child’s room and stepped out into the hallway. That was when I lost my composure. Not because my kid was likely trans, but because the revelation had just blown away my delicate house of cards.

  Until that moment, parenting was the one thing I knew I did well. That no longer rang true. I was ill-equipped to deal with this, and I realized that could seriously harm my child. I was not the mother on that talk show stage. I was not nearly that strong, capable or informed. I was flying blind, and I was sure her other parent was too.

  I needed to find out what being a transgender child meant. I grabbed my computer and typed in the words “transgender children.” Thousands of search results popped up. I wondered what it would have been like to go looking for information on transgender issues before the invention of search engines. What would you do? See your doctor? Go to your local library?

  Thankfully, my work as a freelance writer had led me on some deep journalistic diving expeditions, and I knew enough to stick to well-known, established medical sites and reputable LGBTQ organizations. I figured that if anyone knew how to help trans people, it would be other trans people and those who worked closely with them.

  I also reached out to two key friends that night: a sex educator whose practice focuses on helping families talk about sexual health, and a social worker specializing in LGBTQ clients. Both women responded quickly with information on how to support our child. They sent lists of local resources, websites and recommended books, and they offered suggestions on what to do next, like asking our kid what pronouns we should use.

  “Ask what pronouns we should be using?” I whispered as I read the reply, confusion all over my face. “Really?”

  I had always known this young person as a boy. We had always used “he” and “him.” The idea of using anything else felt foreign. The idea of letting someone choose their own pronouns felt even more so.

  But I was going to need to get over my discomfort. Because my late-night research had also revealed the abysmal statistics on outcomes for trans youth. This extremely vulnerable population carries high rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide. Trans kids are more likely to face discrimination, harassment, bullying and assault. LGBTQ young people are disproportionately represented in the homeless population, finish high school less often and have a harder time finding work. The world doesn’t understand or accept them, the websites seemed to say, and this makes their lives exceptionally harder.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know what suicidal ideation is like for other people. I only know that for teenage me, the idea crept into my mind slowly. When it first entered, I quickly escorted it to the door. But the more it showed up, the more exhausting it became to send it away. I would let it linger. Before long, it took over my thoughts. Depression is smooth, subtle and conniving.

  By fourteen, I had endured years of bullying, the two fire-related attacks and a sexual assault. I had pushed away the few good friends I had with lies, anger or avoidance. I yelled at my siblings and swore at my parents, which allowed me to spend long hours alone in my room. There, I could self-harm with razors whenever the emotional pain became too much. Depression isolates us through any means necessary.

  I planned my death for a night when my parents were going out. I knew they would be home shortly after I was gone, and well before any of my siblings woke up. I didn’t want my brothers and sister at home without supervision, but I also didn’t want anyone to stop me from freeing myself of pain. I thought that life would never get better. That I would always be the butt of someone’s joke. That I would never succeed at anything. By ending my life, I told myself, I was doing everyone a favour. I wouldn’t be a burden to my family. But mostly, I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

  I wasn’t scared of dying. In fact, I welcomed it and felt relieved to be on the other side of doubt. But as I prepared to say a final goodbye to the world I hated, the phone rang, loud and startling, echoing throughout the house. My eyes shot open. It rang again. I thought about not answering it, but I didn’t want the noise to wake my siblings.

  Wh
en I picked up the receiver and said hello, a deep, soft voice I had never heard before asked to speak to Amanda.

  “It’s me,” I said, a little confused. “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Kevin,” said the voice. “I’m Amelia’s boyfriend. She asked me to call you. Did she let you know? I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  Amelia was an acquaintance at my new school. She had a warm, empathetic smile and fiery red hair. That day, she had noticed the fresh cuts I was trying to hide and took me aside to ask me about them. I confided in her that I wasn’t feeling great, and that hurting myself was a way to let the pain out. She asked if I wanted to talk to her boyfriend. “He’s been there,” she said. “Maybe he could help.”

  I agreed because I wanted to appease her—did I mention that Amelia was really nice?—but I knew I probably wouldn’t be alive to talk to him. I was going to die that night, after all. And yet here he was, calling a stranger out of the blue and being quite prompt about it.

  Kevin told me his story of struggle and how he had overcome what was the darkest period of his young life. He asked about my own struggles. I hesitated for only a moment. What did I have to lose at this point? I told him everything, from Zenji to the drug-dealer rapist, and he listened carefully through it all.

  “Want to meet up tomorrow?” he asked. We went to different schools but lived only a quick bus ride from each other. “You seem like someone I’d like to be friends with. And it sounds like you need someone who gets it.”

  That is how Kevin saved my life—by having me hold on one more day. When I met him the following afternoon, we hit it off immediately and understood each other on a deep level. For the next few months, Kevin became my rock and one of my closest friends. Even when his family moved to Winnipeg, I knew I could always call him. That was the love I needed to get me through. There’s a sealed-up crack in my foundation with his initials on it. Years later, I would find him online and thank him for saving my life.

  * * *

  —

  Memories of Kevin and my own suicidal thoughts made my fears for my child grow bigger. I didn’t know what it felt like to be trans, but I did know what it was like to go through a lot of the same issues: self-harm, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, harassment, bullying and assault. I had also been to rehab and lived in shelters, and I was just now trying to finish my high school education after several failed attempts. I knew what it was like not to be accepted by those around you, even if for different reasons.

  I had been a parent for nearly my entire adult life. In that time, I had worked to keep my children far away from the pain I had experienced when I was younger. I wanted them to have a better life, a less rickety foundation. But now, faced with the news of who this child really was, all I could see was a life fraught with hazards. I could lose her to the very things that had nearly swallowed me too.

  No. That would not be her life. I wouldn’t let that happen. If this was the thorny path the world was going to put at her feet, I was going to walk hand in hand with her, carrying a giant machete. A fire had been lit inside me. Now I know how activism is born.

  My spouse left our daughter’s bedroom about an hour after I did and found me reading an article on medical support options for transgender children.

  “Learning anything interesting?”

  “A lot,” I said. “Too much. I can’t believe this is happening. I’m scared.”

  “I know. Me too. But it explains a lot, doesn’t it? The outbursts, the depression, the anxiety—all of it makes more sense now.”

  “It does. I just can’t believe we didn’t see it until now.” Guilt squeezed my heart.

  “It’s a hard thing to see if someone doesn’t tell you, Amanda—especially if they’re doing their best to hide it.”

  I would kick myself a few more times before I finally got the guilt out of my system. But I realized it was time to focus on what our child needed from that moment on, not what she might have benefited from earlier.

  It was time to go forward.

  * * *

  —

  Our daughter was, understandably, too upset and vulnerable to go to school the next day. I made use of the time at home, just the two of us, to gently dig deeper into what had prompted her to send that email. She told me that she had typed “Why do I feel like a girl when I’m a boy?” into a search engine a few weeks back, her stomach in knots. She was desperately seeking answers to long-standing questions.

  For years, her life had felt…wrong. Just wrong. There was no other way to describe it. But whenever we asked her what was behind her chronic melancholy, she didn’t know how to tell us. She didn’t have the language to describe the level of discomfort she felt in her life and her body.

  She reminded me of a recent conversation. “Did you know we gave you my favourite boy’s name?” I had asked. “It’s Irish. You’re named after a saint, which is kind of funny, since we’re not religious. But it’s a beautiful name. Strong and masculine, but also poetic. It suits you.”

  No, it hurt her, she explained to me now. That name, written everywhere—from the front of her bedroom door to the inside of her backpack, scrawled on every craft and quiz brought home from school—cut her to the core. Being called by that name in class or even across the dining room table made her want to cry. That hadn’t always been the case, but as she slowly became aware that she wasn’t a boy, she started to view the name as a shackle to a life that didn’t fit.

  “You made a big deal out of having three boys,” she explained to me. “You wrote about us in your blog a lot, and you seemed so proud of it.”

  She was right. I regularly joked about the chaos a trifecta of testosterone would bring upon our household in the teen years. I considered the banged-up walls and stained furniture a badge of honour when I talked about my family. I hung ornaments on the Christmas tree with all their names, bought them matching pajamas and had them pose for pictures. “I just love my boys so much!” I would exclaim, hugging them all.

  “I didn’t want to say you were wrong,” she explained to me now. “I was scared you would be disappointed.”

  Her being a boy was a part of my identity. But it wasn’t a part of hers.

  Now puberty had hit. My child was experiencing changes that were counter to what she knew about herself. She wanted breasts and instead was getting a more defined jaw. She wanted hips but was getting dark hair on her upper lip instead.

  “I had to know why I felt like a girl when everyone else thought I was a boy. It was so confusing, Mom.”

  She didn’t know how to have that conversation with us. She didn’t know how to explain it to the few friends she had. So she asked the internet, and it provided answers.

  Transgender. She had never heard the word before, but it came up time and time again in her searches. In 2014, the voices of trans people were emerging in their own community. She found articles and blog posts from older transgender people who wrote about why they’d needed to start living life as their true selves. She found YouTube videos from trans kids who explained what it felt like to be allowed to grow up as the gender they really are.

  “I finally had an answer,” she said. “But a lot of the stories about coming out are so scary.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “A lot of kids get yelled at or kicked out or abused. And some get put into therapy to try to make them stop thinking they’re trans.”

  Conversion—or reparative—therapy. I had heard of this harmful practice used on gay people, and it sickened me. Surely she knew we would never do that to her?

  “But I didn’t know that,” she said. “A lot of kids thought their parents would be supportive, but they weren’t at all. I was worried.”

  As she discovered who she was, she wondered how we would take it. Would we understand, or would we try to shove her back in the closet, as many other families had done?

  “I just needed a sign you were going to be okay,” she said. “And then we went shopping for pink s
hirts, and you said the things you did about gender stereotypes. That’s when I knew I could tell you.”

  I had to take a deep breath to stop myself from crying. Here I was, wracked with guilt, and I didn’t need to be. Without realizing it, I had created a safe place for my child. Isn’t that what all parents should do?

  The email she wrote, beautifully crafted for a child her age, took over an hour to compose. She wanted to do it right—to make us understand what it was like to be transgender. At eleven, the words “a girl trapped in a boy’s body” were the best she could come up with. It wasn’t a perfect description, but she hoped it would get the job done.

  After writing, rewriting and editing it for what felt like an eternity, she hovered her cursor over the Send button. This decision could not be undone. If it didn’t go well, there was nothing she could do. She would be at the mercy of our judgment.

  “So I took a deep breath, hit Send, turned off the screen and crawled into bed, terrified.”

  “I’m sorry you felt so scared,” I said. “I hope we put your fears to rest.”

  “You did,” she replied. “Thank you. I think things are going to start getting better now.”

  * * *

  —

  It was time to get to work. I called everyone I could think of. There was a clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, or CHEO, that had gender identity specialists—whatever that meant. There was someone who worked with trans adults at one of the downtown health centres who might know of additional resources. There was a trans person working out of Family Services Ottawa who was supposed to be putting together a support group for parents of trans children.

  I spoke to everyone in a single day. Now that I’ve known all these people for a few years, I recognize how improbable it was to get even one of them on the phone that day, let alone all of them. Their calmness, reassurance and insight were exactly what I needed in that moment. They were people who either had been through the early stages of transition themselves or had worked with many people who had. I frantically scribbled notes as they talked. This was a crash course on a topic I never thought I’d be studying.