Heart of Glass

Expecting a parent to morn a living child is a cruel evil no one deserves.

Gratefully, I can’t imagine the unbearable pain a parent must endure after losing a child, no parent should ever outlive a child. I suspect that no parent will ever let a child’s birthday pass without celebrating their precious life or the life they once lived. The date is etched into the hearts of parents and all the family members, as they say their name and share memories, to keep them alive in the hearts and minds of those that love them beyond time. I am blessed to not be in that club, but unfortunately I have had to endure the misery of being forced to accept my son as a fake daughter with the threat that the other option is to lose him altogether, either from death or estrangement.

Having a living child that has chosen to not share the day with those that created, birthed and nurtured him, is a different kind of grief. Us non-affirming parents are given no option but to honor the life they created alone, while the beloved child with a new name and identity, celebrates a lie, with a new make believe family that encourage him to create distance to punish his real family for not evolving with the delusion.

Neither my husband or myself ever claimed to be the perfect parents. We both came from highly dysfunctional, (yet loving) roots and vowed to learn from the past to do our best raising our precious three offspring. All was going fine, until we realized it definitely wasn’t. Somehow we lost them all, while they were right in front of us, they suddenly became strangers, with alien beliefs that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Being a mom has been my most treasured identity. Motherhood took over everything in my life from the day I discovered I was pregnant. I willingly gave up my individuality when I took on the responsibility for another life. Everything I had learned through my previous life experience had become less defining, as becoming a parent at 25, pushed me towards rediscovering just who I am and into a deeper understanding of what is really important in life.

Before that, I was shy and nervous to speak up for myself and often recruited my outspoken mom to fight my battles when required. But like flipping a switch, motherhood gave me purpose and confidence to protect my child from the big scary world and the new threats I perceived around every corner. I instinctively began trusting in my gut, and even more since the onset of the current decade, when I was forced to choose sides on many current issues.

In 2020 when the pandemic began, we found ourselves to be blessed to have all 3 children home safe with us,(including my oldest daughters’ husband), once we retrieved our only son/ middle child, home from out of province university. My secure feeling didn’t last long sadly, as by the end of the year none of us could deny the division growing among my treasured tribe.

Up to that point, I mistakenly thought we were doing a decent job raising them, creating strong family bonds, teaching by example, instilling values and principles of respect and responsibility and teaching them to trust their own inner voice, before any outside noises can get in their heads.

But in spite of all my efforts for protections, I made a crucial mistake, I sent them to public school. Because it was the same small town school I attended, I naively thought it was safe and that they would receive a similar educational base to what I received there in the 80’s. Man was I wrong! Times had changed, and no one told us. Even after my first two graduated from there and moved on to post education, I didn’t realize the damage that had been done in their impressionable years until just three years ago, when my youngest was entering high school, and my whole world shattered. That’s when I finally started to realize that the school and been reprogramming my children to betray our beliefs and they had been indoctrinated (to be woke), right under my nose.

The trouble started with the pandemic, when things didn’t sit right in my gut, I started questioning and was quickly told by my children and community that I was wrong to ask questions, and it was best to simply comply with whatever measures were placed on us all. I refused and continued to live based in reality and to seek answers to my unwelcomed concerns, as the distance grew between us.

The road to healing the deep wounds the division caused, has been difficult to mend. Due to a severe betrayal from our oldest, she and her father have not spoken in over two years, while I still desperately tried to keep us connected, in spite of my own pain. Now the addition of some brand new issues have created even more division and heartache. As if our opposing views on masks, tests and vaccines, wasn’t enough the ugly beast of gender identity entered the ring and a whole new round of battle began in spring 2023.

I immediately began researching this bizarre new societal claim to try and understand how my beautiful son, in his twenties, suddenly says he has never really been a boy! His woke sisters affirmed him unquestionably, but his father completely rejects the entire farce and hasn’t yet, almost a year later, found any words for him and now they have also lost all communication.

Due to my efforts, we are thankfully not fully estranged, as I continue to try and desperately bridge a connection and hold on for dear life to some kind of family structure for my lost offspring. But I refuse to go against reality and play along with something that feels so wrong to my gut, brain and heart. I will not let his birth name, that I have tattooed on my body, die. I will not call him anything he is not and he is not a girl. Born a male, die a male.

The price I must pay for living in reality is that I must celebrate his birthday without him, and in solidarity, his sisters also no longer share celebrations with us. I can’t help thinking of the nightmare parents must face when they have lost children to death and have no alternative but to celebrate their day without them, and here are my 3, alive and choosing to deprive us of the joy of honoring them on the day they changed our lives forever.

Tomorrow is promised to no one, and every birthday could be our last, so for our children to squander the occasion over petty disagreements feels selfish and cruel. I would never abandon them and will always forgive without question. But to be disrespected and unappreciated during my living years, threatened to shatter my heart of glass. But rather than wallow in my misery, I am choosing to believe that God has gifted us with this pain to teach us the value of unconditional love and to just celebrate their lives anyway, even without them physically present at the party, and trust that this too shall pass.