About Bliss Excerpt #3

Last sneak peek before pub day this Thursday!

My Author’s note frames our family story. If it moves you I hope you’ll consider buying my book and perhaps a second copy to send to a friend who needs it. Families raising trans kids need all the support they can get right now.

Parents of gender-nonconforming children are overseeing a cul-

tural sea change in gender. We are required to make high stakes

decisions impacting our children’s long-term social, emotional,

and physical health while learning a new model of gender that

shakes the foundations of what we thought we knew about life

and about ourselves. During a time when social scientists, biol-

ogists, health practitioners, and transgender individuals learn

something new about gender diversity almost daily, even the most

supportive parents struggle to keep up with current information

and best practices.

At the same time, we have had no choice but to confront the

volatile political backlash that is currently occurring against

transgender rights. Many of us, myself included, have become

accidental political activists. In the few years it has taken to write

and publish our family’s story, more states than ever before have

filed and passed legislation to restrict the lives of trans people.

To give a sense, by the end of 2020, which is where the book you

are about to read concludes, 60 state-level anti-trans bills had

been filed. At the end of 2021 that number increased to 132, and

at the end of 2022, anti-trans bills introduced at the state level

numbered 155 or more.* In 2021 Arkansas became the first state in

the nation to ban access to gender-affirming care for minors, and

since then Tennessee, Arizona, and Alabama have followed suit.

Numerous other laws restricting access to sports, locker rooms and

bathrooms, preventing people from changing state-issued iden-

tity documents to align with their affirmed gender, and banning

insurance coverage for trans healthcare have been filed and passed.

At the same time, states like California, Oregon, Washington, New

York, Massachusetts, and others have strengthened their protec-

tions for the trans community, guaranteeing insurance coverage,

providing safe harbor, and offering the trans community the kind

of legal support necessary to live what most people would con-

sider a “normal” American life.

Looking back, it seems to me that our family grappled with

the issue of my son’s gender at a flash in history that encouraged

us to think proactively and ambitiously on his behalf. We had the

mental space to think creatively about what could be possible for

his future, rather than worry over how we would keep him safe in

an increasingly hostile environment. To be sure, the threat of hos-

tility loomed, and yet, we lucked into a historical and geographical

context that supported our bold hopes. For parents reading this

book, my hope is that our story will give you both respite and in-

spiration. Professionals across the board—psychologists and psy-

chiatrists, pediatricians and endocrinologists, educators and social

workers—have come to the unanimous conclusion that gender is

wildly more complex than the binary model my generation and

generations before us understood. If your child is presenting a

different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, they

are going to be okay. No, more than okay. Your child is unique,

perhaps even gifted. Many, perhaps most, of the difficulties you

and your family will face have everything to do with American

culture wars and very little to do with the child you love so deeply.

In the current context there were many reasons, most espe-

cially to do with my son’s privacy and his safety, for me not to

share my family’s story with the world. But my son has made clear

for many years now that raising public awareness about gender

identity is important to him. He has believed in this book from

the beginning. And although he is a minor and his thoughts on

many things are likely to change, my sense is that his commitment

to helping others in his community is one that will stay with him

throughout his lifetime.

He and I are both aware that our family has lived in a fortu-

nate context when it comes to gender diversity. We live in the San

Francisco Bay Area, we have stable finances and excellent health

insurance, and because of my work as a writer, we have had easier

access to trans writers and their stories. Because of these factors,

my son is safer and has more robust support than other trans kids

his age. As a family our collective imagination has been freer to

envision a bright and generative future. Especially in the face of

the current political backlash, it feels important to speak out from

our vantage point to celebrate gender diversity and normalize the

expectation that our trans and nonbinary citizens will live bold,

proud lives, with full access to their potential and their human

rights.

I wrote this book to organize my own thinking during the year

before my husband and I made some of the most long-lasting

health decisions on my trans son’s behalf. I had already been in

the habit of writing to my three children for many years. With

the birth of each one I purchased a beige hardcover notebook

in which I jotted down notes to them from time to time. The

stack of three has lived on my nightstand or near it for as long as

I have been a parent. Some years I recorded many observations

and some years I hardly wrote a word. But as the reality of my

son’s life became clearer to me, it felt natural to consider the many

aspects of our experience within the container of a habit I had

already established.

When I decided to share our journey, I thought I would be

writing in traditional narrative form, but I ran into a problem of

language that every transgender person knows intimately. The

assignment of gendered pronouns tends to obscure transgender

children’s identity. For years trans children are referred to in words

that do not reflect who they are inside, and the current conven-

tion is that once a person’s correct gender has been affirmed, they

will be referred to using the name and set of pronouns that aligns

with their identity even when telling stories about the past. For

many trans people, using the name or pronouns that were as-

signed to them before their correct gender identity was affirmed

is painful. “Deadnaming” is one word used to describe the harsh

discomfort of using these old names. When I tell stories about my

son in spoken language, the current convention works imperfectly

but well enough.

But when I began writing down stories about my son’s child-

hood, it interfered with accurately immersing you, the reader, in

the relationship I had with him during his early years, which, in

its essence, transcended the language we had at our disposal. I

decided to tell our story in the epistolary form using the second

person in reference to my son, because it renders our relationship

with much higher fidelity than other pronoun conventions allow.

I’m offering the most visceral representation of my relationship

with my son that I felt I could create.

These letters make deep sense in another way, too. Ultimately,

this book is for my son. My hope is that through an honest and

thoughtful documentation of our journey together, he will know

his foundation with all its cracks and weaknesses so that he can

build a sturdy adult life characterized by wholeness. I am hum-

bled by the fact that many of my parenting decisions, including

the one to write this book, have been a leap of faith. And like all

parents, I hope that on the whole I have done right by my child.

May love always guide us as we labor on behalf of a future we

will never know.

*****

If something in this post moved you, if you learned something new, if reading this made you feel more empowered to support the trans community, I hope you’ll consider sharing my free newsletter with a friend! My hope is to double my subscribers this month. Let’s do this!

See you tomorrow! XO