Are You Prepared to Lose Them? Reflections on Respecting Pronouns & Grieving Someone Who is Alive
Author’s note: Larry Till and Barb Rowlandson are two Medium writers and friends with a shared interest in equity, diversity and inclusion. You can read Larry’s companion piece here.
A large-scale national study by Karl Pillemer of Cornell University revealed that 27% of Americans 18 and older had cut off contact with a family member. That translates to a whopping 67 million people nationally. And that’s just in America. If you think that is bad, you’re not going to like this either: 46% of 2SLGBTQIA+ young adults aged 18–25 are estranged from at least one family member.
My mother is 78 years old. She has made a lot of mistakes. I won’t get into it — it’s not my business to spill her business — but suffice it to say, it’s enough that she is now estranged from some of her family, including her children. I try to have a heart of compassion for my mom. I can’t excuse some of the things she’s done, but I recognize she has operated most of her life with significant impediments due to truly horrifying trauma. I understand she just didn’t have the capacity to make good decisions. Sometimes, I am amazed she has made it this far in life. I’m also a mom, and I can appreciate how it is painful — down to her marrow — to have strained and estranged relationships with her children. I extend her grace as much as I can. Some days, I am better at this than others. I acknowledge that, even at this late stage, she has made genuine efforts at change. Some of those changes have even stuck. I am not sure she’ll ever totally recover or own up to things she’s done, but I genuinely think she’s trying. I try very hard to forgive my mom. I have discovered that forgiveness isn’t a once-and-done thing. It is an ongoing practice, and there are some days when I am better at it than others.
And, though she may be imperfect in many respects, there is one area where she hasn’t messed up. She has never once misgendered or deadnamed my daughter. She also didn’t blink an eye when I came out at 45. She just accepted me and loved me, no questions asked.
My daughter came out to me as transgender at around age 20. I remember the feeling of genuine astonishment. I did not see it coming. I walked around in disbelief for about a week. How did I miss this? I am her mother! How could I not have known this about my own child, with whom I have a great relationship? My flabbers were thoroughly ghasted.
It didn’t take me long to emerge from the haze of disbelief. After all, I had been asleep to my own sexuality until my mid-forties. More than a few people were astonished by my coming out (I was one of them!). So, if I could have a later-in-life sexual awakening, wouldn’t it be plausible that my child could have a late realization of her own? The answer is, of course, yes. And, further to that, her coming out as transgender wasn’t about me. I quickly learned to decenter myself from her experience. This wasn’t about me, not one bit. Her journey to embracing her womanhood was hers, and she did it at a time and at a pace that was right for her. As her mom, my job was not to ask why I didn’t see this in her before. My job was, and is, to love and accept her. Periodt. Full stop.
There are so many young transgender people out there who do not get the love and acceptance they deserve from family. Many are rejected outright. Many are tolerated, barely. I know transgender youth (fun fact: when you are a gay mom of teens, all of your kids’ queer friends seek you out at some point) who are deliberately misgendered and dead-named by parents and family. I have watched these young people drift further and further away from unsupportive parents, the damage seemingly unrepairable. It is heartbreaking for young people to lose the support of adults who are supposed to love them.
For parents and families who struggle to use new pronouns and names for their transgender children, I ask this: are you prepared to lose your child forever? Because if you can’t hold them in their identity, you will lose them. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to grieve the loss of someone alive. It is astonishingly painful. Ask my mother, she will tell you. I’ve lost living people, too. I think it’s more painful than grieving someone who has died. There is a finality to death that can eventually be accepted because it is unchangeable. Grieving someone alive is made more painful, knowing that the person who represented love lost is walking around in the world, out of your reach. If only they didn’t escape your grasp. If only you reached out a little further to keep the connection.
Use the preferred pronouns of your transgender loved ones. It’s not for you to decide their identity. Your job is to love them unconditionally. Do your job. Or, end up like my mother, alone in the retirement home, who uses the correct pronouns when talking about a grandchild she only sees in photographs.
