Hope is a female detransitioner. She was on testosterone for a little over 2 years. She also had a mastectomy which she deeply regrets. Hope is on Twitter @choromatz
Hope has written a helpful thread describing her relationship with her parents and her experiences leading to where she is today:
“I am happy as a girl now!!! Only unhappy with effects from transition (such as no breasts)”
I’ve had so many parents reach out with children beginning transition at / around age 18. Here’s my experience with my parents:
I’d like to preface this thread by saying I absolutely love my parents. They are two of the best people I’ve ever met, I talk to them on the phone every single day now that I’ve moved out, I visit them as often as humanely possible.
In no way is anything in this thread disparaging or blaming my parents. They have ALWAYS tried their best. I wouldn’t trade my parents for the world and I’m so eternally thankful that I have an amazing relationship with them now.
When I was fourteen, I first expressed to my mom that I wanted to transition. I sent her a long text saying I felt like a boy and that I HAD to start HRT as soon as possible to achieve the changes I wanted.
Often in the transgender community, there is a sense of urgency to begin medical transition. Too many times I’ve read how starting HRT as an adult will not work, how beginning young is the /best/ way to assure great change. For this reason, I wanted HRT immediately.
My mom was shocked and didn’t really respond to my texts, instead saying we could sit down and talk if I wanted. Eventually we did, where she told me she didn’t see me as a boy at all and wouldn’t allow me to begin HRT (albeit way nicer than my phrasing here)
I was irate! I couldn’t believe she was being so invalidating (note the term I’m using here). Invalidation has always been a huge trigger for me, and has been an issue in my family. I shut down the conversation and subsequently held the belief that my mom was bigoted-and that she would never understand.
Something to note is that I was never super close to my mom growing up. I was way closer to my grandma, who lived with us for most of my life until she tragically passed away from cancer when I was 14.
So I was never super close to my mom. There were a few reasons why, and we’ve since worked through a lot of them, but the fact that our relationship was not intimate when I was younger definitely contributed to me writing off her opinions as unimportant and hateful.
My parents divorced when I was really really young. I lived with my mom and saw my dad a few times a week. He was also extremely against transition, probably way more than my mom. However since he wasn’t really in the household, we didn’t talk too much about my gender issues.
I was fairly quiet about my gender dysphoria for the rest of my teen years. I had accepted that my parents didn’t agree, and I internalized everything. Again, I didn’t really have the kind of relationship with them where I felt okay opening up to them.
I felt invalidated. Validation is so important in a relationship, whether it’s family, friends, romantic…. It’s something me & my parents still work on today – validating each other’s feelings while not affirming negative behaviors.
I also was unable to consider things from my parents perspective. Or from other peoples perspective at all. I was really, really self absorbed and very selfish. I’m not self-hating, it’s just a fact. I didn’t even try to understand why my parents resisted my transition.
When I turned 18, I made an appointment myself at the gender clinic. Again my parents tried to talk me out of it, saying things like:
“You’ve always loved girly things!”
“You like men, you wouldn’t date a girl!”
“I’ve never seen any signs of you being transgender!”
My mom drove me to my HRT appointment and told the doctors at the clinic that she firmly believed I was not trans and that I heavily struggled with mental illness.
She asked why I couldn’t identify as a boy without the medication, without surgery. She raised all of the right questions. I wish I had listened to her. When she says “I told you so!” now, I nod and say “yeah… you really did. I wish I had listened”.
So… if my parents did everything they could, what could they have possibly done to change things? I can’t say for sure but looking back, here’s what I think would have made a difference:
I wish I had started DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) at that time. I wish that we could’ve started family therapy, something, ANYTHING to create a closer bond with my parents. The lack of trust and closeness in our relationship was a huge reason that I didn’t listen.
I wish they had pushed for me to take a year off of college and even point blank refused to pay my tuition. I think having a year to really try and figure things out without stress and pressure would have been good for me (and I ended up dropping out for almost 2 years anyway).
I wish that they had tried to remove me from the online echo chamber that is the trans community. I was almost addicted to my phone and I was exposed to too, too much I shouldn’t have been. My internet access should’ve been monitored and restricted.
Restricting my internet would have definitely upset me but I also think removing someone from trans activists and other trans people is what’s best – transgenderism is definitely partially due to social contagion.
So: therapy, time to heal away from outside influence, and the opportunity to grow / repair our relationship. Again therapy is a necessary one. It can take going thru a few initial appts to find a good fit but a great therapist is invaluable.
I thought transition would make me happy. I thought it was the solution I needed, the peace that I had been desperately searching for almost a decade. I really felt like “if I just do this, everything will be okay”. Never considering that I COULD feel okay without it.
I hope this is a tiny bit helpful. I don’t have concrete answers, I don’t have a solution, but this is my experience and what was going on with me and my parents when I first transitioned. I don’t blame them for anything and I thank God for the amazing relationship we have now.
