Love and Life and Good Friends

I recently called an old friend of mine who lives in Austin.  It was her birthday, but I hadn't talked to her in a couple of years.  I wanted to wish her happy birthday, but also let her know that Chris and Courtney now lived in Austin and mentioned that we should get together soon one day when I was up there from San Antonio visiting the twins.  She asked what the twins were doing in Austin; did they have jobs?  I went on to tell her about the twins' clothing company, FLAVNT Streetwear, and how Chris and Courtney were devoting most of their time these days to their company and gave her the link to FLAVNT's site so she could check it out.  We tentatively set a date to meet for dinner.

A few days after this phone call she called me back.  "I looked at the twins' site," she said.  "After looking at it I wondered if you were worried?  If it's one of the reasons you called me - or hadn't called me in a while.  I wondered if you were worried that I wouldn't still love them."  She must have seen their pictures.  She must have read their stories.  She must have concluded that Chris is transgender.

She was there in Vegas with me and Chris and Courtney on the twins' 21st birthday 3 years ago.  A trip we had taken specifically to celebrate their 21st.  She was there when Chris first approached me on that trip in our hotel room about him possibly being transgender.  At the time, Chris was Chloe, dressed mostly like a 21 year old boy, was definitely gay (I had known that for a few years) but when he told me that he felt more like a boy than a girl, it really never occurred to me, at the time, what that really meant to him.  When he told me this, in a very brief, emotion-filled conversation between him and I, I cried, told him I would love him no matter what and then proceeded to eventually tell my friend, who was with us, what he had said.  Not much was discussed between any of us after that 20 minute conversation (it would be nearly 3 years before Chris approached me again in December of 2014 to let me and his father know that he was, in fact, transgender and going to transition), but that is truly when it all started, and this friend was a part of the journey in many ways.

In that call my friend made to me, asking me if I was worried, I said, "No, not at all.  Honestly, I hadn't even thought about all that has been going on.  I simply called because we needed to see you, as it has been such a long time."

One of the things about Chris and me is that I have never worried about what other people might think.  It was not even in my thoughts when I called my friend.  She has known the twins, and loved them dearly, since the day they were born and it never occurred to me that her feelings for them would change in any way (because I know her), regardless of what all had changed since the last time she had seen them.  In the phone conversation we had recently she affirmed this belief, saying, "I can't wait to see them.  You know how much I love them and always will."

When you learn your child is transgender, you go through many stages of acceptance.  I questioned myself along this journey and some of the questions I asked were, "Are you ashamed?  Are you fearful of how this reflects on you as a parent?  Are you fearful of what people might say or think?"  These are reasonable and logical questions a parent might ask themselves and also feelings they might actually experience.  I asked myself these questions during the times when I was trying to figure out the reasons why I was having so much difficulty accepting Chris being transgender.  The truth is ... I was NEVER ashamed.  I was NEVER fearful of how the situation reflected on me as a parent.  I was NEVER concerned about what people might say or think.  My turmoil was always centered around my concern for Chris.  And my concern for my own mental health when trying to reconcile my sad feelings with a reality I did not know how to deal with.

We will meet this friend for dinner soon.  I will talk to her about some of what has occurred over the last several years of this journey with Chris (and Courtney).  She will be happy to see all of us, show love toward the twins as she always has and be easily accepting of all the changes, just as I knew she would.  I never questioned it.  I never think about it.  Without thought, I go into each situation regarding Chris being transgender (or both twins being gay) believing that people will be accepting and understanding, but if they are not, that is their prerogative.  Not everyone can easily understand or accept how other people live their lives or the choices they have to make to survive.

I have always tried to surround myself with people, such as this friend, that respect love and life the way my family and I do.  Live and let live and then gather around each other - that is the right way for people to treat each other ...

One Hurdle at a Time

Through this blog I met another mother last September who had recently found out her son was transgender.  She and I have been conversing through our blogs ever since.  She has followed my story about Chris and me and I am following her story about her son and her. Since finding out her son is transgender, she began a new blog where she can write about her feelings and experiences with regard to her own journey.  It's been four months since her son came out to her and yesterday I read on her blog that she is at the point where she will now be referring to her son by his new chosen female name and referring to him with female pronouns. Like me, she has been struggling tremendously with all that is happening with her child, but she is a loving mother and has made this major step toward accepting and supporting her child - one of, if not the, hardest steps of all.

When I read this on my friend's blog I got tears in my eyes, as I am so proud of my friend.  It may seem like something very simple to those who are remote from such a situation, but it is a decision that can take many hours and weeks of conscious thought and determined strength to make, if you are the mother.  While it is a question that truly has only one answer, it can take a long time for a mother to reach this point of acceptance.  I am on my own journey with Chris for over a year now and do not find it difficult to call Chris by his new name anymore, while I still forget sometimes.  Every time my friend uses her child's new name, she will find it easier and easier.  And after a while, the name will match the face she sees that is changing.  And then the new face and new name will eventually wiggle their way past the old name and the old face to find that their place in her heart remained exactly the same.

I feel happy for this friend of mine, as I know that once you cross this difficult hurdle, you will encounter many others, but it is a huge step toward letting go of the fear, sadness and anger that tries to stand in the way of truly supporting your child.  I am no teacher of any of these things, but I have traveled some of this road ahead of my friend and, while I am happy for her success, I am even happier for her daughter's, as I have come to learn that supporting these children is detrimental to their survival.

We are two mothers traveling a similar path on a road none of us chose, but we are making thoughtful, determined and sometimes difficult choices to help our children.  That is all you can ask of us.

One hurdle at a time.  One hurdle at a time ...

Old Dogs and New Tricks

I was on Instagram scrolling through the random pictures of food and baby animals and sunsets.  I come across a picture of Chris and so I click on it.  He looks really nice in the picture.  It was not Chris's Instagram that the picture was on, but on a page that was for a certain brand of men's underwear and Chris was representing the brand. It took me off guard.

About the time you think you're prepared for anything that can and will happen, something new comes along that shakes you, even if it's just a little bit.  I go along just fine these days; believing I am accepting and supporting Chris, and then I see or hear something like this that rattles me.  Maybe it's because there are still parts of me that remain in denial.  Maybe it's because I just can't wrap my head completely around some things - like the fact that Chris wears binders to flatten his breasts (until he can have surgery) and wears "packers" (Google "packers for transgender" if you want to know what these are) so he feels and appears more male.  I understand the need for Chris and transgender individuals to do these things, but they are still concepts and practices that are foreign to me.

When I saw Chris on this Instagram page representing for a men's brand of underwear, it was like I didn't even know him, as it was something I didn't realize he was doing, but also because there were tons of other models (transgender), as well, and there among them was Chris - my child ... who I have always known as girl until this past year.

I was talking to Courtney the other day about a transgender female friend they have that I saw in a picture.  I said, "Is she trans?  She's really pretty."  Courtney said, "Yes, someone we knew back in high school that we're still friends with."  I said, "So, she use to be a boy?"  Courtney said, "Yes, but you shouldn't say that.  That's not correct.  That's not how they see themselves."  But wasn't she once a boy?  And wasn't Chris once a girl?

I don't know all the politically correct ways to refer to transgender people yet.  I'm learning new things everyday.  I'm constantly finding that I tip-toe around the words and constantly find myself making mistakes that I am being corrected on.  I understand that Chris and other transgender individuals want and need for us and for me to be informed and educated and accurate when we are referring to them or are in the process of learning, but I become discouraged and hurt and even angry when I am constantly being told that I said this wrong or did that wrong, especially with regard to Chris, and especially because I am trying so hard.  It is not my intent or desire to be and remain ignorant regarding the ways of transgender people.  I wish my mind would just click over to that place where I always say and know the right things to say and do.  Sometimes I refer to Chris as "she" and don't even realize I do it.  It's just a habit I am trying very hard to break, but I am finding it is harder to quit than heroine - this reconditioning my brain to do the thing I sincerely want to do, but it just seems to find the old, practiced way easier to remember.

I know that being transgender offers Chris many obstacles and challenges every day - most, I probably can't even begin to imagine how difficult, but I sometimes wonder if Chris and others are truly aware of how difficult the challenges have been for me.  And I wonder if he and other transgender individuals realize the many, many changes we, as their parents, go through to adjust, learn and accept these changes that shock us, scare us and confuse us so much of the time.

The amount of strength it takes a mother to be at ease with this thing is enormous.  As much patience as a mother has to find in herself to learn it all and accept it all is the same amount of patience the child should require of themselves to deal with that mother when she sometimes fails at succeeding ...

Chris and Me

It is the second day of a new year and I sit here with tears streaming down my face.  I am remembering how the past year was for me and my family and I feel blessed to have survived so much of it.  You think you have control over your life until that day when your life takes control of you.  We all try our best to plan and predict what will happen, but sometimes we are our worst enemies because we lose focus.  I pride myself on my ability to control my life, and yet, in 2015 I lost control and found myself almost losing things and some of the people that I love the most.

I lost faith in people in 2015, in many ways.  And people lost faith in me.  I'm not sure that has all been repaired yet, but I forgave a lot and I was forgiven a lot and because of that we are mending our lives together.  I never meant to hurt Chris with the sadness and fear that controlled my life for so many months of last year, but now that I am able to look back on all of it, I realize I had to go through those months to get where I am now.  I also realize the chain of love that lives in our family; of how it was Chris's twin, Courtney, my daughter, who kept the bond between Chris and I from breaking.  Because of Courtney's commitment and love for her twin - because she was and is Chris's greatest friend and advocate - because she was and is willing to lay herself down for Chris, she showed me how to do it, with grace and compassion and truths and hope and faith and trust and love. There were times when Courtney scolded me.  There were times when we fought vehemently.  There were times she said things that pushed me further away, but then came back to reign me in.  She knew, as I know now, that Chris needed me - not just as his mother, but as an advocate, as well.

When this all started with Chris after Christmas last year, I was consumed with so much sadness and anger and filled with so much resistance.   It took me a long time to where I could call him Chris - refer to him with male pronouns.  I swore I would never be able to do either.  I swore we'd never help in his transition by way of paying for any surgeries.  I swore I'd never be able to let Chloe go and call Chris my son.  I swore a lot of things, as did my husband.

But ... here we are, on the second day of the new year - almost exactly a year later from those days when I was blinded by hopes and dreams I held for a little girl I thought was being stolen from me. Chris said once in a video he taped this past year that he spent a lot of years protecting Chloe, but the day came when he realized that it was Chloe who was protecting him.  I guess you have to be living this kind of trauma and pretense to truly understand how hard it is and then how hard it is to come out from under it.  I still struggle with wondering how and why it all happened, but I understand more of it now.  Mostly because I see how happy Chris is and that has made a lot of difference, as he spent many years in a darkness I really knew nothing about, but saw manifested in depression and self-hate.

Chloe wasn't stolen from me.  I still have her in my memories and in my heart.  I remember everything about her.  I loved her for so many years and I am so fortunate to have known her and had her in my life.  Now I see and know that she was and is so much of Chris's strength - that person who led him to the point where he found his truth and then he laid down her life so he could be who he was meant to be without her.  Even though she is no longer who we see, she is inside of Chris and inside of me.

I am finally there, I think.  That point where I am completely prepared to know who Chris is besides Chloe.  I never thought I'd be here, honestly.  I guess after you cry the tears and mourn for long enough you begin to see that you can survive your own sadness if it means ensuring another's happiness.  I knew I did not want to live my life without Chris and to have him in my life I had to embrace who he was meant to be and not who I thought he was meant to be.

You can control some things in your life.  Chris is proof of that.  I am, too, I guess, as I consciously made the choice along the way to remove focus from Chloe and me ... to Chris and me, and that has made all the difference ...

Thorns and Roses

" Trannies and Faggots. Wow, you got the cream of some sick man's loins."  This was the hate-filled comment left by a man named James Gifford on a Facebook post about my precious (trans/gay) children (Chris Rhodes and Courtney Rhodes) recently.

This statement not only attacks my children and me, but it attacks my husband and his parents and my parents.  I do not take this man's comment to heart, as I know who I am and I know who my children are, but I have to say, I was angry when I read it - so much so that I wrote another post calling him out for his meanness and then I deleted him as a Facebook friend.  He then blocked me - which was fine by me.  I mention all this because even though I seldom encounter people that voice this sort of opinion openly to me, I know they are out there and I know my children deal with this sort hate every day. 

I have written before about my religious beliefs.  I grew up Baptist and I have a strong belief and faith in God.  I believe that God created the Earth and Heavens and Hell and the people and animals.  I believe God created woman for man, as it says in the Bible in Genesis and many times throughout. But ... I also believe that the brilliant God I believe in created man with the ability to make choices.  He could have just as easily created man with the inability to make choices.  Believing that, I have concluded that I do not know what God's plan really is.  Is it that he wishes for all His people to find their way back to one straight and narrow path that is somewhere defined as the only path that leads to Him, or ... is his plan that man live each of their lives making choices that distract from some "perfect" path so that we all come to some realization that diversity and color and abstract and shattered pieces are really the things that will teach and unite and form beings He can truly appreciate and love?  The Bible teaches that God became angry when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, when they ate from the tree of Good and Evil.  It was after that that He put thorns on the rose bush; allowed the world to be more brutal.  A God that can and did create all the wonders of our world that He has created has to have known the choice Adam and Eve would make.  That's my belief.  Believing that ... I have to believe He knew that over the many millions of years, we would either destroy ourselves through and because of our diversities or find a way to all survive together.

We fight this fight every single day, in America and around the world - trying to find a way to live together peacefully.  And because it is impossible for every person to undo all of what they have done wrong, every person's ancestors to undo any of what they did wrong, every nation to undo all the wrongs they have done ... logic suggests that it is impossible, at this point, to revert easily or convert completely to some "perfect" path.  As individuals, we can continuously make new choices to try and "perfect" our own lives to the point that we believe we are living a life that God would be pleased with, but we can not do that by alienating or eliminating others from our lives that do not live as we live or how we believe they should live.  If that were the case, most people would be traveling through life completely alone.

One of the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin was the division of people/races/languages.  Creating a world where there was lack of unity and solidarity, was meant to be a "punishment" for man's sin.  My belief is ... God always intended it that way; diversity.  He allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve from the very beginning, according to the Bible.  The story is that Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil and then so did Adam and sin was born.  If this is truly the beginning of the story as the Bible suggests, why would God even offer such a temptation (a brilliant God who could prevent it and also predict it) if that was not how it was intended to be?  Why create man filled with flaws and choice if you did not intend or desire to see their lives play out through their choices?  I do not believe God ever intended man to live simple, easy lives in a world with thornless roses.  How boring would that be?

Having said all this, I go back to the comment James Gifford left on my Facebook about my children and me and our family.  James Gifford does not believe my children or I are living the sort of lives he believes to be acceptable; it's apparent by his comment.  Are we to change the way we live to conform to some idea he believes to be "right"?  Do we just blindly accept that how he chooses to live his life is the "right" way?  And what if how he lives his life is not right for any of us - do we just change, anyway? We are not asking him to live his life the way we live our lives, even though we believe we live our lives in such a way that we are kind and loving to others, we are hurting no one, we love and protect each other, we support everyone else and respect how they live their lives, even James Gifford, who has the right to believe anything he wants to believe.

A brilliant God would create a world with diversity just to see all the paths people would take and how long and successfully it would take them to find a way to becoming unified, even and because of their diverse and unique individual lives.  That's the real test, in my opinion. 

My children and I aren't anymore diverse or unique than James Gifford, and I have to admit, I did nothing to bond his life to mine.  I failed that test when I deleted him as a "friend" on my Facebook.  I chose deleting this person from my Facebook over trying to reach out to him to make friends.  I did that because I believed I would likely enter into a debate I could not win - not to mention I was too angry to care about being his friend.  I told myself I did not need this sort of person in my life, as he obviously was disgusted enough to make such a public comment.  The truth of the matter is, I need this man in my life and he needs me in his, because we are so different from one another.  

Man has found a way to grow roses without thorns.  Sadly, both I and James Gifford found a way to still use those thorns against each other ...

Those Who Love Chris ...

People want to know, what it is like.  People want me to tell them that it is horrible.  You know, how people can be.  They want to feel the drama, sometimes - even the trauma.

It has sometimes been both of those things - drama and trauma.  But not so much of either, anymore.  It is becoming easier.  It is becoming our life.  However, there are times when someone, like Anna, who is Chris's girlfriend, talks about Chris, and I listen to her.  It's strange. Because she is the one who loves Chris the most - even more than than me, I believe - different than me - and I hear when she talks about him and I am so aware of how she talks about him.

Just about the time you think you are aligning all of the peculiarities of all of this thing together, you hear someone, like Anna, talk about Chris in a way that makes him someone you want to know, but you do not know at all, the way he needs to be known or seen, the way that she sees him.

I don't even know how to describe it, other than to describe it as the way it should be.   Anna sees Chris closer and more as he wishes to be than I see him, yet.  He is lucky to have Anna and his twin, Courtney, as they do not seem to analyze all that it is - they just simply accept all that it is - all that he was and all that it he is now.  It is different than me; how they are with him.  How they have become with him.

I want to be there.  I want to know and see him as they see him.  I'm watching Anna and Courtney - those who love Chris the most - more, even than me.  I'm trying to learn how to love him and really see him the way they do ...

CHRIS

It was on this day last year that I found a hand-written letter from Chris to me and my husband on the desk in my bedroom, telling us that he was transgender.  He wrote us a letter because he wanted us to know how he felt, what he had been dealing with for so long and what his plans were.  He had thought about telling us over Christmas, but decided against it, as people suggested that it might be better to wait until after.  He left the letter and returned to New York.

Even as I write this, I cry.  Not because I am sad or hurt or angry or so scared, anymore.  I cry because when I read that letter last year, I honestly did not think I would survive all that I believed Chris's letter was saying to me.  I cry because I still carry with me all the the days I have struggled to be right with this thing - with Chris being and becoming someone other than who I had believed he would be.  I cry because I am surviving and I am filled with hope that I never imagined would show itself to me on this journey.  I cry because Chris has come so far and I have also come so far.  I cry because I am looking forward on this road, instead of behind us.  I cry because I am no longer so sad.

I am not where I totally need to be with Chris, yet.  I still find myself resisting in moments I should be engaging.  I still slip too often and call him "Chloe" or "she" or "the girls".  I still glance at him, sometimes, and wonder how it is we found ourselves on this strange and frightening journey.  I still battle, at times, with wanting things to be simpler, for me and for Chris.  I still miss Chloe.

But ... I am further up the mountain now - closer to Chris and farther from the strings that tried to bind me to a dark place that was on a lower path; a path where I almost couldn't even see Chris climbing this mountain ahead of me, alone.  I am now trying to do things to help Chris along and trying to make him realize I support him completely.  One of the things I did over Christmas was buy him a masculine ID bracelet with his name on it.  I considered putting "Chloe" on the reverse side, but decided not to do that, as I did not want him to be reminded of the struggles I have had, only be reminded of my acceptance and love when he wore the bracelet.  On the reverse side I simply had engraved, "I love you.  Mom."

I am not yet completely holding Chris's hand on this journey, but I am no longer clinging to Chloe's ...