The Fifth Column: Mama Bear
This post is a response to a question posed in my nifty question box located on the right side of this page. The reader asked, “How is your mom dealing with the transition re: the loss of girly bonding stuff? How is that affecting you?” So, I cheated a little bit with this one and had my mom do my homework for me. Here’s what she had to say:
Garrett Hoffman is blogging his transition at transformgarrett.blogspot.com. You can read the rest of his posts here.
“I don’t feel that my relationship with Garrett has changed much since I learned of his transition….and I don’t feel that I have lost anything as a result of it. If anything, I feel closer to him because we are sharing his journey and he is teaching me much about a process and community that I hadn’t previously been exposed to.
Garrett wasn’t ever “girly” except perhaps before age 8 or so. After that, I felt many times like I was raising a boy. Recently, when I looked at photos of Garrett when he was younger, I slapped my head and said to myself ‘Now it all makes sense!’ I think that this transition has been going on for quite awhile…..it just wasn’t so public. And therefore, I feel I have had a long time to adjust to having a son.
This doesn’t mean that I have not had times of sorrow. I remember recently on a long road trip alone crying about the loss of my daughter. Quite quickly, I realized that I hadn’t lost anything….that my experiences with my daughter are still right there inside Garrett. The person who is Garrett is the same person he was before….he just looks a bit different and is called by another name. What is inside doesn’t change.
My wish for Garrett is that he is able to lead an independent, productive life and that he be happy. What is very apparent is that he is happier now than ever before…and when a mother’s kids are happy, their mom is happy!”
Now for my part:
I cannot express in words the amazing warm fuzziness I feel knowing that I have a mother (and an entire family) that loves and supports me. I am not going to lie, I had a very intense fear that transitioning was going to disrupt my family so much that they were unable to have a relationship with me. This is not because I did not trust them. It was my reaction to the number of people in my life who have had that experience after coming out to their families. But it turns out, my mom is pretty awesome! I’m very lucky.
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