A Letter to My Transgender Daughter

Note: To protect the child’s safety, we are withholding the name of the NWLC staffer who authored this piece. Tell the Senate to oppose attacks on transgender students here. 

Parenting involves confronting fear on many levels. A piece of your heart is out in the world, and you have little to no control over what the world will do.  

When I was just a few years into my parenting journey, I realized my child was on a path I had never traveled and knew next to nothing about. I hope that by sharing the story of what I learned on this journey by her side (and usually several steps behind), I will help others. And so, I’m starting with this public letter to my daughter.  

*** 

The morning after the election, I went in to wake you for school and told you that Donald Trump had won a second term. You lay back down and curled into a ball. With tears running down your cheeks you asked me questions about what would happen next. The next night, you woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. In it, Donald Trump had taken away your gender-affirming care; military officers dressed in brown stormed into our house, clearing our counter of estrogen and with a jagged knife, roughly yanked out your puberty blocker. You dreamed that in fighting these actions in court, our family lost our home and had to move to a dilapidated house where the roof was falling in. This administration is, quite literally, your worst nightmare. 

*** 

Years earlier, we painted your nursery blue. We ordered pizza and invited friends over to paint puffy white clouds on the ceiling. I was so proud of the airplane mobile I found to hang over your crib and imagined you gazing up at your blue sky. 

When you were two, you picked out the pink dress your sister would wear home from the hospital. You covered her in kisses when we placed her in your arms. 

We were a home of dress up. A home of pick your own clothes. A home of practice making good choices. There are so few things little bodies have control of. Picking your own clothes felt like the right first domain for us to place in your capable hands. I remember holding your baby body over your dresser drawer and waiting for your tiny arm to reach for one of the two options I would set out. 

As you learned to dress yourself, your outfit combinations brought your dad and I so much joy. Rain boots with plaid dress shorts. Colorful t-shirts with a fishing vest. Frequently the outfit was topped with a bike helmet. 

When your sister started to toddle, there was a dress you loved in her closet. Even today I can see it hanging there, just at your eyeline. A soft cotton tank dress with a flowing tutu skirt. Blue and white stripes on the top, cloudy white poof on the bottom. You asked me if you could wear it. Seeing your smile and twirl, how could I discourage you? Instead, the words that would become my mantra came to my lips, “Boys can do anything girls can do.” Your bubble of confidence and joy was so strong I could almost see it. I prayed that bubble would protect you and remain intact. 

As you asked questions, I gave you the best answers I could in words and definitions I hoped were clear and comforting. 

 “Boys have penises, and girls have vaginas.” 

I told you this definition early on as you helped me change your sister’s diaper.  

I later learned that my early definition of gender was flawed. It defined gender solely in anatomical terms, when in fact, the qualities that we typically connect to gender include several independent variables that exist on a spectrum, including our bodies, gender identity, and gender presentation/expression.  

Your closet began to fill with dresses and skirts in addition to your favorite blue plaid dress shorts and rain boots. For the next two years we thought we had a son who occasionally wore dresses and other times wore suits, bike helmets, rain boots, and wild color combinations. Life was busy, and we focused on parenting two preschoolers the best way we could.  

  *** 

You were a voracious reader. At age five, you could read confidently on your own. Your preschool library had an LGBTQI+ section. One spring day in your preschool classroom, you found the book I Am Jazz in the school library. It was in that book that you first learned the word “transgender.” You later told me that a light went on inside you when you read the lines: “I have a girl brain and boy body. This is called transgender. I was born this way.”  

Today I’m sad to tell you, dear one, that sweet libraries and books like the one that lit you up are disappearing each day as pro-censorship extremists strip schools of inclusive materials and curricula. 

From the moment you learned the word “transgender,” it took a few months for you to find the words to tell me about this revelation. I was sitting on the sunny floor of your grandmother’s living room playing with you and your sister when you told me you were transgender. 

Somehow, I had the presence of mind to open the voice recorder on my phone. Today when we listen back to the recording, it makes us giggle at the chaos that is a conversation with a 5-year old and her interjecting 3-year-old sibling. But through all the interruptions, the thread of the conversation comes through clearly. 

You: “Sometimes I feel like a boy and sometimes I feel like a girl.” 

Me: “Do you think people who are transgender feel the same or different from how you feel?” 

You (in a quiet but clear voice): “It feels the same.” 

Me: “Does it bother you that you have a boy body?” 

You (even more quietly): “I don’t like being a boy very much.” 

It was fall when you made the same declaration to your kindergarten class, in the recess line. This time you were more definitive: “I am a girl like Jazz.” You told them to call you by a new name. 

The next day we were running errands as a family. Crossing the street, I swung you by your hand up to the curb and said, “How is my sweet daughter?” The words felt forced on my tongue and I felt a flutter of doubt in my heart until I saw your face. Your eyes widened as you looked up at me. Then you wrapped my legs in a tight hug. “Mommy, thank you for calling me daughter!” I felt my eyes well up with tears. That was the first moment I understood how important it was to you. This wasn’t just an experiment, playing pretend, a call for attention. You are my daughter.

*** 

I’d like to say that was the end of your transition, but there were still doubts, and still enough moments when you would tell us “I feel like a boy today” that would let us default back to what was familiar. Your dad and I had endless conversations about how to best support you. It’s easy to say, “follow your child’s lead.” It’s much harder to find that balance in practice.  

It was spring when your dad represented us at your parent-teacher conferences. Your teachers told us that they noticed you had become subdued. You didn’t have the same spark of joy they were used to.  

When they asked you if you had a message for us, you told them three things:  

  1. You wanted us to get one of the toys they had in the classroom at home.  
  2. You wanted to use she/her pronouns and your new name all the time.  
  3. You wanted to enroll in first grade as a girl. 

This moment hit us both like a ton of bricks. We had noticed your fading joy too. We realized that we needed to listen better. At first, I think I had hesitated to throw my full support behind your social transition because I was afraid. Afraid that your life would be more difficult, that people would treat you badly, or that they would judge me as a mother. I was also sad that the future I dreamed for you would be different than what I had imagined with so much anticipation. And I think part of me was indignant, that this future wasn’t something within my control, that your identity included something I didn’t already know intimately. It took me time to understand that those responses were all about me, not you. 

Because you didn’t need to transition. You always knew who you were and did an amazing job expressing that identity consistently, persistently, and insistently. The rest of us had to transition to see you for who you are. I was focused on the wrong things, and it took me time to start concentrating on the right things: you and what you needed from me. 

Today, sweet girl, I am sad to tell you that teachers like the ones who celebrated you for expressing yourself, and helped you share that message with us, are being persecuted around our country. My heart goes out to the families who have to travel this journey without that wraparound support. 

With your teachers’ information in hand, we started to reach out for help. We joined groups for parents of gender-expansive children. We found a therapist who felt like a ray of sunshine and helped us understand what you had been trying to tell us. It took a few sessions before the therapist officially told us she believed that you were a transgender girl. Having her support and reassurance was the final piece we needed to understand what it looked like to let you lead the way in your gender journey.  

From there, it felt easier to fully follow your lead. When you asked us to help you come out to friends or family, we did. When you wanted to change your identity documents to match your gender identity, we filed the paperwork. When you decided you wanted to pause your puberty, so you can grow up in a body that feels right to you, we got a medical team to support you. 

You seem to have built up an instinct to know when you are ready to let people know that special aspect of your identity—and when to let other aspects of your identity take the front seat. Not every conversation has gone smoothly, but you lead each time. It’s your choice. And we will do everything we can to make sure it stays that way. 

I’ve been clear in each of the not-so-smooth moments that the bias we faced came from a place of misinformation and fear. When the solution to the bias is to separate you from others, I feel my inner mama bear roar. You have a right to exist, to be seen fully, to be treated with dignity and respect. You don’t need anyone else’s permission to be you. 

*** 

While at some points we’ve had the protection of the law, the courts, and the federal government on our side, the protections you have had are now under attack. Because you are a well-informed teen, you know that Trump and Project 2025 have already begun executing their detailed game plan to quite literally make your life miserable. Trump and his allies are releasing executive order after executive order undermining the protections our family has used to stay safe while having the freedom to fully be ourselves. 

On his first day in office, Trump issued a hateful executive order that defines sex narrowly in an attempt to remove longstanding protections for transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, including under the Affordable Care Act, Title IX, and Title VII. Just yesterday Trump issued another anti-trans executive order, this one banning trans girls and women from playing sports. Having benefited from so many supportive coaches and teammates myself, I’ve always encouraged you to try out for as many sports as you can. There’s nothing I enjoy more than cheering you on as you stretch yourself in the sports you are now passionate about. 

I still don’t quite have the words to explain to you why this is happening. But I can tell you this: trans and nonbinary students still have civil rights protections at school, and this executive order cannot legally take those away. And I will continue to fight for your right to be supported and challenged through sports. 

Trump is also attacking people’s ability to get passports that align with their gender identity. I’ll never forget the tears in your eyes the only time we traveled with a passport that didn’t align with your gender identity and name, months after your social transition. I felt the pain in my own gut when you had to tell the official you were the person represented on the passport, and answer to the name and gender we had long since left behind. We promised you we would never travel with that passport again, and thanks to protections from the federal government at that time, we were able to change your gender marker and name on your passport a few short months after making you that promise. But thanks to Trump’s flurry of executive orders on January 20, other parents like me can’t promise their children they’ll be able to change their passports to their correct gender. 

Though this administration is trying to undermine it, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that protects against sex discrimination in schools, has been a shield. Years ago, when your elementary school said they couldn’t adjust your name and gender in their records, we had clear guidance from the Obama administration to remind them that under Title IX, any school receiving federal funding had no grounds to discriminate on the basis of gender identity. Any time you’ve asked to try out for a new sports team or club, we’ve had the protection of Title IX to know we can check the “female” box with confidence.  

Since then, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock and other federal court decisions make it clear that your rights under Title IX still exist, even if they are not recognized by the federal government. 

In another executive order, Trump spread lies about gender-affirming care, threatening to revoke federal funding for any health care provider that offers gender-affirming care to minors. We know that the gender-affirming care you receive means you sleep better at night. But it’s more than just your sleep quality. You told me recently that if it hadn’t been for the support of your father and me, you probably wouldn’t be alive today. Having sat with you through many dark nights, I believe you. And I will do anything and everything I can to defend you, to care for you in the best way I can, and to surround you with as much love, and support as I can muster.  

The fight ahead can feel overwhelming. In some states, parents making the same choices we have made are being monitored by child protective services, persecuted for crossing state lines to receive care, or threatened online and in their communities.  Every day it feels like there’s a new executive order, a new attack we need to urgently investigate and understand. Trump is attempting to overwhelm us with lies and threats to make these attacks your reality.  

But bigger than my fear of the future is my faith in the power of humanity. I have seen in myself how someone can change their firmly held beliefs and definitions. I believe that most people want children to live up to their fullest future selves. And I believe that what is holding many people back from giving their full support and advocacy to gender-affirming care is fear and misinformation.  

*** 

That morning after the election your fear seemed overwhelming, and I wanted to say something that would help. So, I said: “Remember honey, it is our job to keep you safe. You just have to worry about being a kid and enjoying your life.”  

Your response hit me in the gut: “Yeah mom, but it’s not just about me.”  

You are right, sweet daughter. It is not just about you. So, I share your story here in the hopes that others will find their fight in our story. Because the future we dream of for you is also a future that is brighter for them.  

No matter what happens, I will continue to roar when the world tries to strip you of your dignity. You are a piece of my heart, and I will never stop fighting for your right to exist. 

To learn more about how to support transgender communities, please see the resources below. And take a second to tell the Senate to oppose these hateful attacks on transgender students. 

Authors