A Typical American Story
10/20/2025
I never intended on writing this. I never intended on speaking on this. But here we are. The current political climate requires it. It is time to tell my story.
I am a white woman in the middle of America. I was born in the 70s and raised through the 80s. I was raised in a Christian church. I am a typical American woman.
I am married. I took my husband’s name. I have three grown children. I am a lawyer and a business owner. I am a typical aspiring American woman.
I raised my children to respect school; to be kind; to help others. I took them to church. I paid for music lessons, sports teams, and theater costumes. I raised my children as expected, like a typical American woman.
I cared about their grades. I made their Halloween costumes. I made gifts for their teachers. I checked their backpacks. I listened to their problems, and I guided them like a typical American mother.
Two of my children graduated in the top percentages of their high school class, and my youngest completed high school early. All three were leaders amongst their peers and liked. My children grew up as typical American kids.
I truly believed I was typical. I was normal. We were every family. We were just like everyone else. But, we are not. Because even though I was doing everything as a typical American woman, my story, my family’s story, is not typical. And even though we consider ourselves normal, typical, Americans, many citizens think we are not.
My parenting story began with 2 sons and 1 daughter. My parenting story continues today with 3 daughters. I have 2 adult transgender children. And, I am here to tell you, I have no idea how our typical American story changed. I just know it did.
My children did not share their truth with me until they were adults. My oldest transgender child was a shock. A shock to me, her father, our village that helped raise her, and most of the city that knew her. We were left scratching our heads.
My youngest transgender child made sense. Everyone knew there was some secret, we just did not know what it was. We expected to carry an LGBTQ flag, we just did not know for which letters. I had refused pink shoes from age 3.
My husband and I had agreed early on that we would accept and love our children no matter who they grew up to be. We had lived through the AIDS epidemic. We had lost people. So, the acceptance came quickly for us. For our friends, family, and village that helped raise them, we received every possible typical result.
I would be lying if I told you that I expected my story to turn out this way. I expected adult sons. I expected to see them as Dads. I expected to see them marry a wife and lead a family. My expectations were wrong. My expectations were typical American expectations, as I had raised, typical American children.
I would also be lying if I told you this was easy, that I did not grieve. I grieved the past. How had I missed this? How had I failed them? I grieved the names I had gifted them at birth. I grieved. I grieved my typical American expectations.
Once the changes settled, and we mastered their pronouns and names, we recognized that life really was not that different. The names of two of our children were different, but the people they were had not really changed.
My oldest adult transgender child is still an over achiever, a leader, beloved to those who meet her. The person you see that appears to have it all and can do anything. Success running to meet her at every corner. And she even has a loving relationship with a successful woman.
There was one big difference. My husband and I always had a feeling that she might take her own life. To look at her life, you would not see it, but we knew something was just not right. We never had weapons in the house, and we discussed reaching out if things got too hard trying to mitigate what we could not control. But we never could shake that feeling of her possible suicide.
That feeling is gone now. It was like a rainbow after the grief. I do not fear this woman taking her life. Now, I fear someone else out of ignorance taking her life. Not understanding, what we ourselves do not even understand and may never understand; why.
My youngest adult transgender child is more herself. She is more open. She laughs louder. She enjoys birthday parties, something she never enjoyed as a child. She smiles more and has found herself a leader in her new community, and she likes it. Her beauty shines. She too has a loving relationship with a successful person.
Our story rocked what I expected out of life. It rocked my typical American expectations, my vision of a typical American life. Something I had pursued from the start. But as each day goes by, I realize more that we are a typical American family, with a typical American life. It is just not the vision I had been taught. We, as Americans, had been taught.
I do not know why our story took the path it did. Someday, hopefully, we will have the complete research to explain this. I expect it will be how my body created them. But, I do know that my family pays taxes, we love each other, we want the best for our neighbors, we vote, and we hope for our futures just like typical Americans. So as much as our story is different and unexpected, it is a typical American story.





