Remember when you never made mistakes? ...No one else does either.

Is love really the answer?

Simply, yes.

I mean it's the easy answer when the are lovable or when it's the people in our lives we care about but what if it's the people who are making us angry. How do we show love then? For example, what if it is a transphobic person speaking negatively about Caitlyn Jenner?

Love is still the answer. Love of Caitlyn and love of that person. What is your ultimate goal or wish? That the person you are speaking with would understand and accept transgender people I hope is the answer. What will help them do this the most? Seeing transgender people reflected in a positive light and not the privilege few upper class transgenders like Caitlyn but the ones who are hurting still, who needs homes and hope, and acceptance. They need to see transgender people in their news feed. They need to see positive stories about the achievements of transgender people. They need to see the people they revere having something positive to say about transgender people.

Highlight what  you love. Take care of what you love and ignore what you hate. Think of it as a plant. If you love a plant you will nurture and care for it with love and kindness (work with me here, you really love this plant. And if you hate a plant (who could?! but work with me here) you ignore it and it will wither and die. Choose to spend time on acts of love.

I think my job as an ally is to amplify transgender (and ALL LGBTQ+) voices and to do that I need to focus more on speaking positively about them and leave the naysayers and the haters to...wither and die (I mean, I don't want them to die ...but their hate can.).

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Boundaries are healthy. You get to say who is welcome in your private spaces and how they are welcome there. They can choose to comply or they can choose to leave. If having them in your life is more important than this choice you will choose to make allowances for them.

Ultimately we can't change others. We can only change ourselves or change how we do it or change how we think about it.

What do we do when someone we love is struggling? Say, with depression. We get them a therapist but we notice they are eating more, gaining weight, sleeping more, and picking up bad habits in general. What do we do? What do we do if it's our child?

We leave them alone. We be there for them. We DO NOT judge them or attempt to fix them or for gods sake talk to our daughters about their weight. What children need the most from their parents is overwhelming and undying love and acceptance for who they are. That's all. They just want to be loved for who they are NOW, in this moment. Not to be seen a project worthy of love or acceptance when they meet that behavior expectation or when they are an adult or when they never make a mistake (remember those days? Yeah, no one else does either.). Love and accept them now. Less judgements and more acceptance. Do it for them and treat yourself the same way.

Unschooling Conference and Gender Pronouns

A lot of things happened at the Unschooling Conference I just attended and I may speak about them here at some point but something weighing on my mind at the moment is this:

I was speaking with another Mother in attendance and I used female pronouns to describe her daughter and the friend she brought with her. The Mother told me that their guest actually preferred male pronouns. I was a bit embarrassed and very happy I had been told. I would prefer to have been told by the Mother than by him. I know I can be hard on myself about pronouns but I so much want to be inclusive and accepting of all transgender or gender queer individuals in whatever part of their journey they are on.

I felt this was a defining moment for me that I've been working up to for awhile.

Another story. I was recently visiting a friend. She rarely posts pics of her children so I wasn't entirely sure of their gender or even how many. When we showed up there were two children, one dressed in pink pants and a brown shirt and the other in a MLP dress. The one in pink pants had shorter hair (mostly because they were younger) and the older in the MLP dress had long hair about to their waist. I referred to them both as 'she' to my children and was corrected by the Mother. The older child was a 'he'. I felt so embarrassed because I of all people support boys having any length hair they would like (as well as girls of course) and not having to wear what our society has deemed suitable for their gender. People who identify as boys should be able to wear a dress when and if they want and still be referred to as 'he' if they wish.

So between these two incidents I spent the rest of the conference working very hard to refer to any children whom I did not hear others refer to with the gender pronouns she and he, as 'they' or 'them' or 'their' or 'the child' or 'the person'.

It really is hard to change your wiring. It's finding a new place in my head not to assume someone is a certain gender because they look to me like a certain gender.

An unschooling conference is the best place to work on this since you are more likely to see non-normative dress and hair styles. Many gender neutral things. Lots of colors being worn by all genders. People who are all accepting of their child and have no subscribed limitations on them.

I think this is very healthy for me to question these things and to learn to speak a new way. To learn to think a new way about gender and how fluid it can be is definitely a change I want to make and I hope to forgive myself (and have others forgive me) for any missteps in my own journey.