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Before I start, I have to note that my mom is a huge support for me now, but not when I was young. I honestly doubt I would be alive today if it weren't for my mom supporting me as my true self in my 20s.
That said, my mom and I were talking about my lost girlhood. She was talking about how my sister was a tomboy growing up and how I was a girly girl. I was girly until I was sexually assaulted by four men at a neighbor's house. They blamed my girlishness on their attack. Being eight, I believed them and felt shame about it. I went from Jem and Pound Puppies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Micro Machines.
What my mom said after we were talking about me being a girly girl is what threw me and is still doing so. She said "I don't know why I hated you so much", and then changed it to "I hated how you acted, not you", but that didn't really help as how I acted was me.
I'm having a hard time reconciling my mom's thoughts about me when I was little with my mom's steadfast support of me now. This conversation was months ago, if not a year or more, but it is still really bothering me.
I told my psychologist, but it didn't really help so I felt I really needed to vent here.
Comments
Shit Parents Say...
One of the things that lives rent free in my head, is my mother telling me "You'd make an ugly girl anyways" when I first came out to her (in high school).
In early grade school she was teaching me to sew, do needlepoint, and more. I was always with my Mom and Aunts and basically the daughter she didn't get with my sister, but at some point, that was no longer allowed.
I grew up in the 80's hearing words like "Trannie" and "freak" and that's whay I thought I was, because that's all I knew.
I was ashamed of myself and when I got "caught" in high school, I "came out" and my mother said those hurtful words.
Later in life, we reconciled a bit. We didn't talk about it much but when I look back I see signs that she was trying to reach out and "make things right" however she could. She passed away of cancer 15 years ago now, and it was rough, but I will always mourn the relationship that could have been.
I say all this not to take away from your post, but to say I don't know how to fix it, I am in weekly therapy myself, but I've managed to not think about it most days, and focus on the family and friends I have around me and the immediate fires that need putting out instead of worrying about the forrest as a whole :)
-Piper
If I may interpret
I think perhaps your mother struggled for words to express what she meant. I think that she meant that she didn't understand why she was against the manifestation of your feminine nature, it being at odds with your body. A kind of gender-dysphoria felt for an offspring and manifested by rejection of the manifestation.
Now that she can reconcile that manifestation as being your true self she is mystified by that earlier rejection.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
When I first told my mum
She kept wondering what she did wrong, an attitude she held for years, despite me saying it was one of those things that happen. This is a long time ago as she died in1999, when I visited her to care for her, she'd been in hospital and was living in Australia, we had no problems with her acceptance, and she introduced me as her daughter to everyone. She was very weak and I had to help her shower and I nearly freaked thinking I was going see my mum in the nude, so I stripped as well. It was the first time she had seen my modified 'female' body and she simply noted, 'that I had a good pair of legs, girl.' No further remark was made and we got along well after that.
Mum's attitudes can change over time and what is probably quite a shock, can have lasting effects, some good some not so good. Our own response to it also has all sorts of baggage too, which can cause all sorts of issues. I think we need to cling to the good and try and forgive the bad unless it involves violence, for which there is no excuse, and just try to move on rather than bottle it up. That way lies all sorts of problems.
I wish you well with your issue and hope that time will heal or that you come to terms with it.
Angharad