One year down, forever to go

A year ago we took our little boy to the pediatrician and left without him. A year ago we went into a store with a little girl beaming with the biggest smile in the world because she was finally accepted. A year ago we heard the words that we had known to be true for a very long time, "Your child has gender dysphoria". The news we received that day changed everything, it changed how we talk, how we look at things, and how we treat each other. We no longer said something was girly or something was only for boys, we no longer saw things as black and white things were rainbow colored from then on. Because the year was 2015 and Target had just made their toy section gender neutral(which by the way did NOT sit well with my transgender child!), we assumed that people would be okay with it. Boy were we wrong, we lost a lot of friends when we announced our news and had some harsh words from former coworkers. Those harsh words had such an impact that I cried in the break room and then cried before clocking in one day and my mom marched up to the manager and said if he didn't do something about it she would! Her grammy claws were out full force! Luckily my manager took it seriously and took care of the issue before my mom had to do anything. That was our first, but sadly not our last bit of discrimination we received. We've been told we're child abusers, that we have brainwashed our children, that we were forcing our "son" to do this. So many lies have been made about our family, calls to CPS have been put in because of our choices, and it's just not okay. Recently we had an appointment with our family therapist who focuses mostly on Callie and her issues, for the obvious reasons, and she asked Callie if she felt different and Jason and I learned some stuff we had never known before. Callie admitted that when she would dress as a boy she would get sad and pray to God to take her away, our little three year old was asking God to take her away so she could stop being a boy. When we heard her say that, we both knew what we did was right. From that moment the hatred people had towards our choices were pushed to the back of our mind and focus on doing what was right for our child. We vowed as parents to love and support our child no matter what and I plan on doing just that. Callie has grown so much in the passed year, she went from being a self conscious child who wouldn't wear jeans in public, to an out going sassy four-almost five-year old. I couldn't be more proud of her and I can't wait to see where this journey takes us.