We all need to love and be loved
Through my interview process I have realized that I need to trust that the voices of the people I have interviewed will speak for themselves.
I am honored to share Tiana’s words:
My name is Tiana and I am 24 years old. I identify as a gay woman, and my pronouns are she/her. I am a psychiatric crisis stabilization nurse.
Everyone just wants to feel accepted and loved. They especially want to feel accepted by the people they love. I truly believe that a child’s development is normal. I think now we just have words and categories and communities for that development. I don’t ever want to invalidate a child’s feeling about attaching to a label, whether that label changes or not. When children aren’t validated, it communicates that they are invalid. In reality, it’s completely valid that they’re going through change or exploration.
These normal, fluctuating changes in their children can be confusing to adults. Some parents are not in tune with all of the changes. Ultimately kids just want to be accepted and want to feel good about themselves. Now we just have words that kids are able to access so they can describe what they feel. I think having the vocabulary is great, but all the label choices can also be stressful for parents and youth. They have this list of words they can use to label themselves or identify what they feel and who they are, but they don’t necessarily know which label fits. People who didn’t have those words growing up find it hard to communicate with the kids. In the past there may not have been role models to see who had different expressions of their gender and sexual identity.
We do have a lot of loving parents who just are not able to wrap their minds around the idea that their child may be struggling with their gender and/or sexual identity. The parents didn’t grow up with it; they aren’t familiar. They don’t know how to navigate the new information they’re learning. A lot of parents use their kids’ pronouns in the right way and they will fight until their kid gets identified with the pronouns that they want to use. They will correct you and try their best to use the pronouns correctly themselves. For example, one father would often misgender his child – not in front of them, but to me – and would immediately correct himself loudly saying, “That is not the pronoun my child uses,” even if the child was not in the room. “I respect my child’s transition and developmental stage wherever they may be. “
It can be difficult for parents to watch their children go through something hard. I think the fact that they validate their kid is everything, whether or not their kid ultimately identifies as queer. If I had said to my mom at a young age, “I’m queer,” and my parents then used my pronouns and talked about everything openly and didn’t hide it from everyone, that would have been enough. It communicates so much. Often the communication is mostly nonverbal: “I accept you and you’re not wrong.” Words, whether positive or negative, bleed into their adulthood.
My mom said to me when I was a younger teenager, “I don’t ever want my kids to be gay, not because I wouldn’t accept them, but because it would be a hard life.” Later when I came out to her, she realized that my sexual identity was never a choice; that’s not how it works. Yes, it can be challenging to face homophobia and know that you’re not always accepted, but that’s your identity and your community and that’s who you are. It doesn’t matter. It’s a choice to wear the clothes you want to wear, but being who you are is ultimately not a choice. Is it a choice to walk out in a skirt? Yes. But is it a choice to feel good in that skirt? No.
Teens, love yourselves. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Try to be vulnerable in front of your parents unless it’s not safe to do so.
Parents, love your teens. What your child is going through is not just a phase. Whether they identify the same tomorrow or not, they need to be validated today. They need to be told that they are worthy of love no matter who they are. If they are questioning today and sure tomorrow, they are no less worthy of love and validation. They are no less worthy of understanding and support.