Letter 113: Accepting the Question
When we learn lessons on love from adolescents
Welcome! This bi-weekly email newsletter is a place where women spanning all ages share their sense of identity and their awareness of our world through personal narrative. Stories shared here come from writers across many generations, cultures, locations, and ethnicities.
Hello, hello,
Has anyone listed to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast Wiser than Me? My sister, Katie, introduced me to an episode this week with Isabel Allende and it was fantastic. The best part of the podcast is its premise: We can learn so much from older women when we a) just ask the questions and b) really listen. I’m reminded of that same tenet when I think of this newsletter and the incredible pieces of wisdom we’ve read from women like Nadine and MaryAnn. My sister, Katie, also introduced me to her friend, Ammi, who shares a powerful, impactful piece here today. I know you will be struck just as I was by her messages of grace, acceptance and supporting one another on their journeys. I’m deeply grateful for her willingness to share these important words with our readers. —Molly
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
Walt Whitman, a man ahead of his times
On a mid-June afternoon, sun kissing the iridescent green tips of late spring leaves, from the back seat of my Subaru, my daughter defected to the patriarchy.
“Dad’s going to be disappointed to have three sons now,” B said. Then she pinned a He/They button on his/their shirt and everything I ever knew about grammar (which wasn’t much to begin with) went out the window with every blindly gender-normative hope I had for my baby girl.
They were not few. Mom-n-me pedicures, proms, a diamond I’d been saving for her, watching her be a mother, her assured evolution into a man-appreciating-feminist. Velvet skirts. Braided hair. Shoe sharing. Wanting her to want to grow up to be like me.
Despite a belief that I’m progressive and a subscription to the NYT, I had all kinds of automated ideas about what kind of person my daughter should be just because she was my daughter. Notice the emphasis on the “my.”
A strange sort of solipsistic grief overcame me and I found myself drowned in the weight of my attachments. Her revelation had opened some deeper wound in me, some calcified part of my own identity that had hardened over time. B’s transition felt like yet another rejection in a familial history of repudiation and disapproval.
In many ways, I grew up with a destructive model of womanhood. I spent much of my life trying to grapple with what it meant for me to be a woman, to find my voice, to heal from the physical and emotional abuse that bludgeoned my childhood with propaganda of shame, guilt, and deceit. While that work alienated me from my own mother, I didn’t do it to repair our relationship. I did it to heal and to offer a different experience to my daughter.
I wanted to show her that a mother’s love is unconditional and did not need to be earned. I wanted her to know she is good and right, capable and independent, and that there is no heavy price to pay or dishonor to bear in order to live in her truth.
I wanted to show her how to be a good woman. Then she decided she didn’t want to be a woman at all. Was she a traitorous turncoat or had my example just been that bad?
Driving home on that same highway some months later, wracked by tears of loss and confusion as I realized this wasn’t some fickle teenage phase, I thought to myself, Where did I go wrong?
Annnnnd… fuck. There it was. The echo of my own mother’s narcissism banging off the walls of my brain cavity. I’ve paid a lot of therapists to confirm that I don’t suffer from a contagious version of this malady, but we cannot deny my middle-child tendencies and trauma-addled brain’s weakness for it.
There were so many painful truths in that singular thought. The implied message that my child is some kind of obliged representative. That his gender expression was about me. That something was wrong at all—and worse—that something was wrong with him.
As pavement turned to gravel and my headlights flooded the narrow forest road, a softness overcame me. I wanted to provide a safe home, and it had proven safe enough for B to explore who he was, safe enough to share with me.
My job as a parent is to steward my child’s journey. Not to define it. Not to shape, cajole, snowplow it. Not to helicopter or tiger-mom it. My job is to offer love and support as B unravels his definition of gender-identity and all the other unknowns of life. To offer security and reprieve when the harshness of the world reveals itself, as it does eventually to everyone. Some of us, like B, just walk courageously toward it.
Adolescence is about revolution and gender is just one of the many boundaries these future adults are challenging. It is our very birthright to explore iterations of ourselves until the day we die. It is how we grow as individuals and thus how society evolves as a whole. We underestimate the capabilities of youth in that quest and overestimate our opinions and their import.
“Gender is a socio-cultural construct, Mom,” says B on the way to school early one morning, “just like virginity.” This is followed by an articulate explanation of an antiquated binary system that prescribes gender and norms in ways that don’t include many of today’s youth. I haven’t had enough coffee to respond with anything intelligent, but I am beaming with pride. He’s everything a parent hopes their child will be: A good person with a mind of their own.
That’s right, Kiddo, question everything. Just don’t expect me to have the answers.
Ammi’s 5 Favorite Things
The Oura ring — I’m a data nerd fascinated by the cluster-fuck freight-train that is perimenopause. This slick gadget helps me feel less crazy.
Books — Keeping a list of all the books I read in a year as a kind of barometer of my life. My favorite book of the last year was Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. I was reading it as I learned of the suicide of a friend and it nursed my grief with visions of his ghost having silent conversations in my living room.
Coffee — Every blessed day it serves as a ritual of gratitude and abundance. What a gift to wake to such joy each morning. I currently love this single origin roast and everything our local roaster, Evans Brothers Coffee, does for small farm producers of the world.
House of Hackney wallpapers — Because I’m convinced having tropical birds in my writing office will lend to producing works of great literature.
Teenagers — If anyone has the power to redeem (or destroy) humanity, it’s these brilliant kids. Also, they keep me current on vocabulary of the times so I don’t sound quite as ignorant as I likely am. Let’s try not to set their planet on fire while they’re busy infiltrating the patriarchy one trans man at a time.
With gratitude,
Ammi Midstokke
P.S. Ammi’s first book, All the Things: Mountain Misadventure, Relationshipping, and Other Hazards of an Off-Grid Life was published in 2023. It is the story of a single mother with a library of power tools, questionable methods of chimney sweeping and the redemptive power of love. Ammi would also love to hear from you and she offered to share her email address with our readers: ammimarie@gmail.com.
Love. Thank you. And thanks B. ❤️
My job as a parent is to steward my child’s journey. Not to define it. Not to shape, cajole, snowplow it. Not to helicopter or tiger-mom it. My job is to offer love and support as B unravels his definition of gender-identity and all the other unknowns of life. To offer security and reprieve when the harshness of the world reveals itself, as it does eventually to everyone. Some of us, like B, just walk courageously toward it.