Ilene was an extraordinary child. Despite being on the autism spectrum, she excelled in many areas. She was a brilliant student, an accomplished musician who played five instruments, a polyglot who spoke four languages, and a dedicated athlete with multiple black belts (or dan ranks) in Tang Soo Do. She lost her father to cancer when she was only twelve. Around this time, I began noticing scars from self-harm, which I immediately addressed with her pediatrician. The doctor recommended getting a dog, and after we brought Ginger into our lives, the self-harming stopped.
The COVID pandemic, however, changed everything. Like many teenagers during COVID, Ilene began spending more and more time online. After a while, she declared that she was bisexual, then a lesbian, and then non-binary. Then, in 2021, out of the blue, my 16-year-old girly girl decided she was transgender. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what being transgender meant, and the information I found online seemed to support affirmation as the only right approach and response. In a panic, afraid of losing my daughter, I agreed to use male pronouns and helped her legally change her name to “Raven.”
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