It was likely just a coincidence, but on Thursday, one day after a transgender individual shot up a Catholic school in Minnesota and brought questions of mental illness to the front pages of our national conversation, Washington Post therapist and advice columnist Sahak Kaur Kohli told a distraught mother to stop referring to her daughter as her daughter because she identifies as a he, even though the daughter clearly has some issues.
To set the scene, the “heartbroken mom” wrote a four-paragraph letter that suggested her daughter’s gender transformation was not the conclusion of a lifelong process or even an adolescent phase of struggling with her identity, but rather sudden.
She describes how her daughter always wanted to be a doctor and an excellent student, but “in her sophomore year [of college], she began struggling with classes and lost her scholarship second semester and never did well enough to get it back. It was during this time she was coming out as gay and began her first relationship.”
She then adds:
Her partner is a trans man who had a traumatic childhood and is estranged from his family. My daughter is now 22 and has been living with her partner for two years. She has rarely been home in those two years and never without her partner, who doesn’t drive. She began identifying as male going into her senior year last year, had a falling-out with her father (my ex, who paid for her college), and had a mental breakdown in the first semester of senior year and dropped out of school (her partner dropped out in freshman year).
After chronicling the couple’s grave financial situation, the mom mourns her daughter won’t accept her invitation to come home (she did not extend the invitation to the partner), “They both resent that I don’t use he/him pronouns for my daughter, but I really don’t think that’s who she is, and I’ve been mourning the loss of who she used to be. I have no doubt she is gay, and I’m fine with that, but I have never seen gender dysphoria in her.”
Kohli wasted no time trying to shame the mom, “I can hear how much you are grieving and struggling to accept how much your child has changed over the years. I imagine that is difficult, but you can mourn the loss of who your kid used to be without invalidating who they are today.”
She added, “You say your ‘daughter has become an entirely different person these past two years,’ but what I am hearing is your son is becoming who he has always been and is now feeling confident enough to emerge more fully as himself.”
How did Kohli arrive at that conclusion? Again, there is nothing in the letter to suggest the daughter had any issues prior to going to college and struggling for the first time as a student.
Nevertheless, Kohli rolled on:
You may not ‘see’ your child’s gender identity, but it’s not something you get to confirm or deny. Rejecting his pronouns or chosen name, even if you don’t yet understand, communicates rejection of him as a person. He may be keeping his distance right now because he feels he has to choose between his selfhood and your love. That’s a painful place for him to be in. So even if you can’t fully understand or agree, use your child’s pronouns and name; after all, it’s the foundation for the bridge that keeps you in his life.
Sometimes people are blind to the fact that they are in a toxic relationship and need an outsider to lovingly speak uncomfortable truths, but continuing with the demands for uncritical affirmation, Kohli added, “I know you are worried for him, but you are also not showing up as a safe or supportive place for him to lean on. Instead, you are blaming his partner for essentially everything that has gone wrong from struggling in school to having ‘low-wage jobs.’”
Kohli concludes:
Right now, you’re presenting your concerns as if they are rooted in wellness and safety. But from where I’m sitting, your worrying is actually more about your desire for control and your discomfort with your child’s identity and choices. You cannot steer your adult child back to who they ‘used to be,’ and attempts to do so will only deepen estrangement. Is it worth losing your relationship with your child completely because you couldn’t find the strength to understand him? Only you can answer that.
Kohli seems completely uninterested in the daughter’s decline. The mother painted the picture of a daughter who is in the midst of a horrible downward spiral, and identifying as a male is just one part of that struggle. The mom wants the version of her daughter that wasn’t deeply troubled, but Kohli portrayed that as possessiveness.
