Published on Huffington Post 09/05/16 Being a mother has called me to do things I never thought I’d do. Now, here I am, about to become a published children’s book author! What inspired my book? Let me take you back to when my son Danny was in kindergarten, over 20 years ago… COVER ART BY ROBERT LIU-TRUJILLO, 2016Danny with a picture of the princess he wants to be in the school parade. Danny is five and he’s already starting to...
What I Wish I’d Known About Gender When I Became a Parent
Published in Huffington Post here. “You had a beautiful baby boy.” Those were the first words I heard after my child was born. I named him Daniel and started dressing him in clothes made for boys. But, raising a child is often full of the unexpected. It soon became obvious that Danny was different than other boys. He loved Barbie dolls, dressing up in skirts and shimmery things, and preferred playing with girls. I didn’t know...
My Son was a Princess for Halloween and I Became a Better Parent
(published in Huffington Post on September 30, 2015. Also published in Polish, here. See related story on Good Morning America, here.) A few weeks before my son Danny’s 4th birthday, I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween. “I wanna be a princess,” he said. He didn’t hesitate for a second. But I did. I cringed inside and tried hard not to show it. “My reaction was clouded by visions of children teasing, of...
Transgender Women’s Lives: A Family Matter
Also published in the Huffington Post, here. This year we’ve broken a record, and it’s not a good one. More transgender women have been killed in the U.S. than in any other year on record. I’m heartbroken and angered that women keep dying, most of them women of color, most of them Black. Most were between the ages of 17-25, just coming into adulthood, when their lives, dreams and futures were stolen. They were sisters,...
Six Cultural Barriers to Family Acceptance
People often ask me about the cultural barriers that I see working with Latino families around family acceptance. I hesitate to answer this question because I don’t want to feed into stereotypes. The term culture is often used to talk about people who are considered different than the mainstream, but not about U.S. culture in general. This post discusses dominant cultural beliefs and norms related to gender and sexual orientation that I grew...
