Anonymous

I’ve shared my struggles in navigating when your kid is struggling with their sexuality, at the end of the day, this is my daughter’s story.

If you go, I’ll have to pick up all the dog poop. I will have to take out the trash. I will have to sleep alone.

My dad had an explosive anger that he took out on his children. My father abused me and I love him in spite of myself. I don’t want him to die.

This article first appeared on Mamamia and has been republished with perm

The sad thing is, it took someone almost destroying me to make me open my eyes to the extent of what happens when we talk not about a culture of consent, but about temptation and defense instead.

This support my gender-fluid child receives at school means so much to my family, but the ripple effects of what the children will learn will go far.

Over those five years, I volunteered on hot summer days and rainy mornings. I stood in snow, wearing warm layers and fleece mittens. I volunteered beside women and men, many of them young, like me, but some older and wiser and living out a lifetime of experience on those sidewalks.

Yelling. Throwing things. Name-calling. The only thing that holds me back from calling my teenager’s behavior abuse is that they are my child.

Moments after this big reveal, as I sat with the knowledge that I was the mother of a queer daughter, we heard about the man in Los Angeles being stopped on his way to Pride with guns and bombs, and I suddenly realized that my daughter was now one of the millions of people at risk because of vile and unreasonable hatred about non-straight sexuality.

What do you do when you have no choice on how you get to work?