Each morning, I wake up before the sun rises and quietly watch Gersemi’s back as she sleeps. The rise and fall of my wife’s ribs remind me that she’s breathing. I get to live another day with her, the love of all my lifetimes. Staring at the ceiling, I try to remember my dreams before they slip away, hoping to relive one that reoccurs often. A lucid one where I get to live out my dream of adopting children.
In the dream, the windows are open. As I soak in the perfect weather, my wife comes home with an envelope and an expression I know very well. It’s the face she makes when she has something to tell me, but she’s trying not to cry. Through tears, she opens the envelope, revealing a letter and a photo. “There’s a child that needs us,” she says. “We’re going to be their home.”
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Suddenly, in the dream, it’s Mother’s Day, and our adopted child is in the living room, the eldest of three. They’re helping the other two learn how to walk. My wife, who doesn’t truly believe in gender, sneaks in with gifts, saying, “Daddy’s Home!”
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Being a transgender mother with a transgender wife, Mother’s Day isn’t always easy for me (or for many others in the trans community). Many, for example, are reminded that they don’t have a good relationship with their own mothers. I’m personally reminded of how my identity made it almost impossible for me to have a child with my ex-wife. During my own fertility journey, I went off hormones for a year to naturally produce testosterone and have a child. The journey took a toll on me, and my mental health declined so much, I nearly didn’t make it.
Like many people who carry a child to term, some of the effects of my sacrifice scarred me permanently. Although I will never conceive from a womb of my own, my sacrifice was a comparable act of love for my child. I deserve a day, too. Mother’s Day belongs to me and to many other transgender people.
For Alexa, a transgender woman living in Lexington, North Carolina, Mother’s Day is a mix of blissful celebration with her husband and longing for a life that doesn’t exist. Each year, she struggles because of challenges related to her fertility and a difficult relationship with her mother.
“I sometimes feel bad for having those negative feelings because Mother’s Day is a celebration of all the women in our lives that helped raise us, and that’s not a bad thing,” Alexa tells LGBTQ Nation. Recounting her fondest memory of Mother’s Day, she describes her and her father shopping together for a surprise for her mother. Regretfully, she and her mother are no longer close, and these memories are a reminder of their distance.
Alexa describes her perfect Mother’s Day, celebrating with her own children and having a cookout at her parents’ house. Unfortunately, Alexa’s path to motherhood was halted by medical and logistical complications related to her transgender identity.
“I used to wish every woman I saw on Mother’s Day a happy Mother’s Day, until I realized for some of us it’s a day filled with pain and hard-to-handle emotions of a life that has been thrown our way,” she said. She revealed that she hadn’t celebrated Mother’s Day since 2018, and she wishes for anyone having difficult emotions around the holiday to know they’re not alone.
It’s a message that would be well-placed for people like Danielle Skidmore, a transgender woman from Austin, Texas. For Skidmore, Mother’s Day has always been a bit complicated. Before her transition, the day belonged to her then-wife, the woman who gave birth to their son. Skidmore, who hadn’t come out as a transgender woman, was happy to celebrate from the sidelines. It was clearly her cisgender partner’s day. After her transition, she continued to observe the same tradition. Father’s Day remained hers.
As time created distance between her and her pre-transition self, though, she began to assert her identity as a woman. Being the woman she always was revealed her role as a second mother for her children. “My ex-wife came to understand that our son could have two moms. We have settled into a place where we both get to celebrate. I suppose now it’s more like parents’ day.”
Skidmore remembers her first Mother’s Day vividly. Her son, Peter, was born days before Mother’s Day in 2001. They didn’t know that Peter had a rare genetic disorder that would cause a traumatic injury at eight months old, leaving him a nonverbal quadriplegic. “Those early days of his life, almost 24 years ago, were the only brief moments of ‘typical’ parenting that we’ve experienced,” said Skidmore. Her first experience of Mother’s Day as a mother remains one of her most cherished memories.
Skidmore and her ex-wife have been separated since 2016, but they remain close. Their lives are still deeply entwined through the care of their now-adult son. They reunite every year on Mother’s Day to celebrate their unique and enduring family. Now, the day also includes her ex-wife’s long-term partner and her children.
It’s not a Mother’s Day that many would conceive, but for Skidmore, it’s beautiful. It holds space for everyone who loves Peter and inspires people who celebrate Mother’s Day despite challenging circumstances – people like Kyla Knight, a nonbinary person who spent a year on a difficult fertility journey with the hopes of becoming a single parent by choice.
Knight had received promising news from their doctor about their chances of becoming pregnant. Unfortunately, an unexpected medical complication halted their progress. Their fertility medications were not compatible with previously prescribed medicines. Their chances of being a parent ended, leaving Knight devastated.
In their heartbreak, they developed a new clarity on what they wanted in life. The original plan had always been to start gender-affirming care after having children. In their grief, they decided to start testosterone and allow the euphoria of a newly affirmed gender identity to ease their pain. Slowly, their voice deepened, and they felt stronger. Secondary masculine characteristics took hold of their body and for the first time, they felt like themself.
Sadly, Knight’s bubble of gender euphoria was burst by people who refused to affirm their identity. On a Mother’s Day while vending at the farmer’s market where they worked in their conservative hometown, they said “Dozens of people, mostly men, wished me a happy Mother’s Day.”
“I smiled and came up with random light-hearted responses so that I could continue to promote my products,” said Knight. Inside, they were unraveling.
They were overcome with grief, raw and layered. Not just about their own loss, but about the broader assumptions surrounding motherhood. Setting gender aside, they thought, it’s presumptuous to assume someone is a parent. Layer on the constant misgendering and blatant misogyny – repeated for hours– trapped beyond the counter at their work left them exhausted and rattled. Knight found comfort in their dark humor. “I might not have a baby, but at least I grew a d*ck,” they said.
Mother’s Day can be a space for an enjoyable day with family, or it can push people into escapism. In my experience, Mother’s Day is a chance to send a cheerful GIF to my biological mother through text and flowers to my chosen mother in the East Village of NYC. Every year, I get to affirm every transgender parent I know who identifies as a mother because I know many people in the world will not.
My ideal Mother’s Day is one where the assumptions around gender and parenthood don’t exist. I tend to recede into my dream of adopting children with my wife. I escape to a world where being called a mother doesn’t create a feeling of being an impostor. In this world, my transgender wife and I can live without having to qualify who we are. It’s a world where we’re not transgender mothers – we’re just mothers. For now, it’s a world that exists only in my dreams. I’ll enjoy Mother’s Day, nonetheless, by sharing love in my own way.
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