CANR
WORK TITLE: WHAT WE WILL BECOME
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Boston
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME:
https://mimslemay.tumblr.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: yes.
EDUCATION:Tufts University, earned master’s degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Transgender youth advocate. Member of the Human Rights Campaign’s Parents for Transgender Equality Council.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the Boston Globe.
SIDELIGHTS
Mimi Lemay is a transgender youth advocate. She grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family but left the community later in life. Lemay gained attention after writing an open letter in the Boston Globe to her five-year-old son, Jacob, who was transitioning after being identified at birth as a girl. Writing in the Human Rights Campaign website, Lemay talked about her inspiration for joining the Human Rights Campaign’s Parents for Transgender Equality Council. She claimed that “there are few forces in the world more powerful than parents whose protective instincts are awakened. The council has enabled me to fight alongside this country’s leading parent advocates and, with the expertise, experience and resources of HRC, there is nothing we cannot accomplish together.”
In an article in Jewish Boston, Lemay admitted that her faith both created hurdles for understanding her son’s gender dysphoria but also gave her a pathway to advocate for everyone in this situation and to raise awareness for the condition. She noted: “When I was a young girl, I was taught that each Jew was like a limb on a body, and if one suffered, then all suffered.” Lemay further explained that “the words of the sages, particularly that of Hillel, are very relevant in my advocacy: ‘If I am not for myself, than who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, than what am I, and if not now, when?’ Particularly the last part of that saying resonates with me as we push for legal change, such as the implementation of an anti-discrimination law to protect transgender individuals in places of public accommodation.”
Lemay spoke with Catherine Triomphe in an article in the Times of Israel about her acceptance of Mia’s transitioning into Jacob. She recalled that “it is bittersweet: there is a great joy in seeing your child being fulfilled, and also great concern about the hostility of the world.” Lemay conceded, though, that “there is also a sense of loss—the person may not have been the person you thought they were but they still existed in your mind.” Nevertheless, Lemay admitted in the same article the validation for Jacob’s affirmation as a boy came from the drastic upswing in his mood. Lemay remembered that “seeing that happiness that the transition brought was the best therapy that I could have asked for.”
Lemay published her first book, What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation, in 2019. The account highlights Lemay’s experience of coming to understand her four-year-old daughter Mia’s wish to transition and become a boy. Lemay relates that her Orthodox Jewish upbringing and break with that community helped her to understand that accepting norms and traditions for the sake of tradition can be harmful. Unwilling to put her child through such a strict upbringing based on her own understandings and expectations, Lemay and her husband began to see how happy Jacob was when allowed to live as a boy.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated: “Compassionate, wise, and sensitively told, Lemay’s narrative offers moving portraits of a mother and family willing to embrace radical change in order to unconditionally support their child.” The same reviewer called What We Will Become “an intimate and clearly heartfelt memoir.” A Publishers Weekly contributor mentioned that ‘this fascinating, heart-wrenching memoir offers invaluable insights into issues of gender identity.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Boston Globe, February 26, 2015, Mimi Lemay, “A Letter to My Son Jacob on His 5th Birthday.”
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2019, review of What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation.
Publishers Weekly, August 19, 2019, review of What We Will Become, p. 85.
Times of Israel, May 18, 2017, Catherine Triomphe, “Growing Up Transgender: U.S. Family Confronts Stigma.”
ONLINE
Human Rights Campaign, https://www.hrc.org/ (October 21, 2019), Sula Malina, author interview.
Jewish Boston, https://www.jewishboston.com/ (September 18, 2016), “How Judaism Helped Jacob Go from Assigned Girl to Boy.”
MIMI LEMAY is an international advocate for transgender youth and the author of the viral essay “A Letter to My Son Jacob on His 5th Birthday.” Lemay and her family meet regularly with legislators, business leaders, educators, and clergy to share their vision of a more equitable world. She is a member of the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council at Human Rights Campaign and holds a master’s in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
HRC Sits Down with Parents for Trans Equality Council’s Mimi Lemay
By HRC staff March 29, 2019
Post submitted by Sula Malina, HRC Children, Youth and Families Program Coordinator
HRC recently sat down with Mimi Lemay, author and member of HRC Foundation’s Parents for Transgender Equality Council, to learn more about her family’s story. Lemay is an international advocate for transgender youth and the proud parent of a nine-year-old son, Jacob. She began her advocacy shortly after her son’s transition at an age of four, when an essay she wrote about the experience went viral.
The Lemay family was instrumental in the fight for the successful passage of an equal access public accommodations law in Massachusetts in 2016. Lemay’s memoir will be released in this fall, weaving her experiences growing up in, and ultimately leaving, her strict Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and her adult life parenting a trans child.
What inspired you to join HRC's Parents for Transgender Equality Council?
There are few forces in the world more powerful than parents whose protective instincts are awakened. The council has enabled me to fight alongside this country’s leading parent advocates and, with the expertise, experience and resources of HRC, there is nothing we cannot accomplish together.
What part of HRC's work do you connect with the most?
The gift of HRC is that HRC is fighting on every front and, through it all, uplifting the voices of individuals and powerfully shifting hearts and minds. It is through these stories that we are then able to demand change in our government’s laws and our boardrooms’ policies. The culmination of all this work is the Equality Act. The idea of comprehensive rights nationwide is simple, necessary and long overdue.
This March, we celebrate Trans Day of Visibility. What does visibility mean to your family?
I have come to believe that the human spirit cannot thrive in hiding. My husband Joe and I experienced this with our son. In the months before Jacob’s transition, we could feel him withdrawing from us. When we began to educate ourselves about what it meant to be transgender, we realized that we needed to allow Jacob to fully become the person he knew himself to be. The change in Jacob once he was affirmed was instantaneous. It was like someone had suddenly flipped on a light switch in a dark room -- and Jacob’s authentic self was blindingly beautiful. That is the power of visibility.
What's one message you have for transgender youth who may not have the support of their families, but may one day be out and visible?
It breaks my heart to know that there are thousands of LGBTQ youth that have to stifle the truest and deepest parts of themselves in order to survive in hostile environments. To them, my message is: your day will come -- you have not been forgotten. We will fight tooth and nail to change the world around you so that you can emerge as the valuable, precious, authentic individuals that you are.
HRC Foundation’s Parents for Transgender Equality Council is a coalition of some of the nation's leading parent-advocates working for equality and fairness for transgender people. To learn more about HRC Foundation's work with transgender youth and their families, visit our Children, Youth and Families Program.
Growing up transgender: US family confronts stigma
Mom says her own rebellion from an ultra-Orthodox community helped her navigate the transition of four-year-old daughter Mia into fun-loving son Jacob
By Catherine TRIOMPHE
18 May 2017, 9:44 pm 5
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Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay poses for photos in the yard of his home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
MELROSE, Massachusetts (AFP) — For months in the Lemay home, the same phrase was repeated over and over by their troubled young child, barely more than a toddler, who showed growing signs of depression.
“It is a mistake. I am not a girl, I am a boy.”
That convinced the Lemay family that Mia should become Jacob.
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Mimi and Joe Lemay live in a large home similar to hundreds of others in the fashionable, family-oriented suburb of Melrose, north of Boston.
Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay poses with his parents Joe and Mimi at their home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
They are parents of two daughters, ages eight and four, and now a seven-year-old boy, born Mia in 2010 but who officially changed his name to Jacob at age four.
At a time of vigorous debate in the United States about transgender students, reignited by President Donald Trump when he repealed federal protections about bathroom use, the Lemays are determined to share their story, how it convulsed their family and how it can offer comfort and help to others who going through the same experience.
While there are no official statistics, child gender transition affects hundreds of American families, if a Facebook support page is anything to go by.
Nearly three years have passed since the Lemays accepted Mia would transition. Their circle largely accepts Jacob, but Mimi admits there were “some tough moments” and “days of genuine grief” along the way.
Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay poses for photos in the yard of his home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
“It is bittersweet: there is a great joy in seeing your child being fulfilled, and also great concern about the hostility of the world,” she tells AFP.
“There is also a sense of loss — the person may not have been the person you thought they were but they still existed in your mind.”
The family doesn’t regret anything.
Jacob, sporting a crew cut, says he loves soccer and sewing — with the toothless grin of a child who has lost his first baby teeth.
“Seeing that happiness that the transition brought was the best therapy that I could have asked for,” says Mimi.
‘Right decision’
Within a couple of weeks, “he just brightened and turned into a different kid. He started laughing again,” says Joe.
“Before he was a depressed person, not wanting to wake up,” recalls his father. “In hindsight, it is obvious to us we made the right decision.”
Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay plays with an iPad in his home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
Jacob’s 40-year-old mother, who was raised in a ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that she left as an adult, says her own rebellion helped her navigate her son’s transition.
“Having already been through that process, I feel it was easier for me to say to my kid, whatever the social norms of the world, ‘I see you, I see the person you are inside and that’s far more important to me and I don’t need to follow conventions’,” Mimi said.
Joe, who is 39 and the co-founder of a start-up that makes electronic notebooks, says he’s also happy with their decision.
“No one really wishes your child to be different in any big way, and in a way that could create challenges in their life,” he said. “You can imagine how I felt.”
“I used to call Mia my ‘Buddha baby’ because she was so happy and bright and always smiling,” he said. “Then I watched that child turn into a very sullen, dark child.”
Life line
After going to see specialists and support groups for transgender children, the choice crystallized, Joe says.
If they refused to let Mia live as a boy, it was at the risk of making him live another year of “shame and growing toward having real mental health issues,” that can include increased risk of suicide, he explained.
Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay plays in the yard of his home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
If they agreed, then the danger of embarrassment or perhaps having to move out of town seemed less of a risk to the entrepreneur.
“I thought the conservative thing was to transition, and the real risky thing was to say ‘no, not yet or not at all’,” he said.
The Lemays don’t know what will happen when Jacob reaches puberty and if he will want to start hormone therapy with a view to having surgery.
But in the meantime, the couple has become a lifeline to other parents confronted with young children rejecting the sexual identity dictated by their bodies.
On social networks as in seminars on transgender issues, or in the bosom of LGBT rights groups, they speak frequently about Jacob’s return to happiness.
“We saw how much hostility there was towards the idea that a child may be transgender,” says Mimi. “That was a mental bridge that people were not able to cross.”
Seven-year-old transgender boy Jacob Lemay and his parents Joe and Mimi look at their family photo before his transition at their home in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 9, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD / AFP)
The Lemays recognize that thanks to their education and surroundings, they are “privileged.” They live in Massachusetts, one of the most progressive states in the United States and the first to legalize gay marriage.
After his transition in June 2014, Jacob changed schools and is now accepted as a boy by classmates who have no idea about his previous identity.
With the help of the school district, principal Mary Beth Maranto organized training about transgender students and gave teachers an opportunity to ask questions “and become more familiar with this new part of our culture.”
“Society will eventually accept it,” says Joe.
“There is social media where people can educate each other, families can get together — no one can pretend it is not happening.”
A Letter to My Son Jacob on His 5th Birthday
A Letter to My Son Jacob on His 5th Birthday
Mimi and her son Jacob. –Courtesy of Mimi Lemay
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By Mimi Lemay February 26, 2015
Jacob Lemay is a transgender five-year-old whose assigned gender at birth was that of a girl but who now lives as an affirmed boy. His story was recently featured on NBC Nightly News and the Today Show.
Back in February, Boston.com republished an open letter Mimi Lemay wrote to her son, which details the story of how she and husband Joe came to accept he was transgender, and allowed him to begin living an affirmed life as a boy.
It was a frigid New England February day, much like this one, when we were first introduced. Of course, I imagined that I knew something about you beforehand, by the way you moved and kicked and somersaulted in my belly — by your satisfied silences and painful protests. The only ‘real information’ I had was that you appeared to be healthy, and that you were a girl.
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I prepared your sister and our home for your advent: another crib with attractive floral bedding, matching dresses, spring bonnets in duplicate and coordinating bathing suits for the summer. Your dad protested all this unnecessary expenditure, but I slyly reasoned that birthdays a half year apart meant that hand-me-downs would be seasonably unsuited. And so I dreamed, and I clicked, and adorable and trendy confections in pink and purple and mint and magenta arrived at our doorstep. It was folly, but it was fun.
When we finally met, you were momentarily silent. You took a pause to adjust to your surroundings before announcing your presence as I anxiously strained the only autonomously movable part of my body, my neck, to catch a glimpse of you around the blue curtain where the surgeon had extracted you from my womb. The surgery had been painful, the anesthetic insufficient, but all that was forgotten as every fiber of my being was focused on your unseeable presence. And then I heard you. You didn’t whimper, you didn’t cry, you didn’t squall. You ROARED: “Here I am!’’ Soon after, as you lay swaddled near my head in a white towel with pink and blue stripes, I was able to gaze into your eyes through a happy haze and introduce myself in return. “Hello Princess,’’ I said, “I’m your Mama.’’
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Your dad often recounts the moment he held you first. Your hearty, solid body, your pumping fists and legs and the surprised thought, “This one is a different model,’’ comparing you to your dainty sister. In the weeks after, we would share all the funny and not so funny moments with our friends: the attempted VBAC, the ensuing complications and that hilarious moment when the anesthesiologist, from her poor vantage point at the head of the gurney called out, “It’s a boy!’’ Hilarious, because you were not, most definitely not, a boy.
What you most definitely were was a spirited little thing. As you grew, you had a way of fearlessly barreling around and into things that earned you the nickname “honey badger.’’ For mild plagiocephaly (flat head), you wore a bright pink football helmet for several months before your first birthday. We assigned your audacity to the fact that the helmet protected you from the consequences of most of your escapades.
You had a curiously deep voice and a blithely cheerful personality. As our second child, you benefited from the benign inattention of more relaxed parenting. However, despite its charms, your ‘knock about-edness’ began to concern us as time went on. You lacked coordination, constantly falling off and into things, sometimes seeming to deliberately throw yourself into the couch or floor. We contacted our local Early Intervention specialists and after a lengthy assessment, you received services for Sensory Perception Disorder, a minor hiccup in an otherwise pristine medical record.
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When your baby sister came along, you were still in diapers. You welcomed her with generosity, with no significant jealousy or displacement. You three were so close, so affectionate to each other. Our family was complete. Three healthy, bright, beautiful girls; we had spun the wheel of fortune and won the jackpot. There were no clouds on the horizon, and the sun shone in perpetuity. Of course I exaggerate. There were tussles and tiffs, bumps and bruises, reflux and influenza, terrible twos and tormentuous threes. But for the most part, I was grateful beyond measure that our lives were so lovely, so ordinarily good. I enjoyed posting pictures of my darling daughters, now dressed in triplicate, to Facebook, and I reveled in the compliments we received.
As you crested the middle of your second year, you developed a curious habit, a persistent routine. You started to change your clothes repeatedly, maybe 10–12 times throughout the day. I reacted with both annoyance and mounting concern. Your pile of sartorial rejects meant exponentially more laundry. Goodbye matching dresses. My concern was that your habit was tinged with compulsion. When you woke up crying at 2 a.m. one night begging to be allowed to change into a new outfit, I called your pediatrician. Since you did not display other signs of compulsiveness, we associated your desire to change with your general sensory seeking behavior. You were changing clothes in order to feel the fabrics rub against your skin. Children with a sensory deficit often seek sensations, because they do not experience them to the full extent that the rest of us do in the ordinary course of our day.
This theory held water for only so long, for soon after you started preschool at 2.9 years, you became attached to one particular garment — a short-sleeved cornflower blue turtleneck sweater with a brown dog on the front, which you wore for the next six months with few exceptions. You wore your ‘doggy sweater,’ day and sometimes, if you won the battle, night. You wore it over your tutu to ballet class, and over your holiday dress to see Santa at the mall. I ordered several more on eBay. Again, I cursed silently as I increased the frequency of my laundry to accommodate your needs. Since the weather was chilly, we had a temporary reprieve from having to figure out how the doggy sweater would work on top of swimwear. I decided to fight that battle come spring. But by the time spring arrived, our struggles over the doggy sweater would seem trivial compared to something new and far more alarming.
In the interim between the advent of the doggy sweater and your third birthday, you set a stake in the ground and declared yourself a boy. At first we bantered with the word “pretend.’’ We explained, and you acknowledged, that you were pretending to be a boy. At preschool you tentatively assigned yourself to the male faction of the class, and you were told that you were pretending, and that pretending was fine as long as it didn’t interfere with the workings of the school day. When I was told that you were told that you were pretending, I nodded and acquiesced. It made sense. This new thing was foreign, and it was troublesome and above all, it seemed unhealthy. Another obsession. Another whim.
Whim or not, our home soon became a battleground over gender with you constantly pulling me, your dad, and your older sister into unwilling skirmishes. You would glare at us with your huge, defiant brown eyes and say, “I AM A BOY,’’ and I, a great believer in the principle of the inverse proportionality of parental disapproval to a child’s sedition, gave little protest. I would sigh: “That’s fine sweetheart. You can be what you want to be in our home.’’
I kept your sister off your back when she protested your apparent disregard for basic biology (which we explained to you). We started to have discussions about the narrow-mindedness of gender expectations: pink and blue, dolls and trains. We assumed that you were stating a preference for things un-girly. We couldn’t comprehend that you could even conceive of what gender was when you had barely begun preschool. So we told you to go ahead and wear boy clothes, and that gray was a perfectly acceptable favorite color for a 3-year-old girl, and that yes, if it was important to you, we would call you Jackson or Max or Jake or whatever the nom du jour was.
You never asked us to call you anything but “Em” in the public arena. But our soothing acceptance never seemed to be enough. You became watchful and guarded at school and in public. At home, there were many occasions that you let go, hitting, kicking and punching, wailing and screaming: “Don’t talk to me!’’ “Get away from me,’’ and frequently, “You ruin everything!’’ Your anger seemed atypical, in excess of the ordinary emotional vicissitudes of being 3.
You had always been jolly and loving as an infant, but now I was the only one you would kiss and hug — you frequently exploded if anyone else tried to show you affection. Sometimes, even with me, if I casually brushed your hair with my hand or gave you an unsolicited hug, you would recoil and bark angrily at me. And that was another thing — your new, quite unsociable habit of pretending you were a dog when people addressed you. You would lope around in a circle, as if chasing an invisible tail, tongue hanging out, “Aarf! Aarrrf!!’’ leaving us to explain your odd behaviors. To be fair, we had many peaceful moments, and it wasn’t all bad. Sometimes you relaxed, and your beautiful, happy nature shone through. Those moments were a blessing, a dream — and I cherished every one, bracing for the next upset.
I knew that being ‘as a boy’ was important to you. I knew little of the word “transsexual.’’ I had first encountered it as a young adult, riveted to the dark thriller Silence of the Lambs, in which the antagonist, “Buffalo Bill,’’ skinned his victims in order to create for himself a ‘woman’ body suit. I was aware that there was a newer term — transgender — and that, in my way of thinking at the time, younger people could be ‘afflicted’ with this too. It was weird, it was beyond the pale, it was, to my current shame, slightly grotesque. I did not truly believe that it applied to my beautiful, round-faced, bright-eyed, innocent preschooler.
But then one day in the late fall of your third year, I attended a routine parent-teacher conference. Your teacher expressed her concern in hesitant tones: “You know, Mrs. Lemay, has it ever occurred to you, is it possible — that Em may actually believe she is a boy?’’ You had just learned how to write your name, all jumbled letters and fat, precious pen strokes. We were so proud of you. You, however, did not share our pride. Apparently, when required to write your name, you would comply, but then immediately cross it out. This obliteration of the marker of your given identity spoke volumes about how you perceived or rather, refused to perceive yourself.
Reality, which had been hovering just out of conscious reach, struck. My stomach churned. I tasted the ash in my mouth (I never understood that expression before). Tears stung as they welled up in my eyes. I tried to stem the flow out of embarrassment, wiping my eyes and nose on my sleeve, standing in the middle of the bare auditorium, no box of tissues in sight. Not my little girl. Not happening. Please wake up.
I stumbled through the next days in a painful haze. We were a few weeks shy of winter break, and I reached out to a friend of ours, a therapist who had worked with at-risk LGBTQ youth. As we stood doling out cheddar cheese bunnies and pretzels to our raucous offspring on a playdate, she confirmed my fears — we should consider that you might be transgender.
I pressed her to tell me what that meant. Not the dictionary definition, but what the implications were: to your future, to your physical and mental well-being, and to our family. I heard words like “outcomes’’ and “high-risk’’ and “medical intervention’’ and statistics like “over 40 percent attempted suicide,’’ and my world started to unravel. She tried to temper these dark things with words of encouragement and moral support, however it was impossible to process any further. The blood was rushing too strongly in my head as my heart was being carried downstream with the vestiges of my fantasy of a wonderful life for you.
I freely write about the negative emotions that the possibility of your transgender nature evoked with regret, but no shame. By now, you know how proud I am of you, how happy I am to be your mother, and how I perceive your unique nature as a precious, if puzzling, gift. At the time though, it was a devastating blow.
I began to grieve, waking up in the early morning hours biting my pillow to silence the sobs, my sheets bathed in the stink of bad dreams. I was losing you, my precious daughter. You were in the room next to me in peaceful childhood slumber, but you were most assuredly slipping from my grasp, hurtling into a void of social rejection, physical mutilation, and suicidal depression. I felt helpless. I began, as many parents do when faced with a child that has unique needs, to ask, “What is the treatment?’’ by which I meant: What is the cure?
I called the Gender Management Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital, and although you were too young for the program, they referred me to a therapist who had experience with transgender youth. She was not covered by our insurance at the time but was willing to speak with me at length on the phone. She told me that many children — up to 70 to 80 percent—who present as gender-non-conforming (running the gamut from tomboy/effeminate to truly transgender) revert to their assigned, or ‘born’ gender upon reaching puberty. Oh, phew. What a relief. “Keep things fluid,’’ she further advised, “Try not to box your daughter into making a choice either way. Just show support.’’ All good advice, and I was temporarily buoyed by the hopeful news. To my desperately seeking ears, this meant you might well be going through a phase. How wonderful.
And so we left things. You asked to cut your hair, and we gave you a sweet pixie cut. Keep it fluid. It was all about compromise those days. Slowing your inexorable march toward all things boy. For your dance recital, your instructor graciously allowed you to wear a tux with a bright pink bow-tie and cummerbund to match the sequined tutus your classmates wore. Your wardrobe was by this time mostly boy clothes. I say mostly, because I snuck in girl clothes in dark colors…they had tiny embellishments, embroidered hearts and bows that reminded me that one day, you could be my little girl again. In my eyes, they also served to ward off the questions I imagined I would have to answer about your appearance to those who knew you as a girl.
For a while you tolerated this deceit, but you soon became quite canny at the subtleties of gendered clothing. You would reject the white Peter Pan collar in favor of the crisp button-down. A-line shirts and ruched sleeves disappeared from your drawers, along with velour and Lycra. Hanukkah and Christmas came and went, and you received superhero action figures and matchbox cars from us and your wonderfully perceptive Grammy, and purple pajamas and pink pencil sets from well-meaning loved ones who didn’t understand the extent of your preferences. You jumped for joy with the one and wrathfully rejected the other. Even I still clung to the belief that if you could only see the gray areas between the pink and blue, you might find yourself at home somewhere in between. Hence the Katniss Everdeen doll that made its way into your heap of Christmas loot. I still recall your look of utter disdain.
It was soon February again, and we celebrated your fourth birthday. And you grew taller, wiser, and accomplished many things. Over the winter break, I had tentatively broached the topic: Would you be happier with a boyish/unisex name at school? You categorically refused. Your answer gave me a covert thrill of hope. I dared to dream that you were not fully committed to being a boy, and that you would be one of the preponderance of kids who ‘figured it out’ because their parents didn’t make a huge deal out of it. For use at home, you settled with us on a name, which sounded similar to your given name, in order to avoid the confusion of the daily merry-go-round of arbitrary boy names. We urged you to choose a name, and you chose Mica. It was enough, for a while.
But I knew in my mother’s heart that you were not truly happy. Not like your sisters. Not like the unburdened joy that I thought you ought to have felt coming from a warm, loving home with plenty of affection, positive experiences, and toys galore. There was an un-childlike, persistent sadness that lay about you like a pall in those years, which should have been so magical.
You see, I believe that what had happened while I was wasting my energy hoping that you would make peace with your biology was that we had become unwitting contributors to your fracture into two different people: “Mica’’ and “Em.’’ Home and school. Boy and girl. Unguarded and guarded. Open and shut. Reality (yours) and role-play (ours).
On the home front things were most certainly getting ‘better,’ or should I say, ‘easier?’ Your tantrums subsided as we managed to convince you that we were truly OK with you being a boy, and that we believed that what you felt about your identity and your expression of it was your choice. Your sister had become a huge support in this regard. Not many 5-year-olds could act with the grace and compassion that she did (and still does). She stopped teasing you about not being a ‘real boy’ and accepted our mantra that “what you are in your heart and your mind is far more important than what you are in your body.’’ The hard knot of your anger started to dissolve. We all basked in this momentary detente.
In the early spring of your fourth year we went on a glorious trip to Disney World, where you were the only kid we saw in a Prince Charming costume. You glowed when strangers stopped and remarked, “Isn’t he adorable!!’’ and “What a handsome little man!’’ and we didn’t correct people, because we knew how much you enjoyed being ‘mistaken’ for a boy. The status quo was an OK place to be.
But back at school, activities, and in our community at large, you remained markedly withdrawn. Our reports from your teachers were that, if prompted, you joined in group activities. You rarely, if ever, engaged your peers in free play. The day you hugged your teacher for the first time brought her to tears. I believe you occupied a special place in her heart, and that she felt protective of you. I am so grateful for the good people in our lives.
Despite the fact that you were beginning to relax in the classroom, you continued to erect walls between yourself and others. The barking and loping persisted, and always there was the hood that would come over your eyes that said: shutting down now. In my ignorance, I even wondered at times whether you were touched by a mild form of autism, but it seemed incongruent that this behavior turned on and off as if by a switch.
It was that playdate at Papa Gino’s that shuttled me right over the edge from keeping it fluid to the time is now. To be truthful, there were many small fissures forming in the Theory of Status Quo as I have now come to see it. There was your tearful sister begging me to force you into a dress so that “people will treat her nicer.’’ There was the sweet little girl at a birthday party that asked me about you: “What is that? Is that a BOY or is that a GIRL?’’ There were the burgeoning signs of dysphoria (“What’s wrong with my body? Why did God make me like this? Is he stupid?’’).
But what finally broke me from my unhappy trance was nothing more complicated than a post-last day of school pizza party, where I got a chance to see you interact with your classmates outside of a structured setting. Everyone was there, the boys, the girls, and most of the moms. You sat down at the edge of a gaggle of girls and tucked into your slice. No one jostled you in friendly banter, no one yelled, “Come on Em! Let’s run to the end of the restaurant and back!’’ The happy little bodies were in constant locomotion, stepping around you and over you as you sat staring at your pizza. Then you looked up at a group of boys being disciplined by their frustrated moms for running amok, “Sit down Jack! Behave Grady!’’ and the expression on your face skewered me. It was a hunger that I had never seen before. You weren’t confused. You knew where you belonged. You just didn’t know how to get there. What if it was I who was responsible for showing you the way?
School was officially out for the year. You were signed up for the next year. Another year, deposit down, of living two lives. Open-shut, boy-girl. I watched you carefully during the next week while you enjoyed a camp run at your preschool, and I thought and I weighed, and I deliberated and I doubted, until a million possible futures nearly drove me to distraction. What if? Your dad and I talked long into the evenings after you had gone to bed and in the mornings before we emerged from ours. A video had gone viral in the weeks before. A slideshow of a transgender boy, not much older than you, whose loving California family had supported his public transition. We wondered if seeing the pictures of this boy, who was so obviously happy in his ‘new skin,’ could make you believe in the possibility of your own fulfillment.
It was Friday, June 13, in the evening after your last day of preschool camp, when we called you upstairs into your dad’s office. We told you we had something for you to see, and so you sat, engulfed in your dad’s big black swivel chair, as he cued the video on his laptop. I translated the words into ‘kidspeak’ as they began to flit across the screen, accompanied by wonderful, endearing pictures. You viewed intently and solemnly as young Ryland Whittington was transformed from a beautiful little girl with golden locks into a handsome smiling boy in a buzz cut and tuxedo. When the video ended, you asked to watch it again. Then you sat staring at your hands. We asked you what you thought about the boy, and you shrugged, stone-faced. The walls you had erected were made of hardier stuff than we expected. But the moment was now. All three of us in this room, your palpable pain, the resolution we needed to help you find.
So I got down on my knees and took your soft, still baby-like little hands in mine. I asked you to look at me, but when you lifted your beautiful gaze to mine, I was momentarily speechless. I rallied. “I believe you,’’ I said, and I didn’t bother to wipe the tears with my sleeve this time. “We believe you. All we want is for you to be happy, but you need to help us understand what will make you happy.’’ Your dad knelt down next to you, too. “Do you want to be a boy all the time like that boy we showed you?’’ he asked. Your eyes filled immediately. “I can’t,’’ you responded with a quivering lip. “I HAVE to be Em at school and Mica at home.’’
So we told you. We told you about the choices, any of which you could make — or not. We told you that these choices were yours. Among which, you could continue at your school as Em. Or, you could go there next year with any new identity and finally, more radical yet, we could find you somewhere to start anew, to simply be the boy you had insisted for so long that you were. You paused a long while. I didn’t know if you could do it. I didn’t know if you had the faith in us to tell us what you truly wanted. I didn’t know if you could imagine a future where you were whole : one identity, body and mind. You broke the silence. “I want to go to a new school. I want to be a boy always. I want to be a boy named Jacob.’’
Jacob, my love. It’s been nine months and change since that fateful Friday, and so much has transpired to make us believe that the journey we are taking together is the one we need to be on. It’s been tough, make no mistake, and solving your more immediate identity crisis did not resolve all the latent feelings of shame and sadness that you have suffered. But the powerful effect of your transformation was almost immediately felt by all who knew you and loved you.
Within days of beginning life anew as Jacob, you began to stand up straight and look people in the eye. You stopped barking like a dog and running for cover. In allowing your transition, we were only hoping to help your spirit survive. We did not expect the seismic shift in your personality that we experienced. You cracked your first real joke within a week, took a fresh interest in learning your alphabet (ironic since school was out), and so much more. You started to cuddle and kiss, laugh and sing —and the dam just broke. You talked and talked and talked as if someone had taken a muzzle off your mouth. You took up hobbies, collecting anything and everything you found that piqued your interest (mostly detritus: scraps, stones, and screws you picked off the street to my chagrin). That summer, the world opened up its treasures to you.
Your dad and I were astounded, delighted, and profoundly gratified. These positive experiences were crucial for us, because those early days were laden with fear. We were always double, triple, quadruple guessing our decisions, approaching each “re-introduction’’ with trepidation. It all seemed so fragile. We fretted: Who would break your trust? Who would clip your wings? Who would sneer or goggle or laugh, sending you running back for cover? But you were strong, not fragile. You were brave, not weak.
Together we weathered the firsts. The first time we wrote your name — yours, a triumphant experience, mine, accompanied by a floodgate of tears. The first time I asked someone to call you Jacob, and finally, the first time that you did. Your first Christmas acknowledged as a boy. You confessed afterward that you had half expected Santa would forget and bring you Em’s presents. Oh baby. The first public announcement, followed by a deluge of love and support from beloved family and friends — their support carried us and continues to carry us. The first week of the new school (you were obsessed about the bathrooms for the longest time) and the first time we ran into someone from your old school (it was awkward, we survived).
Jacob, my love, it is you that have transitioned us to a life less ordinary, and so much more meaningful than it ever would have been. Thank you deeply for your sacred trust. The mystery that is you may never be amenable to a full resolution. I don’t know what’s beyond the next bend in the road, but I am no longer afraid.
I believe in the goodness of people. And I believe in your ability to dispel much of the ignorance and intolerance in those you may encounter. I look at how fine a human being you are becoming—far beyond my meager original intentions — and I know that the future is bright for you. I am no longer afraid.
And it is because I no longer fear—the outcomes, the medical interventions, and the bigotry—that I will not be filing this birthday letter in a box in our attic with those of earlier years. Rather, momentarily, I will set these words free — relinquishing my control over their trajectory and destination. Their intent is to provide comfort and strength to another mother or father with an aching heart. To provide the message: It doesn’t get better. It gets awesome.
For I have seen and wish to share remarkable things. In those early days as Jacob, I saw the most authentic parts, in the deepest reaches of you, begin to unfold. I saw you take your first huge breaths. I saw the clouds above your head scatter and run. At first there was a silence, as you paused to take in the new world around you, and then you roared: I AM HERE!! It was then that I realized that we had indeed met before, but that truly I had not recognized you that first time. It was then that my grief began to depart, as I knew in my soul that you had always been my son, Jacob.
And so always, my love,
Mom
How Judaism Helped Jacob Go From Assigned Girl to Boy
Mimi Lemay discusses how her Jewish upbringing helped her to support her transgender first-grader.
September 18, 2016
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The Lemay family (Photo credit: TDM Photography)
Last year, Mimi Lemay posted an open letter to her transgender son, Jacob, born Mia, on Boston.com. The message of love and acceptance went viral. Today, the Melrose first-grader is happily living his life as a boy with two siblings.
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“He’s much more comfortable in his own skin after the transition, and he’s living his authentic identity,” she says. At this age, a transition involves dressing or wearing one’s hair like the preferred gender and using gender-appropriate pronouns; hormonal changes, if a child still wants them, come later.
Lemay was raised by her mother in an ultra-Orthodox Yeshivish community, first in Monsey, N.Y., and then in Gateshead, England, where she attended Gateshead Seminary after high school. She returned to the United States at 22.
Her husband, Joe, is Catholic. While she’s no longer ultra-Orthodox, her Jewish background informs her approach to parenting.
“In 2012, Jacob presented with signs of gender dysphoria, and it really wasn’t something my upbringing prepared me for. I do feel there is a strong connection in my own trajectory with being prepared to see him for who he really is and realizing he has to forge his own life apart from conventional expectations,” she says, much as she forged her own identity after leaving Monsey.
Lemay holds many Jewish values close, though, as she’s supported her son’s transition.
“When I was a young girl, I was taught that each Jew was like a limb on a body, and if one suffered, then all suffered. As I left ultra-Orthodoxy and embraced the world at large, I can clearly see how this applies to all of humanity,” she says, especially in her advocacy work in the transgender community.
“The words of the sages, particularly that of Hillel, are very relevant in my advocacy: ‘If I am not for myself, than who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, than what am I, and if not now, when?’ Particularly the last part of that saying resonates with me as we push for legal change, such as the implementation of an anti-discrimination law to protect transgender individuals in places of public accommodation,” she says. “People have told me that if we waited a while, passing the law would be easier, that ‘society is not ready to accept transgender people.’ I would answer, ‘If not now, when?’ When is the right time to treat people with the respect they deserve as human beings, and to afford them basic civil rights?”
In June, the public accommodations bill passed both the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives, and was signed into law by the governor, she notes. The family was there for both votes.
Today, the Lemays celebrate Jewish and Christian holidays, and Lemay’s mother visits every few months. And God still plays a role in her life, though in ways she didn’t necessarily expect.
“I do believe in God, and I feel that he has been with us this entire journey with Jacob. He has given us a gift that cannot be surpassed: a child who has had the courage and honesty to tell us who he really is and to fight for it. Also, in my struggle to determine my own future earlier in my life, I think I was able to see that Jacob needed us to grant him the right to live as the person he kept insisting he was,” she says. “Shortly after Jacob’s transition, we saw our child go from sullen and angry and withdrawn to joyful and curious and proud. It was literally ‘me-afelah l’orah,’ from darkness to light. Hand in hand with the miracle of Jacob’s ‘rebirth’ came the knowledge and responsibility that there were many others out there who didn’t have the support that Jacob has had. That responsibility has become a primary purpose in our lives. Joe and I, and the kids if appropriate, have spoken with legislators, businesses, schools, the health-care community and others about the need to affirm and support our transgender and gender non-conforming youth.”
This is particularly important because they’re at risk for mental-health issues, substance abuse and suicide. (Suicide attempts for transgender youth under 18 years old are upwards of 50 percent, she says.)
The Lemay family with Mayor Marty Walsh at the 2016 Boston Pride Parade (Courtesy Mimi Lemay)
Fortunately, the Lemays’ community has been “wonderful,” she says. “Our local synagogue that we attend sporadically has been very affirming and welcoming, not only to us but to other members of the community who are gender non-conforming. Our schools have been supportive and so have our neighbors and friends.”
Of course, there are thorny issues to tackle—some people ask her how a child as young as Jacob could possibly know that he’s meant to be a boy, and she does worry about what might happen as he gets older.
“While Jacob is treated like every other boy in his elementary school, I have heard from parents in older grades whose children have experienced harassment from peers. I’m working with a group of parents from our community to address this issue with our responsive school administration. There is an opportunity for growth and change here. This is certainly something that a person raised in a Jewish home understands: education is key! After all, we are the ‘people of the book,'” she says. She adds that Keshet has been particularly helpful with advocacy.
That said, the transition has been bittersweet.
“There are moments that I miss my ‘daughter.’ Sometimes it will be a mild twinge when I’m looking at old photographs, and sometimes it wallops me with huge emotional impact, such as when I’m dreaming at night. However, seeing the joy on my son’s face, and knowing that he is relearning to trust himself and others and to navigate his world so beautifully, dispels the sadness. He was always my son; I just didn’t realize that for a few years. I am thankful that I have him, and I will always protect the blessing that he is to us,” she says.
Lemay, Mimi WHAT WE WILL BECOME Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 11, 12 ISBN: 978-0-544-96583-6
A transgender rights advocate's account of how breaking with Orthodox Judaism helped her come to terms with her gender dysphoric daughter's wish to transition.
When Lemay learned she was pregnant for the second time, she took an IntelliGender test that revealed she was carrying a boy. However, the child was born a girl, and the author and her husband named her Em. Stubborn and strong-willed, by age 2, her tantrums became as "epic" as her demands; she was, the author writes, a "force of nature." Em later developed an obsession with a dog sweater, which became the only thing she wanted to wear to preschool. For a time, Lemay believed that Em, who insisted she was male, had entered into a tomboy rebel phase. Yet her odd behavior, which included barking like a dog when people tried to talk to her, also persisted. It was only after consulting with a social worker friend that Lemay began to consider the possibility that her child was actually showing signs of gender dysphoria. In the author's parallel story about growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, she recalls how her patriarchal faith sometimes left her longing to be free from the constraints of tradition. Her years at a female Orthodox seminary only confirmed that she could not willingly settle into a life where she would always be subservient to men and their ambitions. Empathizing with Em's identity crisis, Lemay allowed her daughter to choose a boy's name she could use around the house and present herself as a brother to two sisters on a family trip. Not long afterward, she and her husband allowed Em--who now went by the name Jacob--to transition into a happy, well-adjusted little boy. Compassionate, wise, and sensitively told, Lemay's narrative offers moving portraits of a mother and family willing to embrace radical change in order to unconditionally support their child. It will be helpful to any parent experiencing a similar situation.
An intimate and clearly heartfelt memoir.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lemay, Mimi: WHAT WE WILL BECOME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A599964336/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0b58bd08. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A599964336
* What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation
Mimi Lemay. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27 (352p) ISBN 978-0-544-96583-6
Debut author and transgender rights advocate Lemay tells the story of her four-year-old child's gender transformation in this engrossing and compassionate memoir. Born in 2010, Em (a pseudonym) was the middle daughter of Lemay and her husband, a software engineer. Lemay's story segues between her past as an ultra-Orthodox Jew born in Israel in 1976 and her coming to grips with her child's gender identity. While attending college in Boston, Lemay abandoned Orthodoxy and later married a man outside the faith. Their daughter, Lemay writes, changed clothes 10 times daily, threw tantrums, and declared she was a boy at the age of two. Lemay sought the help of a social worker and learned that persistence, insistence, and consistency are signs that an individual may be transgender. After a near car accident with her three children in tow, Lemay decided to embrace Em's trans identity, a difficult choice, she writes, given her rigid religious upbringing. Lemay came to realize how vital it is to nurture a child's true nature--a decision reinforced by statistics revealing the high rate of attempted suicides by transgender individuals who are not supported. Lemay eventually helped Em, now Jacob, as he entered kindergarten. This fascinating, heart-wrenching memoir offers invaluable insights into issues of gender identity. (Nov.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation." Publishers Weekly, 19 Aug. 2019, p. 85+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A597616476/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0563d5e5. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A597616476