10 Trans Pathways Through Life

In this 2025 year of 9…completing a cycle, here are 10 things as a trans nonbinary they/them neurospicy mom, a recovery coach about how my life and work trickles down for my kids:

1. Someone’s lived experience isn’t up for debate. The person sharing their own story is the expert in it. We don’t debate people on their experience as it is truly unique. We stay collectively curious. As our kids’ minds grow, so will how they experience themselves. Belittling their experience creates adults who don’t know themselves and makes them spend a toxic amount of time trying to fight shame with exhaustion. It’s a lose-lose.

2. As a parent, I feel it’s my job to tune in to my kids and hold them close, support them as they trace their roots, listen when I’m wrong and ground myself so they feel safe enough to keep walking forward through their own lives.

3. Values and beliefs deepen and evolve the better you get to know yourself. I can choose to live a courageous life running through the light that I feel, creating on an edge, accepting everyday I aim to fall and wake up a better version of myself for them.

4. If I’m breathing, I’m in gratitude and grief. Something. Someone. Some other version you used to be and some version you aren’t yet. Being present is a string of moments we unravel through our mission and purpose.

5. At the core of us, my wife Kim and I together, create an unbreakable space of care and compassion where love can flow in with abundance. We turn to ourselves and to each other, centering our children’s lives. As mothers in this society, our existence reroutes rivers and we rise, speak at, speak to and through oppression, telling it “No, no more.”

6. If you have privilege, you have access. If you have access, you have options. If you have options, you have responsibility to understand how society ranks your identities. Living means creating a very narrow path that affects everyone around you, behind and beyond.

7. Kim and I won in family court for many reasons.

A- We used our privilege and behaved like allies.

B- Trans identity was the whole reason we were in the court room and it quietly rattled the ribcage of the court system as we refused to back down.

C- We advocated for our kids’ lives and brought our proof by providing them with everything they needed to thrive.

D- They’ll subconsciously make you believe you should be afraid of trans people. What is revealed is living and acting in fear of others’ truth is living as a coward of yourself.

8. “Tough Love” is a way to cope, not show up. It’s an adult pushing away from the table as their child struggles to regulate themselves. I apologize to my kids often…not because I’m giving in to them but because children who have adults in their lives who hold themselves accountable for their words and behavior become adults who can hold themselves accountable for their words and behavior.

9. We will naturally overlook something until we gain the skills to see it. Parenting through neurodivergence, I know a neurotypical brain will finish developing around 25 years old. In ADHD brains, research says there’s about a 30% developmental lag in means the skills of self-regulation which is essential in building self-awareness comes even later. Internal work, lifting weights, dance, sleep and meditation is literally me “emptying the trash” so I can last longer in my the “wizard brain”. (Thank you Amy M for giving me that reference so I understand myself better).

10. Sometimes I crash out. Crash out to me just means through body scans (anytime I feel like I need to do one) I can sense my energy “battery” hasn’t had enough space or time to recharge for whatever reason. Using various grounding and wellness-based techniques, I often do mini recharges throughout the day. Parenting…working and mothering…in this world means you’re expected to be a robot. None of us are robots…we’re living feeling animals. Around 8pm eeeeeeevery once in a while, I tell Kim and my kids I gotta go to bed. A good sleep and we keep life-ing the life.