My body tensed as the weight of my best friend landed on top of me. She pressed her knees into my back, knocking me breathless. She shoved the left side of my face into one of the patches of dirt that bruised the grassy elementary school playground. “I’m not your friend. Do you understand?” Her weight shifted, crushing me further. The last of the air in my lungs rushed through my nose, stirring the powdery soil beneath. “Everyone’s calling me a lesbian because of you. Eat dirt!”

“No,” I said. 

Dozens of children ran around. Laughing. Having fun. Not helping.

“This is all your fault. Eat. The. Dirt.” She refused to get off me.

I refused to eat dirt.

She wouldn’t budge.

A teacher’s whistle blew, but not for me. 

“Fine,” I lied. 

Her grip relaxed slightly as I pretended to give in. I lifted my head, cupped my hands over my mouth, and faked licking the musky earth. My small, ten-year-old hands weren’t large enough to protect the tip of my nose as it smashed into the ground.

The sensory deprivation tank contained a thousand pounds of dissolved Epsom salt in fourteen inches of water. The buoyancy of the body-temperature liquid allowed my five-foot-nine-inch, almost two-hundred-pound body to float effortlessly. With the lid closed, only a faint line of light crept in through the seal until the room’s motion sensor switched off the overhead bulb. 

Darkness blanketed me. My breathing slowed and quieted until my heartbeat became my audible focus point. I lost sense of where my body ended and the rest of the world began. Consciousness simultaneously contracted and expanded, signaling I’d arrived in the deep theta state. I drifted into ninety minutes of uninterrupted meditation.

One December morning, my fifteen-year-old child came out as a transgender boy and asked to be called Jake. On Mother’s Day, three years earlier, he—assigned female at birth—told me he was a lesbian. A lesbian daughter was much easier for me to understand than a trans-son. The gravity of his confession didn’t hit me until a few days later.

While cleaning for the upcoming family Christmas dinner, I found myself curled in the fetal position on my bed and sobbing uncontrollably. The reality I’d built around my child shattered when my baby told me he was a boy, and the name I had so carefully chosen became a dead name.

I knew no one with a transgender child. And most of society dismissed my son’s feelings and dysphoria, labeling them invalid or perverse. Despite the ignorance surrounding us, I listened to and supported my son. Even so, the paradox of mourning the loss of a daughter while still loving the child in front of me was ineffable.

Days before my friend tackled me at recess, we had been in the bathroom. We were acting silly, as fifth-grade girls often do, and she suggested we cover our mouths with our hands and pretend to kiss. I thought little of it, so agreed. After the fake kiss, we giggled at how ridiculous it was. When a classmate walked in, we laughed, “Hey look at this,” and showed her the funny gesture.

She ran out and told everyone we were kissing in the bathroom. By the time we returned to class, everyone laughed and teased us. The rumor spread to the entire school. That was how I learned about lesbians. I went from having lots of friends to being a laughingstock. For a while, the only girl who would talk to me was the one who’d pooped her pants and smeared it on the school bricks.

Every day, my classmates humiliated me. Sometimes, I couldn’t make it to my bed after school; I’d collapse in the bedroom doorway, curl up, and sob. I believed something must be wrong with me.

Why else would no one help? Not my parents. Not the teacher. Not the principal nor the counselor. “Oh, toughen up,” they’d say. “Kids are mean, they’ll forget about it tomorrow.”

But the taunting didn’t stop “tomorrow,” and I didn’t know how to toughen up. No one stopped the bullying or explained why my classmates didn’t believe me when I told them I was not what they thought.

In the early days of my inner-life exploration, I read books that explained our thoughts and beliefs create our personal reality, which isn’t ultimate reality. The idea stayed buried within me throughout the following years when life distracted from my spiritual journey. It wasn’t until my child came out as transgender that I experientially understood my beliefs don’t define Truth.

After Jake first came out, there were moments when Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder in Wyoming or the mass shooting at Pulse in Florida would take over my mind, making it hard to breathe. There are people out there who don’t know my baby but would kill him. 

Thankfully, the realization—I don’t have to attach to my thoughts—helped me navigate the shock and worry of raising a transgender child. Because of my meditation practice, doubt about the future and lingering worry about the past dissolved. The present moment became my anchor.

Still, now and then, a sneaky emotion overpowered my ability to stay present.

When Jake turned 19, he scheduled a consultation for top surgery. He’d talked about it for years. Sometimes, doubts crept in, but I refocused, let go of the intrusive stories and allowed myself to feel the moment. As an adult, he had my support and that of his therapists, doctors, and most of his family. Jake’s body was his choice. 

The night after Jake scheduled his appointment, he walked into the kitchen wearing all black and a long skirt. My chest tightened, and my breath caught. Instead of allowing the uncomfortable feelings to move through my body, I blocked the energy by attaching to the sudden thought storm that washed over me. 

He hated skirts. Boys don’t wear skirts. 

Jake stood confident and tall rather than his normal anxious, hunched over posture. He smiled and laughed as he talked. He glowed. But I wasn’t fully in the kitchen with him. 

I was trapped in my head. He hadn’t worn female clothes since the school forced him to wear a gown during orchestra concerts. Why now, the day after he made an appointment with a surgeon?

Outwardly, I remained calm. In the reality of that moment, everything was okay. “I like your outfit.” I said, which was true. He looked cool. He and his friends had just returned from a picnic. I was happy he was happy. 

But if someone saw him in a skirt, wouldn’t it prove to them I’d made a mistake by allowing him to take testosterone? 

That night, I lost sleep to worry. I needed to figure out why I couldn’t let the negative energy go.

Meditating in the float tank was the perfect way to work out stuck energy. Before the float, I set an intention to explore and release the triggered emotion. Once I entered the deep theta state, I revisited the moment Jake walked into the kitchen wearing the skirt. With no external sensory input, the energy of that emotion was all I could feel.

Within the safety of the tank, I didn’t get swept away by narratives about right or wrong. Instead, I curiously explored the energy as it moved through my body. A heaviness weighed on my chest. I breathed into it. My jaw tightened. I consciously relaxed it. Tingling waves drifted through my torso, then flowed to the left side of my face. The energy lingered before traveling to the tip of my nose. 

What an odd place for it to go. As the sensation slowly moved out through my nose, I wept.

What was that? Unprocessed trauma. 

Who felt those emotions? Relief washed over me as I realized my body experienced them, which had nothing to do with the essence of who I am. In that deep state of meditation, I remembered I wasn’t my body, stories, or beliefs. I was consciousness, experiencing itself through awareness. 

What am I supposed to do now? Inform.

At home, as we sat across from each other at our kitchen table, I discussed everything with my son. “Why were you wearing a skirt the other day?”

Jake sat up straight and looked me in the eyes. “Now that I’m passing as a male, I feel more comfortable expressing myself and wearing styles I enjoy. It’s easier to be me.” He shrugged. “Skirts look good with certain outfits.” He reassured me he knew who he was as I listened with an open heart.

I explained the situation had triggered me. “I wasn’t seeing you when you walked into the kitchen. I felt pain from a childhood experience, and instead of allowing the feeling to move through me, I blocked it by focusing on false narratives. I’ll be able to allow that emotion to move through me from now on. But you know, Honey,” worry collected at the base of my throat, which made it difficult to keep talking. “Some people will look at you and see their own unprocessed trauma. They won’t understand they’re projecting a feeling that has nothing to do with who you are. They’ll believe something’s wrong with you instead of looking within themselves.”

“I know, Mom.” My child comforted me. “I’m used to it.”