My mother"you're an embarrassment with no future".

[Ms Grace]

The best thing you can do is prove her WRONG. Once you start living as yourself work as hard as you can to be a success at everything... social life, work life, everything. She may never publically admit it but she'll know you aren't an embarrassment that you do have a future, she'll know she was wrong.

[sparrow]

Wow... this is just awful.  Sounds like my wife's mom... we talk to her a few times a year.  Your family situation seems utterly toxic, and you seriously need to get out.  Maybe your mom will always be like this.  Maybe she'll come around after a year or several years of not seeing you.  But she won't come around if you're her punching bag.  There's a time to fight... this sounds like a time to run.

I just wish I had money so I could move elsewhere.

If you make this priority #1, you can do it.  It'll be hard scrabble for a while, but you can do it.  Get a crappy minimum-wage job or two, and rent a single room in a house in a college neighborhood.  I've known a few single moms who have been forced into this lifestyle.  You can afford to move out.  And until you can, you'll be spending so much time working that your mom won't have time to abuse you.

[Zoetrope]

That is one of my favourite songs by Madness.

[Ltl89]

Thank  you for allowing me to vent.  It really annoys me when I'm subjected to transphobic and homophobic rants that come out of no where.  And while I love my mom,  its hypocritical  to say you have no issues with lgbt people yet cant accept your own flesh and blood for who they are.  But truthfully,  I love my family and they arent bad people.  In fact, they are good people who are just struggling to cope but its getting hard to take and it hasnt improved.  When you can go from a normal family morning to ranting about how embarrassing  i am for my lifestyle  and aay in going nowhere  is just sort of uncalled for.  Anyway, things are better.  I was forced to take part of a memorial  day party the other day after all that, but I hid away from my family  which made me feel better.  Probably  made my mom feel better cause part of why she freaked is she has to worry what her family and boyfriend think of me.   Family  situations  are always awkward for this reason.

Anywya, gettinf my own place is needed.  I just dont know jow.  I make more than minimum  wage and do "alright ", relatively  speaking, but add health insurance and general xare, car insurance and rent in NY, its all too much.  I'm a receptionist/office assistant  in a medical office.  I already pay rent at home and thats hard enough,  anything more would destroy me.  But maybe with a roomate i could scrape by.  I jave to start looking  or i have no one else to blame.  And I  know ive made my own bed and have to deal with everything that comes my way.  No one said this would be an easy life nor is life ever easy.  Just have to learn to overcome the challenges.

[stephaniec]

nothing wrong with finding  two three or four roommates. Your half way there if you already pay rent to your mother and her boyfriend.

[.Christy]

aw im so sorry! my dad was like that too when i came out to him as trans. he was saying how i will never find work or how no one will want to marry my sisters because our genes are now "tainted."

i really do hope you are able to separate yourself from that toxic environment!

[Naeree]

I wish I could cheer you up in person, do not let these words make you do something wrong with your life. You mom have a bad attitude toward trans, she can change but it will take time and you who love her can prove that you have a bright future.

If possible, go to college, don't give up. Be better than average, this will shut people bad thought down.

I know it's hard, try not to hold to all the negative word and thought from other. Stay strong ok, you will ge through this. Hope everything cool one day.

[SonadoraXVX]

Sounds like your mom is closed minded. Seek social support outside the naysayers.

[BlonT]

My mom has told me she rather me be unhappy living the life she envisioned for me

Her saying this prove that you would have a hard time even to be a  good son!
Best to try to find a way that make you as happy as possible, and prove her wrong.
Remember we are all products of our parents,youth,education and place we life.
Live good and happy

[Alaia]

She is saying these things because who you are is in direct conflict with her current perception of reality, built upon her beliefs and values. You used to fit nicely into her belief paradigm, but now you don't and it is starting to shake the walls she has built around her world. She wants things to make sense again, for you to fit right back into her life where she thinks you belong and all the pieces of her world fit together.

But she can't control you, and you wouldn't fit back into that place if she tried. And so she lashes out, painfully and abusively, hoping to cause enough pain to get you to want to go back. This is because it is easier to lash out at you than it is to go inward, have a sincere in-depth look at her own beliefs, and tearing down the ones that are no longer serving her or conflict with what she values most important. It can be nasty stuff tearing down one's belief system to allow oneself to become more accepting and loving. Well, I don't really mean nasty actually, as the end result is a better place. It's really more like a refiner's fire. But it can be a very painful process as sometime it feels like your whole world is crumbling down around you.


I think that in your situation, you staying there is not serving you or your mother. As long as you are there then she can still remain stuck in that process of trying to hurt and control you without immediate fear of losing you from her life. And as long as you are around that toxicity, verbal abuse, and low vibrations she is putting off then you will keep getting pulled down to a place you don't want to be.

As others have suggested, I would recommend moving out and distancing yourself from her until she is ready to extend the olive branch. If she truly loves you and values having you as part of her life then the pain of not having you in it will overcome any pain or fear she has about confronting her own beliefs, allowing her to finally go to that place of deep introspection and be open to a paradigm shift that leads to love and acceptance without judgement.

Additionally, not having the yoke of dealing with her constant abuse will free you and allow you to reach new heights and find more abundance and happiness in your life.

[stephaniec]

I was in a situation a while ago when I took care of my father before he passed . My sister wanted my father in a nursing home and I didn't. I wanted to take care of him . she decided to  try to make my life a living hell to get me to give up. That wasn't going to happen, but she tried her best to abuse me to the point I had to change the locks on my dads house to prevent her from getting in when I wasn't there. When someone is determined to get you to do what they want they will go to extremes. I put up with the abuse until my father passed because I was trapped in a situation where my sister could get away with the abuse because she was my sister and was supposedly there to help. when my father passed I completely cut all ties to my sister and haven't talked to her in 25 years and have no intention of seeing her again. I was severely abused by a relative so I feel for you because it hurts, I hope you can resolve this issue some how.

[Emileeeee]

My father's just like this and he doesn't even know about the trans stuff. It's solely based on me as a person. He has put so much fear into my head about how others will treat me that it became a debilitating phobia. Over the years through experimentation with crossing the gender lines in public, I've found that the only person that cares what I look like, is him. I've seen people stumble on pronouns, but nothing like the "they're all gonna laugh at you" response from Carrie that I expected.

It probably is a genuine attempt to protect their kids based on their own experiences growing up. The world was a lot different when I was growing up, not nearly as accepting, and my father has 20 years on me. Doesn't make it right though. It's best to distance yourself a bit. I haven't gone as far as cutting him out of my life, but I only talk to him once every few months or less because he sucks the happiness out of me every time. Life is better without his commentary and my confidence is finally increasing without him there to put me down. One day I'll probably let him back into my life, but not before I'm strong enough to counter his hatred without ending up depressed.

[traci_k]

So sorry to hear about all the abuse you are having to deal with. I heard pretty much the same things from my wife when I came out to her. I don't hear too much anymore, but that's because I put transition on hold foe now.

On the other hand, you're young. You have a future. Make the most of it. Look around, being transgender is much more accepted. We don't have all the acceptance as do the LGBs, but social norms are changing. As Grace said and I reiterate - prove her wrong.

An old motto of mine - "The best revenge is massive success!"

Hugs,

Traci

[grace_hopper]

Today my mom the bigot who can't learn to accept people for who they are decided to tell me that I'm an embarrassment and that I'll have no future. 

I'm not sure how long you've been on the journey and take from this what you will. When I told my parents in the early 1990s it effectively ended my relationship with my father until six months before his death and all but ended my relationship with my mother and we had not been close since the early 1970s at that point (I'm in my late 40s). Sometimes people can surprise you however and sometimes you'll surprise yourself. My father disinherited me but after he died, she put me back in the will. That was a big surprise and something I knew nothing about until my sister told me. My mother and I had our last conversation probably a year before she died.

But this response is really about the second part, you'll surprise yourself. I don't know this for certain, but I suspect that my mother did *finally* get it that I had learned all the really important lessons and she got it because she saw the life I had built for myself. When I started transition I had dropped out of Cal, had no marketable skills to speak of and delusions about being the next Lorraine Hansberry or a female James Baldwin. I work in the software industry and have for 21 years this last March. I literally made a career out of my plan for funding my surgery. I had a front-row seat to the Internet boom because I was right there, doing a job (UNIX admin) that my parents, both college professors, could never really quite grasp. I made a good career out of it, my son grew up with me making the child support payments, even though my ex wouldn't let me see him for the best part of a decade. Then I bounced back from the crash in 2001 after four hard years and I think that somewhere along the way, she realized that I was exactly who my parents raised me to be. Different packaging and I took my own damn way getting here. But if I had stayed a boy and followed the straight and narrow path and wound up in exactly the same place, my parents would have no more or less reason to be proud of me.

My point is that *you* have the power to prove your mother wrong and to simultaneously flip her the biggest most righteous bird while still being able to claim to be a good and respectful daughter. How? Live a good life. YOUR terms of what is a good life.

I had two guiding stars when I set out. One was to discover in myself the woman I would have been otherwise. The other was to honor the 16 year old girl I never quite got to be. Between those two, within the limits of what I could make happen, I have become that woman. Decide what your guiding stars will be and navigate by those. You may be surprised a decade or more later what really amazingly good decisions you made early on. I know I was!

I am married to a woman who is the delight of my life and our relationship is so strong that an ex-girlfriend was my maid of honor at our wedding and told me that if *I* ever did anything to screw it up, she would kick my ass! I have a fantastic job at a company that pays me well enough that I'm able to put my wife through college and us have enough money for her to be able to lease a horse. This has allowed me to give her something she has always wanted since she first knew what horses were. I'm very well thought of at my company. Enough so that I was able to have a serious dip in productivity due to a depressive episode that I've just pulled out of in the last few weeks. I've been there a year so having latitude to have a noticeable drop in work and it never get to anything written down as a disciplinary action meant that in the prior 12 months I had built up some serious goodwill.

I say *none* of this as a boast and I really hope you don't take it that way. I just want to say that despite your mother's objections and her naysaying, you can build a life better than you ever imagined possible. You can do it on your own terms. And maybe your mother will come around and be proud of the extra daughter or she won't. But if you live your life on your own terms, I won't say it won't matter either way but you it will matter a hell of a lot less.

Sorry, I didn't mean to write such a long response. I have nothing to draw on but what has worked for me over the last 25 years.

Hang tight, sister.

Cheers
GH

[Mariah]

Hi Grace, welcome to Susan's. I look forward to seeing you around the forums. Good luck and hugs
Mariah

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I'm not sure how long you've been on the journey and take from this what you will. When I told my parents in the early 1990s it effectively ended my relationship with my father until six months before his death and all but ended my relationship with my mother and we had not been close since the early 1970s at that point (I'm in my late 40s). Sometimes people can surprise you however and sometimes you'll surprise yourself. My father disinherited me but after he died, she put me back in the will. That was a big surprise and something I knew nothing about until my sister told me. My mother and I had our last conversation probably a year before she died.

But this response is really about the second part, you'll surprise yourself. I don't know this for certain, but I suspect that my mother did *finally* get it that I had learned all the really important lessons and she got it because she saw the life I had built for myself. When I started transition I had dropped out of Cal, had no marketable skills to speak of and delusions about being the next Lorraine Hansberry or a female James Baldwin. I work in the software industry and have for 21 years this last March. I literally made a career out of my plan for funding my surgery. I had a front-row seat to the Internet boom because I was right there, doing a job (UNIX admin) that my parents, both college professors, could never really quite grasp. I made a good career out of it, my son grew up with me making the child support payments, even though my ex wouldn't let me see him for the best part of a decade. Then I bounced back from the crash in 2001 after four hard years and I think that somewhere along the way, she realized that I was exactly who my parents raised me to be. Different packaging and I took my own damn way getting here. But if I had stayed a boy and followed the straight and narrow path and wound up in exactly the same place, my parents would have no more or less reason to be proud of me.

My point is that *you* have the power to prove your mother wrong and to simultaneously flip her the biggest most righteous bird while still being able to claim to be a good and respectful daughter. How? Live a good life. YOUR terms of what is a good life.

I had two guiding stars when I set out. One was to discover in myself the woman I would have been otherwise. The other was to honor the 16 year old girl I never quite got to be. Between those two, within the limits of what I could make happen, I have become that woman. Decide what your guiding stars will be and navigate by those. You may be surprised a decade or more later what really amazingly good decisions you made early on. I know I was!

I am married to a woman who is the delight of my life and our relationship is so strong that an ex-girlfriend was my maid of honor at our wedding and told me that if *I* ever did anything to screw it up, she would kick my ass! I have a fantastic job at a company that pays me well enough that I'm able to put my wife through college and us have enough money for her to be able to lease a horse. This has allowed me to give her something she has always wanted since she first knew what horses were. I'm very well thought of at my company. Enough so that I was able to have a serious dip in productivity due to a depressive episode that I've just pulled out of in the last few weeks. I've been there a year so having latitude to have a noticeable drop in work and it never get to anything written down as a disciplinary action meant that in the prior 12 months I had built up some serious goodwill.

I say *none* of this as a boast and I really hope you don't take it that way. I just want to say that despite your mother's objections and her naysaying, you can build a life better than you ever imagined possible. You can do it on your own terms. And maybe your mother will come around and be proud of the extra daughter or she won't. But if you live your life on your own terms, I won't say it won't matter either way but you it will matter a hell of a lot less.

Sorry, I didn't mean to write such a long response. I have nothing to draw on but what has worked for me over the last 25 years.

Hang tight, sister.

Cheers
GH