the cis maternal urge to treat your trans son’s body like an extension of your own body, and to react to said trans son’s physical transition as if they might as well have just started hacking away at your own body with a rusty axe, really is something else.
my mom hasn’t seen my chest post-op at all because the idea of it is so awful to her that the one time we took my bandages off with her present, she ran across the hotel room to hide from it and started crying to my brother about it (yes, with actual tears). she drove an hour and a half with us at 5:30am to my post-op just to sit in the waiting room because she refused to come in and see me after the surgeon took the bandages off. my dad has been the only one helping me with recovery things like changing bandages and monitoring healing because she still won’t look at my chest.
and she says that’s because she loves me and cares about me. love is when you treat the body your child can finally live in comfortably like it’s your worst nightmare. apparently.













