The Struggle To Understand My Grown Daughter

If there’s one thing I felt certain about early in my parenting journey, it was that I was doing motherhood “right.” I was determined that I would parent differently than I had been raised. Growing up in a conservative Christian household, the rules were as rigid as the wooden pews we sat on every Sunday. My parents believed in order, obedience, and a very specific vision of what a “good girl” should be. Even as a child, I vowed that when I had kids, I would loosen the reins. I would listen more. I would let my children be themselves.

Of course, back then I assumed “being themselves” meant choosing between soccer or baseball or deciding if they wanted to go to camp or stay home for the summer. What I didn’t realize was that parenting differently would require me to stretch in ways I never imagined. Ways that would challenge not just my habits, but the very foundation of what I believe about gender, sexuality, and identity.

When Brie was little, I reveled in the rituals of having a girl. As a newborn with no hair for the first year, she wore tiny bows I secured with double-stick tape that matched her frilly dresses and stockings embroidered with dainty flowers. Cheerful and easygoing, she wore them without complaint.

But children grow, and the world grows with them.

By the time Brie reached her 20s, the bows were long gone, replaced by ripped jeans, black nail polish, and all-black ensembles. Then came the announcement: she was bisexual. I remember blinking slowly, as if my brain needed a moment to buffer. This was one of those fork-in-the-road moments. How I responded would shape what she chose to share with me in the future. In that moment, it felt like someone had handed me a book in a language I didn’t speak.

I nodded. I smiled. I tried not to ask too many questions, though that’s my usual instinct. I told her I loved her no matter who she chose to be with. Inside, I found myself praying this was a just a phase that would pass. But then, I reminded myself of the promise I had made years earlier — to parent differently. And now the test had arrived, in a form I never anticipated.

Then came the hair.

Purple. Not a gentle pastel, but a bold, electric shade that looked like it had been borrowed from a cartoon villain. Then green. Then violent red. Then the tattoos. First small, then larger, then the one that wrapped around her arm like a rebellious vine. Most of them unsettling to me. Skeltons, tombstones, barbed wire. And then the nose ring. I stared the first time I saw it, unsure whether to comment or pretend it wasn’t there. My first thought, of course, was What was my mother going to say? I already knew the answer — and she delivered it.

By her mid-20s Brie had fully embraced an androgynous, goth-leaning style. Black boots. Black eyeliner. Ever-changing hair color, and clothing found in the men’s section.

The first time she brought a girl home I thought I might stop breathing. They sat in her room playing video games and I had to actively stop my mind from going to places I wasn’t ready to go.