What made you decide to write this memoir? When I found out my fourth child was transgender, I was in shock. I looked for help, and the obvious first step was therapy. Therapy didn’t work for me. I found social media groups and even books for parents of transgender children, but they all seemed to celebrate the fact and ignore the difficulties that family members face when someone in the family is transgender. While the individual obviously faces a tremendous amount of angst, their family is impacted deeply as well. No one was telling this story, so I decided that it was mine to tell. I can only speak for me, the mom, so my book is about the mom’s journey.
Click on link below for parents of transgender children to find support.
https://www.parentsoftransgenderkids.org/
When He Was Anna: A Mom’s Journey Into the Transgender World is the story of a mother’s quest for understanding upon learning that her seventeen year old child is transgender. It is a brutally honest story of the stress and confusion that consumed her family in the early years of her child’s transition from female to male. The mom is me.
Click on link below to order WHEN HE WAS ANNA: A MOM’S JOURNEY INTO THE TRANSGENDER WORLD from Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/When-He-Was-Anna-Transgender/dp/1950306380/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1670MOERL9OIW&keywords=patti+hornstra&qid=1650331805&s=books&sprefix=patti+hornstra%2Cstripbooks%2C102&sr=1-2
Can you talk about your experience of researching for this memoir? And the dates of when you began researching and when your research was complete? There was quite a bit of research, I had a lot to learn. I researched terminology, statistics, history; I wanted to be both factually accurate and respectful of something that I knew nothing about. My book is a memoir. I lived every page of it. My story is a raw, honest, no B.S. account of the two years that followed my learning that my fourth child was a transgender male, born a female and transitioned to male.
What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I began writing in December 2019 and finished in August 2020. It took me about nine months to write.
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? I wrote in my home office. I live in Virginia on a body of water called the Piankatank River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. I’m fortunate to have a beautiful view of the river from my office window.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop, specific time of day? I write when the mood hits me. This was a very emotional book to write, so there was a lot of starting and stopping. So many memories came flooding back as I wrote. It really was my therapy. I began writing this as a way to understand what was happening to my child and to my family. I had no idea in the very beginning that I would publish this book.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers or Chapter number as references. This is an excerpt from Chapter 8, The Puppy. This is my favorite chapter of the book. It really captures the range of emotions that we were all going through.
From Chapter 8,
The Puppy
Let’s regroup—summer school is over, high school graduation has happened (no gown, no ceremony, but we did have a party to celebrate), the two part-time jobs are in full swing, and Anna’s taking a few classes at the community college. And she’s as unhappy as I’ve ever seen her. One therapist (Mona) was kicked to the curb (by Anna) for not believing that Anna was transgender and suggesting that we dive deeper and find out if there was something else going on. Another therapist (Debra) was dismissed (by me) for refusing to even consider that: 1) Anna MIGHT NOT be transgender and, 2) that we needed to dive deeper and find out if there was something else going on.
They’re calling her Lucas at work; we’re calling her Anna at home (and honestly most of the time at this point I just avoided using a name at all). She wants us to use male pronouns, to accept the fact that Anna was gone, and Lucas was here. She began to talk about a legal name change as soon as she turned eighteen (at this point she’s barely seventeen). I even offered to take her to the county courthouse to file the papers, smug and certain that she’d never actually go through with it. I reminded her that a name change is a big deal, and that she needs to be one hundred percent sure that the name she takes is the one she wants. Then she surprised me. She presented me and Curt with a list of about seven names, first and middle, and she asked us to vote on them. She liked all of them, was having a hard time deciding, and thought that we’d like some input into her new name. (What I actually wanted at this point was to wake up and realize that for once I’d been sleeping and this was all a bad dream). We cast our vote for Tristan Blane. She liked it, we liked it, so Anna Marie was now to be called Tristan Blane. Lucas was out.
Somehow this managed to bring me a little comfort. Tristan sounded almost androgynous, so I could deal with it a little better than Lucas. Nothing legal at this point, but I agreed to try calling her Tristan. But, the he/him/his? I just wasn’t there. It’s hard; it was hard then and it’s hard now. I became a pronoun-less mama when Anna became Tristan. My mouth WILL NOT let the he/him/his come out when I’m talking about my daughter. Do I try with the pronouns? I’d be lying if I said yes, because I don’t try. I don’t because I can’t. It seems ridiculous to me that I would refer to her as a male. I might as well call Mallory he and Christopher and Andrew she. That makes as much sense to me as calling Anna he. My four children have been a constant source of joy and tears (alternating) for more than half of my life; one minute you’re bursting with pride at the wonder of them and the next minute you want to go hide in a closet and never come out. Do you want to know one of my favorite things as a mama of four? It’s silly, but here goes. It’s when someone says, “Oh, do you have boys or girls?” And I say, “Two of each, boy girl boy girl.” Invariably they respond with, “How perfect!” And, yes, it’s perfect. Boy girl boy girl.
If you’ve walked in my shoes and it was a piece of cake for you to flip the switch and go from having a daughter one day to having a son the next, then that’s awesome. That means you may have avoided the torment that has consumed my thoughts for so long now, and that has impacted every part of my life each and every day since that car ride down the winding road. I hate that road now. Every time I drive it I see my sweet daughter with her too-tight jeans, t-shirt cut a little too low, bleached blonde hair, and eyeliner, sitting next to me and telling me she’s not, in fact, a girl at all.
At this point we have an unhappy, depressed seventeen-year-old who is trying to navigate life as a different gender, with a different name, and with little social interaction other than what she gets at work or at school (at this point she’s taking a few classes at a local community college). She gets frustrated when customers at the pet store call her ma’am, but at this point she certainly doesn’t look like a sir. She’s not making friends at school, but at this point I totally blame Stephanie for our latest predicament, so I think making friends at school is definitely overrated.
I was absolutely no help at this point. I was in unchartered waters and felt like I was sinking fast. Kids, even seventeen-year-olds, so often expect their parents to have all of the answers, to fix everything or at least to have a lifeboat to offer when they start to sink. I had no answers, no fixes, and not even a buoy ring to toss out, much less a lifeboat.
So, what’s a control-freak mama to do when she’s lost control and cannot find a way to help her kid? That’s easy—she gets the kid a puppy!! Yes, a puppy. A puppy would fix everything, right? A puppy would give Tristan (trying to get the hang of the new name) someone to love and care for. They could bond; they could snuggle. A puppy would be fun. A puppy would make Tristan happy. A puppy would heal the depression. We would all love the puppy. We would spend our evenings at home playing with the puppy and laughing at the puppy. We’d be so busy having fun with the puppy that we wouldn’t have any time to argue; who can argue when you’re so busy laughing at the adorable puppy? Puppies really do fix everything!!
(Time for a side note: at the time all of this was happening we had a wonderful older pup named Princess. Princess was THE best dog there ever was, I’m convinced of it. She was loved more than I can say. However, Princess was old. And lazy. She slept all day and was definitely not a snuggler. We needed to up our canine game and add another one that could step in and fix everything for us faster than you could scream “QUICK, TAKE HER OUTSIDE, SHE’S PEEING ON THE FLOOR AGAIN!” )
My puppy plan had just the tiniest little hiccup. Anna (before she became Tristan) had been singing the I Want a Puppy Song for a while, and Curt was having absolutely no part of it. As far as he was concerned Princess was the final chapter in our dog book. He had refused to even consider a puppy. I, on the other hand, have always been a sucker for a puppy, so Curt was used to me siding with Anna every time she found another puppy that she wanted to bring home (she was working in a pet store, so there was always a puppy to bring home). Anna would show us a picture of an adorable pup, I’d point out how adorable it was, and Curt would tell me that my next husband and I could have as many puppies as we wanted (somehow he thought this was funny). His no puppy stance was quite firm, until it wasn’t. It all changed when Anna became Tristan. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Curt finally saw the logic in adding a puppy to our mixed-up mix.
We (Curt, Tristan, and I finally agreeing on something) chose a tiny, two-pound ball of white fluff that Tristan named Calypso. That name lasted about seven minutes since Tristan and I both realized that Calypso is a great name for a large, regal dog (maybe a Great Dane or a Siberian Huskey) but not so much for a tiny fluff ball who’ll only grow into a slightly less tiny fluff ball. (FYI, she’s a whopping ten pounds at age two). Calypso was shortened to Caly, and our short-term mission was accomplished. Caly was (and still is) a bundle of love and joy wrapped up in a white fluffy jacket. And while I don’t advocate answering all of life’s problems with a puppy, she certainly helped us as we were trying to navigate around a pretty big boulder in our family road. Adding a puppy is almost like adding a toddler: feeding schedules, nap times, potty training. Caly made us laugh and kept us busy. She also distracted us from the angst that was our lives; she gave us something else to focus on rather than our constant disagreements about gender and pronouns. Caly didn’t solve our problems, but she sure did (and continues to) give us a reason to smile as we struggle. Princess (God rest her wonderful soul) even learned to tolerate Caly.
Pretty soon, however, it was obvious that adding Caly to our family was like putting a Band Air ® on a hemorrhage. She gave us a common ground, a neutral territory. Caly was goofy and happy, and she always made you smile. But our family was hemorrhaging pain of a unique sort, and puppy love can’t take that away. We had the pain of a child who was trying to leave her whole identity behind and struggling to find her place in her new world. We had the pain of a mom who just wanted the whole situation to go away, who wanted to put her head in the sand so she didn’t have to deal with it. I didn’t want to learn about correct pronouns, and binders, and gender dysphoria, and name changes. I hadn’t signed up for any of this. I wanted my daughter back. I think that maybe this whole situation might have been easier to process had Tristan been happy, but she just wasn’t.
To make matters worse, I just flat out didn’t believe any of it. I did not believe for one second that Tristan, my Anna Marie, was transgender. But, at the same time, I didn’t believe that Tristan was lying (who would lie about that?). So, how could I not believe her and yet be convinced she wasn’t lying? Beats me. I didn’t know Tristan. I knew Anna, and Anna was as honest as they come. So now there was an even bigger question to lose sleep over; what the hell is REALLY going on here? (Spoiler alert: I still don’t have the answer to that.)
Here’s what I KNEW, in a nutshell:
- Anna left Virginia as Anna.
- Anna came back from Iowa as Anna.
- Anna started summer school as Anna.
- Anna finished summer school as Lucas, proclaiming to be transgender, after making a friend in summer school who just happened to be transgender.
- Anna/Lucas was now going by Tristan Blane.
- Anna’s BFF therapist who’d seen her 50+ times was totally blindsided by all of this.
- Anna’s parents, siblings, and grandparents were totally blindsided by all of this.
- Anna was unhappy and depressed.
And here’s what I THOUGHT:
- Anna put way too much pressure on herself over this drum corps thing and was embarrassed at the outcome.
- Anna’s self-esteem was practically non-existent; it was low before Iowa and pretty much gone now.
- Anna didn’t like who she was (Anna, before Lucas or Tristan even came into the picture).
- Anna wanted to be anyone BUT Anna when she got back from her four-day adventure in Iowa.
- Anna thought that being Lucas/Tristan was the answer to all of the above.
Here we were, about three months into this transgender world, and I was so lost and confused that there’s no way I could help my child—my smart, funny, beautiful little girl who was still smart, funny, and beautiful but not my little girl anymore.
If only we could really answer all of life’s problems with a puppy.
Click to order When He Was Anna: A Mom’s Journey Into the Transgender World from Barnes and Noble.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-he-was-anna-patti-hornstra/1137701308?ean=9781950306381
Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? My family was going through so much change during this time, and there was so much that we didn’t know and needed to learn very quickly. I, personally, felt like I was grabbing at anything I could that might ‘fix’ our situation. For this book to be 100% honest, no B.S. as I promised, this part of the story was so important. I couldn’t realize at the time that this wasn’t something that needed my fixing. The most wonderful addition to our family came from this time of turmoil and confusion—Caly! We love her so much and she’s such a joy.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. There really weren’t any deletions. I write ‘in my head’ before I put anything ‘on paper’ (meaning on the computer) and I do tons of self-editing as I go along. There was one really significant change that I’d like to share, and it’s about the cover of the book. When I first wrote the book, I found an image of swings that I loved and wanted to use. I had the photo edited (with permission of the photographer) then I had help with the cover design. About six months after publication, I was told my someone in the industry that I needed a new cover. Here’s my blog about that:
Patti Hornstra is a proud mom of four adult children. She knows from first-hand experience that raising four children is not for the faint at heart. Life is a never ending series of surprises when you have twice as many kids as you have hands. She’s been married to the love of her life since 1987. They have adjusted nicely to life as empty-nesters and eagerly await life’s next great adventure. Patti is an accomplished real estate broker, and lives in Virginia with her husband, Curtis and their white ball of fluff, Caly.