The Dialogue

In my last post, I wrote about Animorphs #31: The Conspiracy. Not just the family tension, but Jake’s opening description of the war with the Yeerks: a secret war that most people don’t see. I talked about how that framing becomes a roadmap, not only for the rest of Animorphs, but for how we recognize and resist cults; and, more broadly, modern fascism hiding in plain sight. 

And of course I also had mentioned how the series became a major literary fulcrum in my memoir. It is a major part of my childhood that affected my thinking regarding the fundamentalist cult I was raised in.

I hadn’t planned to keep writing about the series.
But as I've continued my reread, #33 The Illusion stopped me cold.

Most readers remember this book for its torture sequence. Team scout and loner, Tobias, is captured, restrained, enduring unbearable psychic pain as a terrible Yeerk leader and her machine twist his brain’s pain and pleasure centers. It’s one of the most excruciating scenes in the entire series. But what struck me most wasn’t the physical torment. It was what surfaced during it.

In the middle of the torture, Tobias’s mind slips—or maybe the machine drags him deeper—and suddenly he’s in a memory. A dim living room. The shades drawn. His uncle in front of the TV, a beer in his hand. Tobias speaks, tentative, trying to share something that matters.

He says his drawing has been chosen for an award. It’s an honor. He’s excited. He just wants someone to see him. His uncle doesn’t look up. Doesn’t pause the TV. He asks if there’s prize money, and when Tobias says no, the man mutters that he had a job at that age. The words land flat.

Tobias feels the beginnings of tears and chokes them down, before retreats to his room and gazing forlornly out the window.

Outside, a mother and daughter are getting out of their car, the daughter clumsily juggling a school project in hand: a finger painting that’s getting slightly crumpled in how she is managing it. The mother stops, rescues it, and holds it up "like it was the Mona Lisa" as she carries it into the house.

Tobias watches. Realizes he’s alone. The tears start to pour, but when he moves to wipe them away, he sees his hand is covered in feathers. It’s a wing. And that snaps him back to the present. Back to the pain, the restraint, the violation.

It’s such a quiet, devastating moment. The boundary between memory and reality dissolving in the very act of survival. And that’s the line that undid me. Because I think every former child of neglect, knows that window. And as a trans parent, I'm on alert for it.

The duality of the glass

I read that scene and felt two people inside me: the child looking out, and the parent looking in.
The part of me that still aches to be seen, and the part of me trying to teach my daughter that she already is.

The other night, she told me there’s no representation anywhere for kids with trans parents. Not in books. Not in movies. Not even online. She said it gently, but the loneliness behind it was heavy.

I said something small... something like, “Yeah, I know. There really isn’t much.”

Later, I realized I could’ve said more. I could’ve turned it into a moment—a Mona Lisa moment—where I stopped everything I was carrying and held her words carefully in my hands.

But then I remembered that she felt safe enough to tell me. And our conversation had closed with her remarking that her friend was making an animation, and she’d asked her to include a trans mom. And I told her how proud I was of her noticing things like that, and being so bold in trying to change narratives to show real lives that get overlooked.

So hopefully she did feel seen, after all. My daughter is an artist and animator herself, and we ended the night by sitting together and watching an anime we enjoy.

The hawk mind

When Tobias retreats into his hawk mind, it’s supposed to protect him. To dull the pain, to detach. But even inside that refuge, the human part of him bleeds through: the boy in the dark room, speaking into silence.

Reading that, I wondered what my own hawk mind has looked like over the years.

When you’re raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, you learn how to hover above your own feelings. You learn to perform bravery, to be “proud” of being different, even when it isolates you. You learn that openness is duty, not authenticity.

I carried that habit into adulthood... into parenthood, even. Generally, when I think about my daughter out in the world—talking about her family, trying to fit that story into other people’s narrow templates—I am looking for ways to make it easier for her. Little adjustments to language that might save her from having to explain too much. Even expressing little exceptions...  Just to let her know her needs are what come first.

But sometimes, the hawk instinct comes out louder than I mean it to. I tell my kids they should be proud of who they are, proud of their family, proud of having a trans parent. And I mean that. They should be. But I’ve realized that sometimes I’ve said it like a commandment—like it’s their job to feel that way. Like pride is a duty.

That’s not what I mean or want for them. I don’t want them to inherit pride as another duty. A mask like mine was, to wear in spite of people, or in front of me. I want it instead to be a well they can draw on when people don’t understand. I want them to arrive at it naturally, formed on its own from love, and in their own words. 

And I do feel we've accomplished that, even if situations are not always easy.

Because for most people, family still comes in tidy shapes: mom, dad, brother, sister. Ours doesn’t. She has two moms, and we’re separate, and she moves between our homes. It’s not something she should have to justify. So I tell her that however she needs to talk about it—whatever phrasing helps her move through those moments with dignity and calm—is okay with me.

It’s not that she needs to redefine who I am... she already knows. I'm the custodial parent. We are close and the relationship with the other is somewhat rocky. But it’s that my daughter deserves to feel at ease while navigating a world that still isn’t sure what to do with families like ours.

So maybe my hawk mind isn’t what protects me anymore. Maybe it’s what keeps me from swooping down to meet her where she is.

Default pride

That’s where I’m learning to draw the line. Between pride that’s assigned and pride that’s embodied.

When I was a Witness, pride was mandatory. Visibility was obedience. Now, as a trans woman and a mother, pride feels different. It’s not something I expect from my daughter; it’s something I want her to have room to define for herself.

If it’s easier for her to talk about us like we’re a single mom—one word, one presence, one safe explanation—she can. If it feels better to say “my moms,” or to call us separately “Mommy” and “Mama,” that’s hers to decide. She doesn’t owe anyone the logistics of her family.

All I want is for her to move through the world without shrinking. To know she can adjust her language without betraying who we are. That it’s okay to choose comfort over confrontation, and that doing so doesn’t make her less brave.

That’s what I mean by default pride: not a performance, not a duty, but the quiet knowing that your family is whole, even when you have to describe it in shorthand.

Because the words don’t make us real. The love does.

Through the window

Sometimes I think about Tobias at that window, and how many of us grow up staring through our own versions of that glass. Some of us never stop. We spend our lives trying to become the parent in the scene. The one who knows when to stop, take the weight, and carry the painting gently inside.

Maybe that’s the real miracle of stories like Animorphs: they hand us our old selves in ways we can finally understand. They remind us that the hawk and the child are still in dialogue, still teaching each other how to be whole.

And sometimes, the only thing between them is a window: one we’ve spent our whole lives learning to open.