Crushing pain tightened my chest, stealing my breath before I could call for help. I flipped through the old pictures like they were someone else’s, not mine. Not ours. Who were these people? They looked like us, but they looked amazingly different. Like life was so much easier then and we were all just mugging for the camera, blissfully unaware.

The two baskets that cradled the photos of my kids in their very early years have literally been shoved in the closet. I could barely see them when I glanced through the out-of-season section of my closet, but I’d quickly turn away when I did. The last physical contact I had with the baskets was when I packed away the school photos of Hope before she transitioned. At her request I’d taken down her picture down from the foyer, stuffed a new one inside the frame and banished the beautiful photo to “The Baskets”.

Once it was all tucked away I melted to the floor in a heap, sobbing as if she’d just been torn from my arms, never to be seen again. My head knew this to be true. My child was safe, happier than ever and always mine; however, my heart needed more time letting go of that moment frozen in time when my child was just living like any other boy. Free from people’s judgment and ridicule. Free to see the family and friends who have since let us go. Free from the manipulations of life that some gender non-conforming children endure: searching high and low for a discreet clothes for school, swimming and ballet, growing out your hair, seeing acquaintances on the street that call you the wrong name and then stare at your new curls and dress, being called the wrong name by just about every medical professional, wondering why your grandmother or your uncle or your old best friend just doesn’t call anymore, defending yourself and your identity on a regular basis when all you want to do is just be a kid.

Sure, life was admittedly easier, but “he” wasn’t free, was he? Inside she was trapped. Lost. Silenced. Who wants that for their child? My head knows this. My heart still aches when I see pictures. It’s my Achilles heel. Knowing this, I am going to give myself a little more time to just be with the fact that it hurts me. It’s not that I don’t fully accept my child. I do. It’s not that pictures mean more to me. They don’t. This is painful for me and that just is the way it is.

Shortly after I unearthed the baskets, my sister reached out to me. She knew what this activity would do to me. Pain rippling like the tide. Always insightful, she shared a little revelation that “this little boy existed” and we have the opportunity to honor that. Not toss it away. I don’t have to run from the tender memories of holding my child in my arms, dressing him up, whispering his old name in his ear or the shear joy I felt knowing I had a beautiful, healthy son. Those memories do not have to be my enemy, unless I see them that way. Unless I fear the power of my emotion behind those memories. My emotions are love. Pure love.