Psych Wards are Pretty Familiar in My Family
By: Teresa Kuhl
Tags: LGBT, LGBTQ, Love, Relationships, Allyship

Psych Wards are Pretty Familiar in My Family

But they are never routine. They are a catalyst for change.

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash

I remember the conversations like they happened yesterday. I was standing right over there on my deck, talking with my daughter about how surprised we were that her son, this just-out-of-the-closet transgender 16-year-old was doing so well, emotionally. He didn’t seem depressed, at least not any more than you would think someone who doesn’t live in a body that doesn’t match their identity would be.

We were both a little proud. We were proud of her son, my grandson, for doing so well. But secretly, we might have been a little prouder of ourselves. I think we both thought we were so damn wonderful and loving that we created an environment where this kid, ours, could move through this incredibly difficult teenage angst and be relatively unscathed.

That was delusional thinking on our part.

It wasn’t long after our back-patting session that the call came from the local police. Kameron was in their patrol car, and he needed to go to the hospital

A friend of Kam’s made a call to the cops because they were afraid he was going to hurt himself. He had a plan. It involved a gun. We had completely missed it.

Now, a quick background tidbit. Both my daughter and I had taken a turn in the psych ward for a few days in our past. Alcoholism and depression are very real, folks. So, the idea that Kam had to spend a little time at the hospital didn’t seem like it was terrible, but it sure didn’t seem necessary. But, doctors know things that I do not, so I was doing a relatively good job of breathing evenly and not falling to pieces. I still believed the suicidal ideation was more talk than anything real. I simply could not bear the pain of accepting it was true.

Until I heard this story from Kameron.

He called me from the little room he was in, waiting for others around him to make life and death decisions about him. He told me he was hanging in there. But when the nurse told him to change, he began to grab his t-shirt. The nurse tossed a gown at him, laughing, “Oh, no!! I don’t wanna see those!” with one hand covering her laugh, and the other extended toward Kameron’s pre-surgical chest.

Kam grabbed the gown, choking back the tears, as he whispered, “Neither do I.”

It was in that instant I realized I didn’t have a clue. I had no real understanding of what my first-born grandchild was going through.

A word about grandkids, and first grandkids, there’s a little part you don’t understand until it is you and your grandchild.

I’ve always said that as deeply as we love, a mother never loves deeper than when she looks at her newborn baby. Let me just warn you- that multiplies exponentially with a grandchild. Kameron and I had been close since day one. And we were traveling on this road none of us knew. No, unfortunately, I can’t say that relates to the psych ward. We could do that. It’s the whole, “I’m really a boy” thing that was new.

How incredibly anguishing it must be to look into the mirror and truly believe that is not the body you should be living in. I know what grief and loss feel like, but this feeling, this “everything about this is just wrong” feeling, that I did not really grasp until he said those words, “neither do I.”

For the first time, I couldn’t just hug him and cheer him up just because the two of us were together. This was much deeper than a hug could fix.

Don’t get me wrong, I held onto him every single chance I could without driving him crazy. I no zero issues with the love part. Absolutely nothing had changed, not the smallest iota of anything changed as far as the love part. From the minute I was told Kam was transgender, I knew I would fully support him. All of us did. We loved him far too much to do anything else. I could never have the ability to cut my child or my grandchild out because there was a difference between us. Nothing like that could ever matter.

It wasn’t easy for our family, generations of fairly conventional people (we thought) to understand what transgender was really all about.

I am deeply grateful that we have been able to handle every single step with love. My deepest prayer is that others can do the same.

Now I work with LGBTI families as a friend and ally, helping them to accept their journey with their loved one.

Thank you for being here! I appreciate you!

To know more about me and my journey with my grandson, start here.

To learn more about the LGBTI refugees in Kakuma and Nairobi, start here.