Important: This idea came to me when writing my Letter to Younger Me. I wanted to share my feelings and thoughts in letter form so I could feel the release without actually doing anything. Disclaimer: I love my mom, and she even reads all my articles (Hi Mom!!). But this is how I felt after I came out as nonbinary. 

Dear Mom, 

I just want to start by saying I love you, and I love our relationship. I know it has not always been easy and I doubt it will get any easier. Life for me has never been easy, you know that. Life has thrown both of us curve balls we could have never seen coming. But through everything, we have had each other no matter what. I have come out to you a multitude of times: different sexualities, and different identities and you have never told me that I came out too much. You always accepted it, maybe not understand it, but still accepted it as who I am. Until it came to me not being a girl anymore. I don’t plan on getting any medical procedures done to make myself look any different than how I did when I was a girl, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not different on the inside. You love me so much, yet every time we’re together you only use she/her pronouns. That’s not who I am anymore. I am nonbinary, I am your child. I am no longer your daughter. I know it might hurt you that I changed my name to Ivory because we won’t have the same first initial anymore. I know you were excited to do all the girly things with me like getting pedicures or whatever you imagined when I was born. We still get to talk about boys, get lunch, shop, etc. I just don’t want to be your daughter, I want to be your child. I know you wanted me to grow up in the church and be a daughter of god but that’s just not realistic anymore. I know my pronouns don’t make sense to you because they seem to be plural. That is just the thing: I don’t want a gender associated with me. You have always supported me and that’s what makes it hurt worse, that this was the thing to pull you away. Just a bit. If I could change it, I would, just to make you feel better. But I love my life and this has been the happiest I have ever been. Charlie has made feeling confident in my identity as a partner even easier. I have loved getting to love myself while falling in love with another trans person. For you, his pronouns didn’t even phase you. Because he looks like a boy. If I looked more androgynous, would you respect my pronouns more? I know that they/them seem like it shouldn’t be real to you, but for me, these are the things that make me feel real. My whole life I wanted to fit in and I wanted to make you proud of me, but once I started feeling like what I was born as wasn’t me, I didn’t want any part of it. You had been calling your stomach my deadname long before I was due and you had spent 18 years after calling me that, too. Now, that it is different, you have had a hard time with the adjustment. I think the only time it is easy for you to call me Ivory is when it comes to medical stuff because you want everyone to respect it. It hurts me so much to know that this part of me doesn’t make you proud, at least that’s how I felt at the beginning, and every time you use the wrong pronouns or deadname me. I love you and I love how close we are, but I wish you could love me as your child and as Ivory. Fully. Completely. 

Love, Ivory

P.S. I promise I will still always be your pumpkin