Found in Transition: A Conversation with Mother, Pediatrician and Author Paria Hassouri
ABOUT PARIA HASSOURI
Website: http://www.PariaHassouri.com
Book: Found in Transition
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/paria.hassouri
Instagram: @laparia
Twitter: @pariahassouri
LINKS FROM INTERVIEW
https://themoth.org/storytellers/cybele-abbett
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The Wisdom Shared Team
Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
Co-Producer and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson
Production Assistant: Becki Leigh
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[00:00:00] Paria Hassouri: My initial instinct, I think, with so much of parenting is to make decisions based on fear rather than looking at the kid who’s in front of you that day and making the decision based out of love.
[00:00:19] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to episode four of Wisdom Shared, a podcast community where parents are the experts.
[00:00:31] Today’s conversation features Paria Hassouri, a pediatrician, mother of three, transgender activist, and the author of Found in Transition. Her essays have been published in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Women’s Running Magazine.
[00:00:49] Paria Hassouri: I’m just like, really? I’m just a mom. I actually think all the other credentials mean nothing. I’m just a mom really, first and foremost.
[00:01:00] Carole Blueweiss: When a Wisdom Shared listener who is the mother of a trans daughter reached out to see if I’d consider interviewing Dr. Paria Hassouri, she rocked my world. Talking with parents of trans kids was uncharted territory for me. I hadn’t really thought about it before.
[00:01:20] However, as the listener told me how her own parenting journey paralleled the journeys of the parents she’d heard on this podcast, I realized I had to interview Paria. I reached out to her soon after and was so happy when she said yes. I’m honored to feature her wisdom on this edition of Wisdom Shared. Paria talks about being blindsided when the child she gave birth to and called her son announced at the age of 13 and a half, that she identified as a girl, wanted to live as a girl, and wanted to be recognized and acknowledged as her mom’s daughter.
[00:02:00] In our conversation, she opens up about her own transformation from shock, disbelief, and fear to inner strength, acceptance, and wisdom. She talks about how she learned who her daughter is from the inside out, realizing that the way forward was not to judge but to listen, not to try and fix or change, but to connect, to love and support her daughter.
[00:02:29] I was moved by Paria’s honesty, vulnerability, and generosity. She’s probably been asked the same questions I asked hundreds of times. Yet she carefully considered all my questions because she wants you, my audience, to become more aware of this marginalized group of people who are no different than the rest of us.
[00:02:52] She also taught me a lot about myself. In this interview, I mentioned the word tomboy because that’s how I identified, and I considered cutting that out. But I wanted to keep it in because it’s such an example of how we use labels in our society and how we have this binary way of looking at our gender.
[00:03:17] Paria talks about gender as a spectrum, and that makes so much sense to me now, and I didn’t even consider it before. So before we listen to the wisdom that Paria shares, I asked her some basic questions to help us better understand some important vocabulary. Him, they, she, her, they. Why do people put that next to their name?
[00:03:42] Paria Hassouri: So, a lot of times trans people are misgendered and the wrong pronouns are used for them. They will put, for example, you know, Ava, she/her, or even introduce themselves, my name is Ava, my pronouns are she/her/hers, so that people will know, oh, this person’s pronouns are. Because sometimes a trans person might be looked at and if they don’t look like they are a she/her, then somebody might use the wrong pronouns for them.
[00:04:14] The reason that now a lot of cisgender people are using their pronouns as well. For example, I use my pronouns if I’m about to give a talk, let’s say, or, you know, in my email, I use my pronouns or I have it on my business card now, is that when everyone starts using their pronouns, it normalizes using the pronouns, and then it also says that just because somebody’s using their pronoun doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re trans either. So that if my daughter uses her pronouns, you can’t just assume she’s using it, you know, because she’s trans.
[00:04:52] So it just normalizes it and it says that we really, we should be asking everyone their pronouns. We shouldn’t be making assumptions about how somebody identifies, and a lot of times we make assumptions about how somebody identifies just based on their presentation.
[00:05:11] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, that makes so much sense. See, this is where it gets tricky. I started to talk to, I know he was a man, but he had makeup on, so he looked like a woman. He had a great jacket on or she had a great jacket on, I don’t even know what the right, because I don’t know if that person is trans. They could just be dressing up.
[00:05:29] Paria Hassouri: So that’s like a great opportunity when you’re talking to someone like that to say hi, what’s your name and what are your pronouns? That will just let you know how to address them. So you could just say, I’m Carole. My pronouns are she/her. What’s your name? What are your pronouns? Then all you need to know is their name and what pronouns to use when you’re talking about them. Because right now, you know, you don’t know if whether or not you should call them he or she, or maybe they are a they/them.
[00:06:00] But, I mean, I think if you’re talking to someone and you ask them their name and then you’re not sure how to address them, you can just say, you know, my pronouns are she/her. What are your pronouns? And they won’t mind. They’ll be actually, they’ll be impressed that you ask that.
[00:06:18] Carole Blueweiss: Another definition. Cis, I never really knew what that is, but correct me if I’m wrong, that just means someone who is the gender they were born with?
[00:06:26] Paria Hassouri: It’s when your gender identity matches the one that was assigned to you at birth based on your genitals. You were born with a vagina or a penis. That’s your sex. That is not your gender. People become aware of their gender later, but we impose a gender based on genitals for everybody. And so if the gender that was assigned to you based on your genitals matches with how you identify, then you’re cisgender, and if the gender you identify with doesn’t match the one that was assigned to you at birth based on your genitals, then you are transgender.
[00:07:07] And part of the reason to use the name cisgender, if I said Ava is transgender female, but I’m just a female, it’s almost as if like I’m a normal female. Saying that she’s a transgender female and I’m a cisgender female, in a way, doesn’t label her as non-normal. Because the alternative is to say that I’m a normal, regular female and that she’s not normal. Being trans is normal.
[00:07:37] Carole Blueweiss: It’s interesting, that whole idea of labels, because in this podcast, you know, I am interviewing parents of children that are unique and even in this podcast I’m gonna be interviewing the mother of someone who has da, da, da, da. And you’re a pediatrician, so you are very familiar with the idea that children oftentimes get that label and then they’re just thought of as that label. Do you see any parallel between kids with disabilities having these labels and being called children with special needs and then children that are born without special needs are called typical?
[00:08:12] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s like you have the neurotypical versus the atypical labels. It’s really, it’s hard to use labels to define somebody, but then not want to make them feel other. Using labels is unavoidable for certain things. So it’s hard. And, you know, gender is an identity. It’s gender identity. It’s not a diagnosis or a disability or special needs, but it is a type of identity that may, for some people, require medical care that other people who are cisgender maybe don’t need. But not every trans person medically transitions or needs specifically different medical care either.
[00:08:56] I mean, there are trans people who identify as trans, but decide not to do anything medical at all, but just change how they present and the name they go by. They just change their clothing and hair and mannerisms and decide not to do anything medical. Their trans identity is just as valid as the person who decides that they’re gonna do some medical intervention or have surgery or, you know, there’s trans people who never have any type of surgeries. There’s trans people who have multiple surgeries.
[00:09:32] Carole Blueweiss: I would imagine, and correct me if I’m wrong, that a lot of…just not so much that there’s a problem with the person who realizes their true gender and wants to live that truth, but because of society that there’s that need for, I would guess, everyone to have to need therapy or psychological support?
[00:09:50] Paria Hassouri: Not every trans person needs therapy. It’s actually not a requirement to get therapy to medically transition. It used to be that you had to see a therapist for 18 months or two years or something like that before you were allowed to medically transition. You don’t even need to see a therapist even one time to transition.
[00:10:09] I mean, there are kids who have been, especially nowadays, like there are kids who are clearly stating their gender identity early on, 3, 4, 5 years old, and the parents are aware of it and they’re letting themselves express themselves in however the way they want and they’re supporting them and those kids are just very seamlessly and smoothly moving through. And then when it’s puberty time, if they want to do some medical intervention, they go see a physician and get medical intervention and never see a therapist. That’s not a more common scenario, but it definitely is one and it’s one that will become more and more common as we learn more and become more aware and start supporting these kids younger and younger.
[00:11:02] Carole Blueweiss: And would I be right to say that you don’t even have to have a problem to see a therapist. You can be a perfectly healthy, maybe a very healthy person who needs to talk things through to a professional who’s not biased. So it could be also a healthy, normal, typical need to speak to somebody and get it straight.
[00:11:20] Paria Hassouri: I mean, I think majority of people will need to talk to therapists, you know, at some point or another. And so there’s, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with a therapist, but if you have a child who’s been sure of who they were from when they were very young and they’ve been supported by their parents and things are going very well for that child, and then now it’s, you know, time for that child to potentially put a pause on their puberty or start medical transition or all of that. And then you say, okay, we’ve been believing and supporting you in your identity all along, but now that it’s time for medical transition, now you have to go talk to a therapist because something’s wrong.
[00:12:02] You know, it’s like, wait, why do I suddenly need to talk to a therapist if I’m perfectly fine and been doing fine and I have no, I’m certain about my gender identity and have no issue with my gender identity, then why do I suddenly have to go see a therapist? Which is why it’s really no longer a requirement.
[00:12:21] Carole Blueweiss: The kids end up in therapy because the parents need to have that reassurance and the parents are the ones that are not as clear as the child?
[00:12:32] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, for a lot of people that is the case. I mean, certainly a big part of why Ava ended up in therapy was because when she came out to me, I didn’t believe her. So I said, okay, we’re gonna get a therapist to help sort this out so that you figure out what’s wrong that you’ve decided that you wanna be trans. If it was a decision for her to make.
[00:12:53] So, I mean, Ava definitely did need therapy anyway, so it’s not like she didn’t need therapy, but the initial reason I put her in therapy was so that the therapist could figure out why she wanted to be trans when I thought she wasn’t trans. And so there’s definitely a lot of kids coming out to parents. Parents are in disbelief that this could be true, and therefore saying, okay, okay, we’re gonna get a therapist involved here to help figure out why you’re so confused that you think that you’re trans.
[00:13:24] Carole Blueweiss: You talk about this in the book, your initial feeling about fixing as opposed to connecting.
[00:13:30] Paria Hassouri: Ava came out to us at 13 and a half. I mean, I was completely blindsided. She’d never had what I considered any signs of being transgender. When she came out, I just thought the chance that she was transgender was less than 1%. So I thought, okay, here’s a teenage confusion, depression, desperation phase she’s going through that I need to fix.
[00:13:56] Okay, what are the steps I need to take to fix and get past this and, you know, move on to the next thing that I’m sure will come up. I wasn’t listening to her at all because I just didn’t think that there was any possibility that it was true, and that was really because of my own ignorance about how and when gender identity emerges.
[00:14:18] I really knew hardly anything, and I thought I knew a lot and thought that all trans kids have signs when they’re 3, 4, 5 years old or, you know, sometime in early childhood and then that gets stronger and stronger over time and that’s not the case at all. At least half of trans people and their gender identity doesn’t really reveal itself until later when their body starts puberty or around puberty time or even later.
[00:14:48] My ignorance is what made me not really listen to her and it’s part of why I wanted to write the book was because I think a lot of people do think that all trans people have signs, you know, in early childhood. And so when they hear about trans people who are coming out later, or in their particularly trans teens coming out who didn’t seem to have signs of a gender dysphoria prior to their teen years, we think, oh, this must be a phase. A fad. This is, you know, not real, basically. And we don’t listen.
[00:15:29] Carole Blueweiss: And what about your pediatrician doctor, your training in school? I know what you mentioned in your book. I assume not much has changed since you wrote the book.
[00:15:38] Paria Hassouri: Basically, you know, I did medical school in the late 90s and residency in early 2000s and didn’t learn anything about gender identity at all in medical school and pediatric residency training. And then in the last 18 years of, you know, being a practicing physician, we’re required to do continuing medical education credits every year and take, you know, courses to keep your license up. And in none of the continuing medical education requirement over the last 18 years have I been required to learn anything about gender identity or transgender kids.
[00:16:21] So, really everything I learned, I learned on my own after Ava came out. And there, even now there’s some, it’s getting a little bit better with some residencies, doing a little bit of training on gender identity, but many aren’t. And I just think really every primary care physician, whether it’s a pediatrician, internal medicine, family medicine, should be getting trained on transgender healthcare, even if they’re not necessarily gonna practice it, which I think eventually more and more physicians will be, but even if they’re not gonna practice it, they should at least be trained in it and familiar with it.
[00:17:04] You read these disorders and memorize these disorders in textbooks that you never, ever see in a whole career of being a pediatrician. And you don’t learn about something as important as gender identity and the different times that that can emerge and present itself and the basics of trans care.
[00:17:26] Carole Blueweiss: You talk about how you wanted to be a mom from way back, particularly you talk about how you really wanted girls.
[00:17:34] Paria Hassouri: Yeah. I don’t know why I always had a really strong maternal instinct. My mother was so determined that all three of her daughters would become professionals and would become independent and so frustrating when I would always, you know, say that I want to be a mother. And then I’d say, okay, well, I’ll do something else, too. But, you know.
[00:17:54] Carole Blueweiss: So when someone asks you about your three children, I would love to hear a little bit about the relationship of the three of them.
[00:18:01] Paria Hassouri: So this was a big part of my identity had always been like being a mother of two sons and a girl. It took me a while to let go of that identity and get to this point of like, oh, I’m the mother of a son and two daughters now. It’s easy to just say it, but to actually believe it and feel it, it took me a little while to get to that point. For so many years, I felt like my identity had been this person who’d like first had two boys and then finally had her girl. And then when Ava came out, we weren’t telling people right away because she wasn’t telling people right away either.
[00:18:39] Most trans people will come out first to a few friends or a family member or something, and there’s an in-between period where they’re not comfortable coming out to the world yet. Where for someone just to come out to everybody on the same day, including the world. So there was this year period where I didn’t know what to say, like if I did see somebody new, I mean, I would just say I have three kids. And if they pressed, then I would have to say I have two sons and a daughter, because she wasn’t out to the world yet.
[00:19:14] But I also was internally was like, what do I have? Do I have two sons and a daughter? Do I have a son, a daughter, and a maybe trans daughter? You know, I just had this sort of in-between period for myself as well. But I can say now that, well, one, I try to just place less emphasis on gender in general in a lot of ways.
[00:19:36] So if somebody asks me, I will just say I have three kids. And that is because I’m trying to just deemphasize gender in general. I just feel like, you know, we place so much emphasis on gender and then if they ask me, oh, what do you have more in detail? Then I’ll say, I have a son and two daughters, and I feel that I have a son and two daughters.
[00:20:00] And, I mean, when we’re talking about this book and we’re talking about transgender rights, then I tell people I have a trans daughter. But if it’s just, if we’re in general conversation, I mean, I have two daughters. I don’t have a cisgender and a transgender daughter. One isn’t more valid as a daughter than the other. They’re equally my daughter. So, yeah. So if I just meet someone and they ask me, I’ll usually say, I have three kids. And if they ask further, I’ll say, oh, I have a son and two daughters, and I feel it. You know, that’s how I definitely got to that point where I believe that, you know, I feel it in my core.
[00:20:41] Carole Blueweiss: You were surprised how not a big deal it was for the three of them.
[00:20:46] Paria Hassouri: You know, Ava was always much closer to her older brother Arman than to my younger daughter, Shayda. Arman and Ava were always like joined at the hip, you know, and I was really worried that if they went from being two brothers to being brother and sister, that their relationship would change or they wouldn’t be as close. And really nothing changed at all by the time we did tell Arman, he had already figured it out, you know, on his own anyway. And he was just like, okay, you know, next. I mean, he was completely unphased by the whole thing and their relationship is just as close now as they’ve ever been.
[00:21:29] Carole Blueweiss: It’s interesting what your fears were and then what a lot of what had transpired isn’t necessarily what happened. You talk in the book about how you felt growing up as an outsider and how that’s formed you. You’re very articulate and very aware of how those feelings as a child played out in your mothering.
[00:21:47] Paria Hassouri: I’m a Iranian American. My parents moved back to the US in 1983, which was shortly after the Iran hostage crisis. And we moved initially to Madison, Wisconsin for a year and then to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So when we moved, I was in fifth grade and it was really the worst time to be an Iranian in the US.
[00:22:09] Madison was all white when we were there. And in that year, I got bullied pretty much on a daily basis at school, and that caused a lot of lasting insecurity in me. And so then we moved to Pittsburgh and again, I was like just one of a handful of brown kids. I mean, there were a few more brown kids there, but it was still predominantly white.
[00:22:35] And because of my year of being bullied also, I carried all this fear and insecurity with me, and I really spent all of my middle school and high school years very lonely and feeling very much on the outside. Because of that, I had this focus in middle school and high school. Like, I had decided like my life was gonna start after high school, and, you know, and I had this very singular focus and vision for myself of, you know, going to school and becoming a professional and having my own family and moving to a diverse city and knew that I would either move to like the DC area or Los Angeles so that my kids would fit in and blend in.
[00:23:16] And that’s pretty much what I did. And so I think when you’ve spent a lot of your life feeling like you’re on the outside or not good enough, or that you need to prove your worth, the last thing you want is for one of your children to then become an outsider. And, you know, I was carrying a lot of fear from that and I was really worried that when Ava came out, that if she really is trans, then she’s gonna experience the bullying I had, that she was gonna be 10 times or 50 times more of an outsider than I had ever been, that her future was gonna be limited by being trans, and that she was gonna have to potentially spend her life proving her worth as a woman the way I had sort of felt like I always felt like I needed to prove my worth as a Iranian immigrant, but still an American who deserves to be here, you know?
[00:24:16] So I had a lot of just fear and worries for her based on my own experience, and I think that was part of the hesitation of supporting her in transitioning, was knowing that it could potentially be harder for her.
[00:24:33] Carole Blueweiss: And you had seen The Moth.
[00:24:36] Paria Hassouri: I came upon a Moth scene video of a woman called Cybele Abbett who did this little Moth 12-minute presentation of her son who came out as trans as a teenager. And I saw her stand and tell her story and speak with just such authenticity, and saw her really go through the emotions and the phases in her presentation, and then come out at this beautiful place of acceptance and activism. And I, for the first time, saw a potential future for myself where I would come out of this too, where I would go through the phases and come to acceptance, and not just acceptance, but be proud and be an advocate.
[00:25:28] So watching that video, and how incredibly well she articulated her feelings as she was going through it was really very emotional and inspiring and moving for me. And I, when I first watched it, I watched it like four other times in a row, and then I sent it to everybody in my life who knew what was going on, and I said, this is me. This is what’s happening to me.
[00:25:53] I felt like she was articulating my feelings better than I could, except that I still hadn’t gotten to the acceptance and pride part. So that for me, just if she could affect me that way, the power of sharing your story. And the other thing that made a big difference to me is that I finally did end up in a support group called Transforming Family for families that have trans children and ended up meeting other really incredible people and parents who were going through the same thing that I was and not just going through what I was, but also other people who’d had kids who’d come out later and the parents had been completely blindsided by it. And going to those support group meetings and seeing people who had already navigated through this and come out stronger on the other side and just feeling not like I’m the only one that this has happened to was really, really a turning point for me.
[00:26:54] Carole Blueweiss: You were in these different groups or having these different therapies, or obviously you have friends and but it wasn’t until that particular dynamic of parents that had very close, similar story to yours that you really were able to connect with them and start to feel or rethink or reevaluate everything.
[00:27:13] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, well I think, you know, up until that point I was also still really in denial and disbelief that Ava could be trans. I mean, I still, up until that point, I still felt like if she was really trans, I would have known it like as a mother in my core, somewhere I would’ve felt this thing and that I had never felt it.
[00:27:34] So then when I saw all these other mothers who had also never felt it and didn’t know, I felt, oh, if all these other parents who look like they’re good parents, you know, look like they’re good, involved parents could also be completely blindsided the way I was completely blindsided, then maybe what she’s saying is actually true and that she is trans. I need to start listening to her. Before that, every story I heard and everything I read, it was like, oh, okay. You know when they’re a kid and we really didn’t know when she was a kid. You know, she never tried to do anything that one would consider or associate with female gender identity or girls.
[00:28:20] Carole Blueweiss: You know, you have to be careful with the textbook or that generic definition of how people grow. Everyone has their own path and thank God you found something similar because it sounded like you needed that to get you to wake up and say, okay, I have to start somewhere else with my child. I have to start listening in a non-fearful way. And I remember you said that there was something about that trigger in you after you saw that Moth talk that went from the fear to the love.
[00:28:53] Paria Hassouri: Yeah. So after I saw that Moth video, I actually found Cybele on Facebook, and I sent her a private message thinking, okay, she might never see this and never answer it, but I need to let her know what sort of impact she had on me.
[00:29:11] And this was five years after she’d done the Moth thing. So it was, you know, she’d moved on in her life, you know, she might. So, she called me and we talked for 45 minutes. I was so incredibly touched that she’s talking to a complete random stranger who contacts her through Facebook Messenger, you know, five years after she did this thing.
[00:29:34] And she told me that she was like, what I didn’t really say in the Moth scene was that at every decision point, you know, anytime I was hesitating, I would start to ask myself if I was hesitating or holding back because of fear, and was I making the decision based out of fear or was I making the decision for my kid based out of love?
[00:29:57] From that day, I started to practice that same idea. If Ava wanted me to wear a bra or something, which would show under her outfit to school, was I saying you can’t wear the bra because I was afraid of what the consequence would be to send her out there, you know, with the bra strap potentially showing? Or what was the decision based on love?
[00:30:23] I mean, the decision based on love was that putting a bra on made her feel feminine and more comfortable with her body. Am I gonna choose fear or am I gonna choose the love? I mean, that decision I just kept every time at a point where she would ask me to do something and I didn’t know what to say.
[00:30:42] I mean, my initial instinct, I think, with so much of parenting is to make decisions based on fear rather than looking at the kid who’s in front of you that day and making the decision based out of love. You don’t have to have a trans kid to apply that. I mean, we make fear-based decisions for our children all the time and for ourselves. And so I think that was the greatest phone call and lesson anybody could have given me. And I still use it.
[00:31:13] Carole Blueweiss: Looking back, if you had, let’s say, heard her speak or had that conversation earlier on, how might your parenting had been different?
[00:31:23] Paria Hassouri: I mean, a lot of it would’ve been different. I think a lot of not wanting to accept having a trans child or even letting her just explore her gender identity, even if I wasn’t sure if it was real or not, was based on my fears. For one, my fears based on my own experience of, you know, being an outsider and then fears of what’s gonna happen if she steps out the door or goes to school in a dress.
[00:31:53] What’s gonna happen if I allow her to put on the makeup, do the things that she wants to do? And I really didn’t let her explore her gender identity for several months until she really just forced it on me and started experimenting with it. Not being able to explore, it made her so depressed and unhappy, and every time she was allowed to start to explore it and express herself in the way that she wanted to, she, it would make her so happy and make her feel so, you know, so much better about who she is.
[00:32:29] So I would’ve listened to her and I would’ve said, okay, this is not talking about even, you know, medical things, or it is just like playing around with how you, you know, express yourself and present and yourself to the world.
[00:32:46] Carole Blueweiss: And you made a comment in the book that parents and doctors are so easily accepting of giving children a diagnosis of ADD and giving them medication pretty quickly. But it’s not exactly a parallel, but you did use that. So I’ll ask you about that because it made a good point. You had decisions to make and choices to make, and the truth of the matter was that they were not irreversible at that point, so you were still afraid.
[00:33:15] Paria Hassouri: There’s so much less hesitation about putting kids on some of these other medications, but there is so much hesitation around puberty blockers in kids. And puberty blockers are completely safe and reversible.
[00:33:31] So that’s different than hormone therapy. Yeah, hormone therapy does have some side effects that are irreversible, but puberty blockers, which just put a pause on puberty while you can try to explore and figure out what is going on with the child. And it really brings so much relief to the kid to have their body stop masculinizing or feminizing in the wrong way.
[00:33:55] Puberty blockers are completely reversible and safe, and we are so scared of using puberty blockers in kids. It’s because there isn’t enough information. We’re not educated on it. We just don’t, we don’t hear about these things.
[00:34:11] Carole Blueweiss: There’s a scene in, I think you were in Sephora, where you saw some kids that were bringing attention to themselves, or you kind of felt that people were staring at them and you started to think, oh gosh, I don’t want Ava to have to go through that. Yet Ava may be someone who wouldn’t have minded. I don’t know. So how do you explain that fear that you had?
[00:34:32] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, I was in Sephora and there were two, I’m assuming, this is obviously my assumption based on their appearance, but it looked to me like two trans women, probably in their late teens or maybe early twenties, who were there just together buying makeup.
[00:34:48] I mean, they weren’t doing anything wrong, but I looked at them and they looked trans to me, and I just felt like, I don’t want people to look at my daughter and be like, oh, there’s a trans person. It’s like an automatic labeling. I didn’t want people to look at Ava and notice that she’s trans before they notice anything else about her.
[00:35:14] And obviously I had just looked at these girls, I don’t know anything about them, but the first thing I’d notice is that they were trans, you know? And they weren’t doing anything. They were just buying, you know, makeup. This is part of what I had to get comfortable with and accept, is that there’s always gonna be people who may look at her and see that she’s trans before they see anything else.
[00:35:39] And if they do, they do. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with being trans. So I just need to get over that. And I think the reason we look at somebody who’s trans, or I’ll say, the reason I would look at somebody and say, oh, that’s a trans person, is because I don’t see enough trans people or know enough trans people.
[00:36:02] You know? Like right now, if I am, let’s say, walking down the street and I say, see two gay men like holding hands, and then they like, you know, give each other a peck. I mean, I don’t think twice about it, right? But when 20 years ago, I may have noticed it like, oh, there’s two gay men, but now there’s a gay man walking past me, you know, all the time and I don’t even notice it. So I think there will hopefully come a time where being trans isn’t something to notice anymore. It just is.
[00:36:35] Carole Blueweiss: I often ask parents what kind of reactions they get from other parents that don’t necessarily have the situation that you have, how they’ve responded. So that people, let’s say like me, who see somebody with you and a child, what are some things that you talk about that were kind of hurtful to hear and what would you like to hear from friends or supporters?
[00:36:57] Paria Hassouri: You’ll hear things all the time, like children shouldn’t be put on hormones or medical transition shouldn’t happen until someone is an adult or, you know, 18 years old, basically. I mean, first of all, there’s a difference between children and teens and so nobody’s putting eight year olds on hormones so that, you know, we need to be clear that, you know, any sort of medical treatment, if it is happening, it’s happening in kids once their body starts going through puberty.
[00:37:24] So that may not necessarily be a teenager. A lot of times, that’s a tween or younger for some people, but nothing is happening in a pre-pubertal child. The idea that we shouldn’t do any sort of medical intervention on someone until they’re an adult is just not at all, it’s not realistic. For a lot of children, it’s not safe and these are not decisions that parents make lightly or for people who don’t know, to just make like blanket statements like, we shouldn’t let teens transition or it should be illegal to do that until you’re 18.
[00:38:05] These are just really ignorant statements and you can’t comment on what somebody else is choosing to do for their child until you’ve been in their shoes. I think that’s, you know, the main. So for example, for Ava, if we had stopped her puberty earlier and then started her on estrogen later, she would present a lot more female.
[00:38:29] I mean, she wouldn’t have grown as much facial hair, her shoulders wouldn’t have broadened as much. The Adam’s apple wouldn’t develop. The facial structure wouldn’t become masculine. To know that someone is trans and then wait until they fully masculinize or feminize into an adult version and then try to undo all that, I mean, you can’t undo those things with medication. You can only undo those things with procedures and surgeries. You know, if somebody does want to undo that. So there’s that. There’s the fact that teens who are trans who are not supported have a three times higher risk of suicide if they’re not supported.
[00:39:09] So, you know, these are complicated decisions that parents are making for their children and nobody should just make like a blanket statement like that, you know.
[00:39:23] Carole Blueweiss: What was most supportive for you with your community, friends, and family?
[00:39:29] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, I mean, I think people who were just like, just listened to, you know, what was I was going through and said, you know, we’re here for you and accepted her from day one and didn’t pass any judgment and accepted her and treated her like a girl from as soon as they knew, you know, as soon as they found out. And, you know, used appropriate name and used the appropriate pronouns and yeah, just being supportive and there for us.
[00:39:57] Carole Blueweiss: So it’s interesting because I think a lot of people need to be educated on what that means to be supportive. You spoke about the idea and that society tends to be very binary.
[00:40:09] Paria Hassouri: Yeah.
[00:40:10] Carole Blueweiss: And brought up definitely in school, right? So this idea of a spectrum. And the idea of black and white versus the colors.
[00:40:20] Paria Hassouri: Yeah. Gender really is a spectrum. I mean, there are people who very clearly feel feminine, and there’s people who feel very clearly masculine and there’s people who feel masculine on some days and feminine on other days, and there’s people who feel neither.
[00:40:37] And there’s people who feel some of both, you know, and there’s all different places you can be on the spectrum, but we impose gender on kids so young and so early. And I don’t know why we feel the need to sort of divide like this, you know, even if one of the things, you know, a lot of times happens in schools, and I hope that this has stopped happening or is happening less often is like, you know, it’ll be time to go out to recess in elementary school and be like, okay, girls, line up on this side and boys line up on this side, and okay, boys go to the water fountain first, or girls go to this thing first.
[00:41:17] For that kid in that class who might not quite fit into either a boy or girl or have these questions in their head, I mean, think how distressing and confusing that, you know, it’s always like you’re a boy, you’re a girl. I mean, even just in the last year, my sister’s kid who’s in first grade got a worksheet sent home and it was like pictures, little, you know, graphics and she had to pick like who looked like a Mr and who looked like a Mrs.
[00:41:48] It was crazy. I mean I couldn’t believe it. This is in the last year. And this is not in a small city either, you know, and it’s like why does that even? So they’re picking Mr and Mrs just based on clothing and presentation, you know, and hair and I mean that’s such a not okay thing to teach kids. So we have a lot of work to do.
[00:42:11] We are not these binary definitions. And these binary gender roles are detrimental to all of us. It’s detrimental to you and I as cisgender women and, you know, detrimental to cisgender men. I’ve gotten so much better at recognizing all the different little ways that gender sneaks in and trying to not make decisions that way and to use it less in my language as saying like, I have three children, or I don’t know if, like, if my niece asks me for a puzzle, just getting her a puzzle that’s animals rather than getting a puzzle that’s princesses or, you know, just becoming aware of all the little ways that we can take gender out of something when it doesn’t really need to be there.
[00:43:02] Carole Blueweiss: Right. Being aware, that’s a big word. And you’re making me very aware of, I happen to be a tomboy. And very good in athletics and felt much more comfortable with boys clothes. I had a brother and I just, I was always, now thinking about it, was forced to be more feminine. I never wanted to wear the lipstick or the high heels.
[00:43:24] My mother was insistent all my life that I dress a certain way and it just goes to show, like even in a typical, you know, there’s, it’s not black and white, but some people think that it is. And hopefully, I guess as we evolve as human beings, the trend is to evolve and to realize these things and start exploring and being more open-minded as opposed to going the other direction.
[00:43:47] Which is possible also and being more binary because it’s safer and just more, I don’t know, religiously correct for some people. And I think that a lot of parents would like to hear the balance difficulties that you had. You were so honest about that and so many people have it and they don’t talk about it.
[00:44:04] Paria Hassouri: There were days where I felt like I can’t do this. Like, my brain is shot right now. I can’t go to work. How am I gonna do this? Yet when I would go to work and open a patient room and walk in and have to shut everything else out so I could focus on the mom, it was almost like it would save me. Because for three, four hours I couldn’t think about Ava if I was gonna do my job, but then I would get home after that and I would be exhausted from the effort to not think about Ava and to focus, you know, on the person in front of me.
[00:44:40] So it was definitely really difficult. I mean there’s, I think just like anybody else, there’s been times where I haven’t done my job as well and there’s been times when I’ve done it better and there’s times when I’ve parented better and times when I’ve parented worse. And yeah, it is really hard to be doing everything. Being great at everything all the time is, you can’t, And, I mean, I don’t claim to have ever really done it, but I also think, I do think women in general, I mean, we do it all the time, you know? I mean, we figure things out. When things are thrown at you, you just, you figure it out and you keep going because there’s not really an alternative sometimes.
[00:45:24] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me a little bit about the relationship with your husband through all this.
[00:45:28] Paria Hassouri: Really up until Ava came out, there were many, many times in my marriage that I thought it would be easier if I was just raising these three kids on my own, because I felt like I was doing 90% of it on my own anyway, for a lot of those years. When Ava came out was the first time that I really couldn’t do it on my own.
[00:45:53] He really stepped in and he took care of a lot for, first of all, he accepted her much sooner than I did and really started supporting her and then taking care of me so that I could deal with all of this. And I really felt like I needed somebody who was experiencing and going through this journey and feeling it as much as I was.
[00:46:20] And it’s not really a loss, but it feels like a loss when you’re going through it. And I needed somebody who was like feeling that sense of loss to the same degree that I was, and he really just stepped in and our relationship got a lot stronger because of it. When Ava came out, I suddenly felt a complete lack of control.
[00:46:42] And I also got to the point where I realized like I had to hand over some of the control to somebody else and it was just too much for me. All the other stuff had been relatively easy. It was all things that I could handle on my own, but this I couldn’t handle on my own. We were lucky that we were on the same page and going through most of this together. It’s really, really difficult decisions to make for a child.
[00:47:09] And so I definitely see other families where you may tear the parents apart or the parents, you know, one parent wants to support the kid, the other parent doesn’t wanna support the kid. It’s really difficult on a lot of marriages and a lot of the parents, you know, when they go, they go through it together and come out stronger.
[00:47:26] Carole Blueweiss: Can you explain what your husband does for his career?
[00:47:30] Paria Hassouri: He’s a plastic surgeon, so he does lot of different surgeries, but one of the surgeries he does is transgender top surgery. And he was doing that before Ava even came out. And as part of why he had an easier time believing her and accepting her is because he’d been working with trans people for a few years.
[00:47:51] For many trans men who don’t have surgery, if they blocked early in puberty, then they develop full breasts. And a lot of times they’re wearing these binders and binding down their chest, which is really uncomfortable. And when they have top surgery, it really improves their quality of life a lot. That’s one of the most gratifying surgeries he does because it makes such a difference in their life.
[00:48:14] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me a little bit about how you take care of yourself.
[00:48:17] Paria Hassouri: Running has continued to be my form of therapy and meditation. I sew. Ran my first marathon in my early forties, and I’ve run four marathons now. I still run four or five times a week, and if I run, it seems like no matter what happens later in the day, I can handle it. If I don’t run, I can’t always sort of, you know, it’s really just like clearing my head with the run in the morning prepares me for whatever the day is gonna throw at me. I mean, there’ll be times where if I’m like crabby, one of my kids will be like, wow, maybe you just shouldn’t go for a run, mom, instead of snapping at us.
[00:49:01] Carole Blueweiss: This is one excerpt that struck me. It’s on page 104, where you talk about Ava’s bravery and what you learned from that.
[00:49:10] Paria Hassouri: So this was shortly after she had come out. Babak and I were, at least I certainly was, still in denial about whether or not she was trans. So she would have to advocate for herself in school and go ask for a private area to change or other accommodations that she needed.
[00:49:29] To me, it’s just the strength it has to take to go and ask for those things as a freshman in high school. To have to do that. I mean, it’s just incredible and it makes me so sad that I wasn’t in a place that I could ask for those things for her. But at the same time, I’m so impressed that she did it, you know?
[00:49:51] And it also shows me how sure she was of who she was, that she knew she had to advocate and ask for what she needed.
[00:50:06] Within three weeks of school starting, Ava walked into the Norman aid office, the school counseling center, and asked to speak with someone. She’d told the counselor that she was a girl and did not feel comfortable changing in the boys’ locker room. She requested a private area to change. They arranged for her to change in a locker room used by the dance team since no one was using that area during the period when Ava had PE class.
[00:50:30] Ava was 13 and a freshman in high school. The courage it must have taken to go and ask for a counselor, tell them she was a girl when she still looked very much like a boy, and ask for her needs to be met was astonishing to me. That’s something that we should have been able to help her with. If we’d only bothered to talk to her more, to perceive her level of discomfort instead of being in denial, that’s something parents of other trans kids do for them. Babak and I should have been there to advocate for Ava. She should not have had to do it for herself.
[00:51:03] Carole Blueweiss: You also had an example in the book that I was touched by that’s related about her wanting to be in the choir. She loves to sing, but there was the dress code.
[00:51:13] Paria Hassouri: Yeah, so when she was in freshman choir, there was men’s choir and women’s choir. And as a freshman, she was out to us but not out in school. So she was in the men’s choir and there was a requirement to wear this white shirt with black pants and she really didn’t want to wear that. She ended up talking to the choir teacher and I also came around and I was able to email the choir teacher and help advocate for her. For the next year, they changed the choir dress code where instead of being men, boys wear pants and a shirt, girls wear the black choir dress, it was like, you know, option one: white shirt, black pants. Option two: black choir dress, and you could wear, you know, either one. So if any of the girls wanted to wear just more comfortable wearing the white shirt and black pants, they could do that as well.
[00:52:06] And they also changed the names of the choirs from men’s choir and women’s choir to I think like bass choir and treble choir or something like that. There wasn’t a gender attached to, it was just like, okay, deeper voice choir is here and, you know, more soprano voice choir is here. And really, I mean, there’s so many of those girls that don’t want to wear that long, ugly black choir dress and feel more comfortable in a shirt and pants.
[00:52:33] Carole Blueweiss: First of all, you must be so proud also that your advocacy and your experience, you’ve already gone through this earth having made a great contribution to mankind, having these rules changed. So bravo to you both. It reminds me of my son went to a uniform school and in the winter the boys wore khaki long pants. The girls winter or summer had to wear short dresses and I never could understand why they weren’t allowed to wear long pants in the winter.
[00:53:02] Paria Hassouri: Yeah. I mean, it’s exactly, I mean, the uniforms should be either like gender neutral or it should be that, you know, here’s like a set of options. Wear whatever you want, you know, amongst these options, like if you’re gonna have a uniform.
[00:53:19] Carole Blueweiss: In your book, you mentioned that a therapist in one of your support groups said, don’t be your child’s first bully.
[00:53:28] Paria Hassouri: So we had gone to a transforming family support group meeting, and one of the moderators who was a therapist there was talking to the whole room and said don’t be your child’s first bully. When I heard the words don’t be your child’s first bully out of the therapist’s mouth, I mean, it was like a gunshot to me because I just thought Ava had come to me, told me all these things, and I had said, no, no, no. And asked me to call her by a girl name and female pronouns, and I had said no. And everything she’d asked me, I had said no. So this is a little passage about after we left the meeting. I said, what struck Babak the most from that meeting was advice from Mark, don’t be your child’s first bully.
[00:54:19] No child ever says, I wish my parents hadn’t supported me through that confusing time. Had we been her first bullies? I immediately recalled the incident when Ava had walked into our room asking if we could call her by a girl name in private, and we had said, no. I wanted to throw up. After years of begging my child to tell me what was causing her sadness, I had been unwilling to listen.
[00:54:44] I had invalidated her over and over. We hadn’t supported her appropriately for the preceding six months. I left the meeting completely drained, knowing that it was time to listen to what Hope had told me months before and what Jane had told me after just one brief meeting with her, it was time to find her a therapist through the LA Gender Center and stop denying my child what she needed.
[00:55:09] Carole Blueweiss: If parents have a suspicion that something’s going on, maybe their child’s acting sad and depressed, or the child’s actually talking about it a little bit. Any parts of that, any advice?
[00:55:19] Paria Hassouri: You know, one thing would be just listen to what your child is telling you and don’t immediately react and respond. I wish when Ava had come to me, I had listened rather than immediately reacted negatively.
[00:55:35] If you can’t have a positive response, then just listen and say, this is a lot of information for me right now. Can you give me a couple days, a couple hours, a week? Can we talk about it, you know, again? Don’t immediately have a negative reaction. And then the other thing would be in general, don’t underestimate your own capacity to evolve along with your child. If you just open your heart and your mind, and that really can apply to many scenarios in parenting.
[00:56:08] I never thought that the day would come where I would look at Ava and see my daughter, and that day came and it came sooner than I expected it to, and it wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me. It actually was an incredibly enriching experience.
[00:56:33] It’s going through this transition with her as a family, it has been the most impactful thing that’s happened in my life, brought people into my life that I would not have otherwise met, given me, you know, a sense of purpose in a way that I never really had before. I evolved as much, if not more, in a different way.
[00:56:56] I mean, you can’t, you know, she had her journey and I had my journey and my evolution was incredibly significant as well, and was one that I was not expecting. So this is a little journal entry after Ava had come out and I had accepted her. My greatest challenge is with Ava now. Learning that I have not lost Aydin, that Aydin is here but is just Ava, that on some level she has always been Ava, that if my child can have such confidence and put herself out in the world like that, I need to get over my shit.
[00:57:36] She is teaching me about love and being open, strength, seeing people as beautiful humans, and what I really need to learn here is to let go of fear. Fear that her life will be difficult, fear that she won’t find the best life partner and will have to compromise, fear that she will get hurt or beat up. Fear that she won’t have the best life possible just because of this. It’s time to let go of fear and to lead with love.
[00:58:04] Carole Blueweiss: That’s beautiful. If people wanted to learn more from you or get some information?
[00:58:12] Paria Hassouri: Well, I have a website, PariaHassouri.com, where I have, you know, articles I’ve written and I put up, you know, some of the podcasts, and I also send out newsletter if people subscribe. And in my newsletters, like if I have a publication or something, I will send out a newsletter. So I’m fairly active on my Instagram, which is @laparia. On my website, people can also email me and I do answer email questions through my website as well.
[00:58:39] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you so much for joining me today on Wisdom Shared. You certainly had a lot of wisdom to share and I really appreciate your openness and your willingness to discuss your family.
[00:58:50] Paria Hassouri: Well, thank you so much for having me, sharing this conversation with your audience. You know, being open to learning, I think it’s sometimes scary for people to talk about topics that they feel they don’t know so much about, or that they don’t have the right language to talk about it, and then they shy away from talking about it at all.
[00:59:09] And it’s much better if we just admit that we might have limited or not exactly the knowledge we’d like to have and are willing to learn together. So I really appreciate that.
[00:59:21] Carole Blueweiss: You can find more piercingly honest reflections in Paria’s book, Found in Transition, a book for all parents. Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all our other episodes. Visit caroleblueweiss.com. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with a friend. Subscribe and leave a review so you can receive some wisdom every month. Thank you for listening.
