The following is a letter I sent to President Trump in response to his comments about gender on day one of taking Office. I was seeking a publication with a wide audience to get this message out. The lives of my daughter and countless others depend on it.

Dear Mr. President,

Sometimes words from our leaders can shake a parent’s entire world. On Monday, your words shook me to my core. As I listened to your statement, I felt a physical pain in my chest – the kind of visceral fear that only a parent can understand when they sense their child’s future, safety, and very existence might be at risk. This isn’t just momentary panic — it’s now a chronic, gnawing terror that follows me through every hour of every day. The thought of feeling this sick with fear, wondering what each new declaration might bring, is unbearable. As I write this letter, my hands are shaking. I am writing to you today not as a political advocate, but as a mother with a story I believe you need to hear.

In 2006, I gave birth to a son. However, by seven months of age, my baby was already showing signs that would challenge everything we thought we knew about gender. In our local KB Toys store, my child repeatedly crawled from the boy toy aisle directly to the girl toy aisle with unwavering determination. At nine months, there was a persistent refusal to wear boys’ clothes, tearing them off in favor of being draped in blankets or towels like dresses.

As language developed around age one, so did clearer expressions of identity. By eighteen months, my child was dancing and twirling, using any available fabric as a skirt or dress. Then, at two and a half years old, came the clear, unprompted declaration that would confirm what these early signs had been telling us: “I’m a girl.”

One moment stands crystallized in my memory as both beautiful and heartbreaking. When my daughter was three, on Halloween – traditionally a night when children can be anything they want to be – she chose to dress as Snow White. The transformation I witnessed wasn’t just about putting on a costume; it was about watching my child truly emerge. Before that moment, she had been withdrawn, depressed, observing life from the sidelines. But as Snow White, she didn’t just walk – she floated, radiating joy, her smile stretching from ear to ear as we trick-or-treated through our Sherman Oaks neighborhood. She carried her treat bag with a prop poison apple, fully embodying her character. I had never seen her surrounded by such light; she was finally her whole, authentic self.

That magical evening was shattered by her father’s words: “Next year, it’ll be Batman or Superman, but no more of this girl s**t.” This moment drove the first wedge in our family, eventually leading to our divorce. The pain of watching one parent reject what the other parent could so clearly see – our child’s true identity – created fractures that would ultimately break our family apart.

Mr. President, I want to be clear: My views on gender identity are more conservative than some might assume. I don’t disagree with the basic concept that there are two genders: male and female. However, I need to make an important distinction. My daughter’s experience — evident from infancy and consistent throughout her life — represents something fundamentally different from today’s broader gender discussions. What I’m talking about is not about fashion, social movements, or choosing pronouns. I’m talking about individuals who are genuinely born with a profound misalignment between their brain and body — a real, medical condition that causes deep, persistent suffering if not addressed.

“My daughter’s experience — evident from infancy and consistent throughout her life — represents something fundamentally different from today’s broader gender discussions.”– Jessica, mother of a trans daughter

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There’s another crucial distinction that needs to be made. My daughter’s experience is fundamentally different from those who transition later in life, such as Caitlyn Jenner. My daughter could have never lived as a male until adulthood — she would have died before being forced to live that inauthentically. This wasn’t a gradual realization or a choice made in maturity — this was a primal, innate truth present from her earliest moments of consciousness. When someone’s identity is this deeply hardwired from birth, there is no ‘choosing’ to wait or conform. For my daughter, living as her true self wasn’t a choice — it was a matter of survival from her very first awareness of self.

Mr. President, here’s something fundamental about human development that many people don’t realize: Every human fetus begins as female. It’s only through a complex cascade of hormones, genes, and chromosomal influences that some fetuses develop as male. This isn’t ideology — it’s basic embryology. If we can accept that nature’s developmental process can result in variations affecting any other aspect of human development — from heart formation to limb development — why is it so hard to understand that this same complex process of gender development might not always follow a perfect path? When you consider that every human starts as female, and that it takes multiple biological steps to shift that development toward male, the possibility of variations in this process becomes straightforward and logical. This isn’t about ideology or choice — it’s about understanding that the same biological processes that can result in other developmental variations can affect gender development in the brain.

Mr. President, you speak of defending women and “biological truth,” suggesting that transgender individuals are somehow a threat to women’s spaces. Let me be clear — my daughter has never been a threat to anyone. From the moment she could crawl, she has simply been trying to live authentically as who she is. This isn’t about “gender ideology extremism” — this is about a child who, from her earliest moments, consistently and persistently knew who she was. When you speak of “ideologues,” you’re not describing my family’s reality. We’re not pushing any agenda – we’re simply living our truth, one that revealed itself long before my daughter could even speak.

Furthermore, Mr. President, you’re conflating two entirely different concepts. Gender, as we know it today, is actually a social construct that wasn’t even conceptualized until the mid-20th century — it’s about roles, expectations, and societal norms. What my daughter experiences isn’t about gender as a social construct — it’s about something far more fundamental and biological. It’s about brain structure, neural pathways, and hormonal influences during fetal development. When you dismiss transgender individuals by reducing this to a debate about “gender ideology,” you’re missing the critical scientific distinction between socially constructed gender roles and the hard-wired biological reality of one’s innate identity.

I’ve never shared this publicly before, but I need to tell you something profound that opened my eyes to the biological reality of gender development. While undergoing fertility treatments to conceive my daughter, our fertility specialist urgently warned us about my husband’s use of Finasteride, explaining that this common hair loss medication could affect a fetus’s reproductive organ development in the womb. During the same visit, I was asked if I wanted a girl or a boy because they could spin the centrifuge so the weaker (male) sperm fall off, separating the two. Mr. President, if we can actually control a fetus’s biological sex through such simple medical interventions — if a common hair loss medication can influence sexual organ development, and if we can separate sperm by sex through basic centrifugal force — how can anyone definitively claim that gender identity is always simple and binary?

If you acknowledge that babies can be born with obvious physical variations — a missing limb, an extra finger, a heart on the wrong side — how can it be so hard to understand that variations in gender identity could occur in the brain during fetal development? This isn’t ideology — it’s basic human biology. Nature doesn’t always follow a perfect blueprint. Medical science clearly recognizes that countless factors during gestation can affect human development — why is it so hard to accept that gender identity could be one of them?

Mr. President, with all due respect, what medical or scientific expertise allows you to declare that my daughter — who has known her true identity since infancy — doesn’t exist? What qualifies anyone, even a president, to dismiss 18 years of lived experience? How do you explain away a seven-month-old baby’s determined crawl toward their truth, or a toddler’s consistent, unwavering knowledge of who they are?

“Mr. President, with all due respect, what medical or scientific expertise allows you to declare that my daughter — who has known her true identity since infancy — doesn’t exist?”Jessica, mother of a trans daughter

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When you declare there are only two genders and that trans people don’t exist, you’re not just making a political statement — you’re telling my daughter that her entire journey, her struggles, her joy in finally being herself, are all invalid. You’re telling me that the light I saw in her eyes that Halloween night when she was three, the first time she could truly be herself, was somehow a delusion.

The fear your words have sparked isn’t just about today or tomorrow — it’s about survival. Every news alert makes my heart race. Every headline about gender sends me into a spiral of anxiety about my daughter’s future. How do I protect my daughter in a world where the president himself denies her existence? Where do we turn when the highest office in our nation tells us that what we’ve lived through isn’t real?

My daughter is now 18 years old. That determined child who once crawled through toy store aisles, who lit up the night as Snow White, has grown into a beautiful, smart, talented, and charismatic young lady. She is my one and only, my heart, and I love her more than anything in the world. Her journey to becoming the remarkable woman she is today demonstrates what is possible when a transgender child is loved and supported. Yet now I find myself sick with fear about her future in a world where her very existence is being denied.

What you may not know is that my daughter is only one degree of separation from someone in your immediate family. When you make such sweeping declarations about gender, you never know who your words are hurting. It could be someone much closer to you than you realize. These issues of gender identity touch all of our families, directly or indirectly, often in ways we cannot see.

It’s taken my ex-husband, my daughter’s father, a long time to accept that his child is transgender, but he did come around. If someone from a traditional background, who was once firmly set in his conservative beliefs and initially struggled to understand, can make this journey of understanding and acceptance, I have hope for the rest of us. His transformation reminds us that change is possible, that understanding can grow, and that love can ultimately transcend our initial prejudices and fears.

This journey of acceptance doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to understand, accept, and even embrace — but it does happen. While our family’s path has been an 18-year-long struggle in many ways, there are no regrets at all. None. The only regret would have been denying my daughter the chance to live as her authentic self.

Understanding often comes through personal experience, through knowing and loving someone who is transgender. But right now, I’m terrified. Your words have the power to shape not just policy, but public opinion and understanding. They have the power to either illuminate the complexity of human biology or to deny the reality that families like mine live every day. I implore you to consider the weight of declaring that people like my daughter don’t exist, and the fear such declarations instill in parents like me who have witnessed their child’s truth from the very beginning.

At our core, we are all human beings trying to live authentically in this world. The measure of our humanity lies in how we treat those whose experiences we may not fully understand. In the end, beneath policies and politics, beyond declarations and debates, we are all simply humans deserving of respect, dignity, and the right to exist as our true selves.

With hope for understanding,
Jessica

Jessica is a mother professional organizer and LGBTQIA youth advocate from Los Angeles.