Fighting For My Transgender Child's Identity
Donation protected
GoFundMe lists this category as "Health, Illness and Healing." How does one heal from being born the wrong gender? How can a child seek help to live when the adults who own her health care decision making tell her this desperation to be herself is a choice she can live without?
My child Jaiden is a transgender female, and was born in the wrong body. The statistics for survival without intervention are so incredibly frightening I try to ignore them. Yet, her insurance company has denied our request and our appeal for coverage of hormone blocking medication.
I have a very narrow window of opportunity to treat my child, put her on a path to wellness, and make her better. I try, but I cannot imagine how it must feel to be told you can't be the person you are supposed to be... all because the money we put into our insurance every month is filtered back to us by decision makers who simply don't believe in gender care.
The insurance company apparently owns the right to decide who my child is and whether she lives a full life or spirals down a path of despair into an outcome I can't even articulate on this page.
And so I humbly ask my community for help saving my child. Her hormone blocking treatment right now is $3600 every three months. It is my sincere hope that I can right this ship at some point. I am writing the Insurance Commissioner and my local legislators and looking for other advocates to assist in this fight. But in the meantime, time is running out. I know it, and my child knows it.
I am hoping to raise funds for my child's first year of treatment. If my situation changes before that time, I commit to donating the remainder to another child at the Seattle Childrens Gender Clinic who is faced with insurance denial.
I have also started a blog, where you can find my short essays about our journey. It's calledThe Perimeter Line: Wilderness, Love and Gender . If you are a parent of an LGBTQ child, have a loved one on a difficult journey, or are an LGBTQ ally, feel free to stop by and take a read.
A little bit about Jaiden. She wants to be an electrical engineer. She is self taught with CAD software, design, 3D modeling and anything electric/battery/sound powered. She invents electronics on a weekly basis. She loves every living creature, from the spider she rescues in the house to our two dogs and two cats. She is wonderful and patient with children and does an incredible job teaching them. She volunteers to take our Golden Retriever to nursing homes to sit with elderly people. She insists that she was put on this earth to help people. She's also a worrier. She has anxiety and was diagnosed this past spring with high functioning autism. Because she is struggling so much on her gender and autism spectrum journey, she is barely hanging on in school. I am hopeful that her treatment will help her better cope with school as she enters her sophomore year this fall.
Jaiden is an amazing and wonderful person, and I want nothing more on this earth than to watch her grow up, be healthy and happy. I love her with all of my heart and she deserves to thrive.
Thank you for reading this far. Jaiden thanks you too.
My child Jaiden is a transgender female, and was born in the wrong body. The statistics for survival without intervention are so incredibly frightening I try to ignore them. Yet, her insurance company has denied our request and our appeal for coverage of hormone blocking medication.
I have a very narrow window of opportunity to treat my child, put her on a path to wellness, and make her better. I try, but I cannot imagine how it must feel to be told you can't be the person you are supposed to be... all because the money we put into our insurance every month is filtered back to us by decision makers who simply don't believe in gender care.
The insurance company apparently owns the right to decide who my child is and whether she lives a full life or spirals down a path of despair into an outcome I can't even articulate on this page.
And so I humbly ask my community for help saving my child. Her hormone blocking treatment right now is $3600 every three months. It is my sincere hope that I can right this ship at some point. I am writing the Insurance Commissioner and my local legislators and looking for other advocates to assist in this fight. But in the meantime, time is running out. I know it, and my child knows it.
I am hoping to raise funds for my child's first year of treatment. If my situation changes before that time, I commit to donating the remainder to another child at the Seattle Childrens Gender Clinic who is faced with insurance denial.
I have also started a blog, where you can find my short essays about our journey. It's calledThe Perimeter Line: Wilderness, Love and Gender . If you are a parent of an LGBTQ child, have a loved one on a difficult journey, or are an LGBTQ ally, feel free to stop by and take a read.
A little bit about Jaiden. She wants to be an electrical engineer. She is self taught with CAD software, design, 3D modeling and anything electric/battery/sound powered. She invents electronics on a weekly basis. She loves every living creature, from the spider she rescues in the house to our two dogs and two cats. She is wonderful and patient with children and does an incredible job teaching them. She volunteers to take our Golden Retriever to nursing homes to sit with elderly people. She insists that she was put on this earth to help people. She's also a worrier. She has anxiety and was diagnosed this past spring with high functioning autism. Because she is struggling so much on her gender and autism spectrum journey, she is barely hanging on in school. I am hopeful that her treatment will help her better cope with school as she enters her sophomore year this fall.
Jaiden is an amazing and wonderful person, and I want nothing more on this earth than to watch her grow up, be healthy and happy. I love her with all of my heart and she deserves to thrive.
Thank you for reading this far. Jaiden thanks you too.
Organiser
Ingrid O
Organiser
Bainbridge Island, WA
