Discovering My Son’s Secret World: An Article about Virginia

A Virginia parent reflections on Fairfax County’s promotion of trans identities to vulnerable kids like her son.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The washing machine stopped humming and our laundry room went quiet, a familiar rhythm in our Northern Virginia home. I tossed my son’s clothes into the dryer, expecting the usual tangle of T-shirts and jeans. But there, among his socks, was a black bra, delicate and unmistakably feminine. My heart skipped. Weeks later, I hugged my son goodbye, my hand brushing his back. I felt it again—a bra strap. My brilliant boy, so naturally talented in creative writing, debate, math, sports and more, who’d always been so distinctly himself, was changing in ways I couldn’t comprehend. I stood frozen, a mother blindsided by a world I didn’t yet understand.

My son was 25 years old in 2020 when these moments began piling up. Before heading to college, he’d been a varsity athlete, played in the orchestra, and acted in plays. He was a star at Improv Night, and aced the math SAT with a perfect score. Teachers called him “above his peers in intelligence.” But he’d also struggled—bullied at his competitive all-boys school, wrestling with depression and anxiety, often stressed out, maybe even on the autism spectrum, as a coach once suggested. I’d taken him to psychologists, worried about the times he’d hit his head against the wall as a child, saying, “I hate myself.”

I blamed myself for his pain, for the many days and weeks I spent at the hospital with his brother during a 2.5-year battle with childhood cancer, leaving him with babysitters when he was just a toddler. Had I missed something crucial? Was this my fault? Could I have done something differently?

The signs kept coming. I found women’s makeup and nail polish in his bathroom drawer, colorful lace panties and bras in a box in his room, packages arriving from the Netherlands—likely clothing he’d ordered online. I was panicked, lost, with no one to turn to. My husband, swamped with work, tried warning him against “this path,” but our son wouldn’t listen. I begged him not to make ‘life-changing decisions,’ but he was already slipping into a world I couldn’t reach, influenced by online communities and a therapist I later learned was an “affirmation” specialist, not a psychologist. It felt like he was being pulled away, not by force, but by a promise of belonging I hadn’t realized he craved.

Then, one morning in March 2025, I opened my laptop, still half-asleep, and clicked on a Patch article from our local news site. The headline announced the NoVA Prism Center, a new McLean facility for the LGBTQ+ community, just miles from our home. My jaw dropped as I read about a vibrant space for youth, boasting a community fridge, a food pantry, a crafting area, and a library with “1,000 books on LGBTQ+ perspectives.” A large, captivating photo showed a bright display of colorful trans storybooks for kids and teens, promising a “fun and friendly” environment. To me, it looked like a trap. The space was so inviting and seemed to aim at pulling in vulnerable kids searching for identity. My heart sank, imagining my son—or other parents’ children—walking through those doors, drawn by the warmth and crafts, only to be swept into potentially harmful choices they could not fully understand.

The article went on, proudly noting that the Fairfax County School Board had unanimously declared March 31 as Transgender Visibility Day. The board chair, Karl Frisch, called it a place where “young people feel safe to be who they are.” Safe? The word stung like a serpent’s bite.

To me, safety meant protecting kids from rushing into irreversible decisions, not celebrating a path that could lead to harmful, lifelong consequences. I forwarded the article to a friend, who sent me another article from the Washington Blade, detailing the growing presence of LGBTQ+ initiatives in our schools and neighborhoods. I felt encircled, as if my community was shifting under my feet, cheering a movement that was taking over and that I now knew, after five years of research, could do serious, lifelong harm to the very kids it claimed to help.

Sitting at my kitchen table, I pictured my son at 20, witty and talented, but also moody and oppositional, struggling to find his place. The Prism Center, with its promise of community and creativity, felt like a magnet for kids like him: artistic, creative, highly intelligent, feeling a little lost as they try to find themselves. I imagined other parents in Fairfax County, unaware their children might be drawn to the same allure—arts and crafts, a welcoming kitchen, a place to “express themselves.”

But what if that expression led to harmful choices they couldn’t undo? What if, like my son, they were encouraged to redefine themselves in ways that cut them off from their families, their pasts, the individuals they always were, and their healthy, natural bodies?

I couldn’t shake the image of my son walking out the door of our family home five years ago, wearing a dress, heading to Washington, D.C., where he found a community that celebrated his new identity. He changed his name, his birth certificate, and stepped into a world of “artistic fantasy,” as I saw it, supported by people who believed in his delusion. They are all living in an all-encompassing mass psychosis. But I worried—still worry—about what lies beneath that false reality. Is he happy? Is he safe? And what about the other kids in our neighborhood, drawn to places like the Prism Center, searching for belonging? How do we protect them when the world seems to cheer them toward choices they cannot fully understand because of their youthful naivety? As a mother, I’m left with questions, not answers, and a longing to keep other families from the shock and pain I’ve lived through.

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