SHE HAD BEEN A TOMBOY: Raising a Transgender Child, a Mother’s Journey by Sandra Bowman – Family Memoirs, Parenting, LGBTQ+

She Had Been a Tomboy: Raising a Transgender Child, a Mother’s Journey by Sandra Bowman is a deeply revealing memoir about a protective mother who watches her sensitive child grow into someone who is familiar, yet new.

This moving narrative tells the story of her two children: how they were born and how they grew. She Had Been a Tomboy hops from one period of the children’s lives to another, showing how the elder child matures and how the female within slowly blooms into being, little by little revealing herself.

But the long journey to realization and understanding of self was not easy, nor was it gentle.

There were numerous hurdles to be crossed, not only for the transgender girl, then young woman, but the rest of her family.

Author Bowman writes about the challenges for the younger child as well, who feels overlooked so often as his older sibling takes precedence. He overachieves in order to make up for the pains suffered by his parents, such as his father’s frequent work-driven absences that leave his mother, the narrator, isolated and struggling.

“Robert flies here, he travels there. He works hard. I am alone.”

Once they learn to work together, the family struggles to understand how they can help both children.

They wrestle with emotional highs and lows, including those of the mother-narrator herself.

“I hurt profoundly. Again I cry. I sit and I stare. At absolutely nothing.”

Despite going through so many trials, the daughter slowly grows to understand herself and her role in the world.

“Because again, she must raise herself up. … She will raise herself, by herself … she will get herself to a state of autonomy.”

As her daughter matures and eventually flourishes, the mother-narrator slowly adjusts to her new reality, as do the father and the younger child, learning about themselves, the world, and their family.

Author Bowman’s highly stylized writing flows, serving the story she tells of her daughter’s coming-of-age. The reader empathizes with the family’s effort to grow.

Overall, Bowman’s memoir about her transgender daughter is an emotional, forceful tale about discovery, illumination, and eventual understanding.