The Invisible Loss: Loving a Son Who’s Gone Away

Our son was born a girl, but just before the world locked down in the chaos of COVID, he told us something that changed everything: he hated being a girl and wanted to be a boy. That moment, raw, vulnerable, and life-altering, marked the beginning of a journey none of us could have prepared for.

We supported him the only way we knew how: unconditionally. I’ve lived with my own connection to gender too, being transgender myself, with a deep love for all things feminine. I often feel that, if life had taken a different path, I might be living full time as a female. I understood, perhaps more than most, what he was feeling inside. But I never got the chance to tell him that, nor could I trust that sharing this part of myself would help him, or even be safe to share. That silence between us feels like a wound that never healed.

He wasn’t interested in a full medical transition, just wanted his breasts removed so he could feel more like the person he knew himself to be. That seemed like a small ask for someone trying to live an honest life.

But the truth is, loving someone doesn’t always make the road smoother.

Our son also has Asperger’s, though never officially diagnosed. The signs were always there, the rigid thinking, the sensory overload, the meltdowns. After coming out, he went on antidepressants for a while, and there was a glimmer of light. But he stopped taking them, and the darkness returned.

The outbursts became harder to manage. One day, after a particularly intense episode, he just walked out of our lives.

We reported him missing, hearts in our throats. I searched for him, literally. I drove the streets, combed through parks, hoping for any sign. One evening, I found him: soaked to the skin, a rucksack on his back and several plastic carrier bags in his hands, everything he owned, I suppose. I begged him to come home. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Something inside him had shut the door.

Later, someone reached out to me on Facebook, a stranger. They’d seen him sleeping in a bush in a park, alone. The image of that, my child, vulnerable and lost in the world, is something I can’t unsee.

Eventually, my sister stepped in. She offered him a place to stay, worked through the red tape, and managed to get him housed in his own flat. We thought maybe this was the turning point. Maybe now we’d hear from him again.

But we haven’t. It’s been over a year.

We’re left in limbo, living with two kinds of loss: the daughter we once had, and the son who no longer wants us. There’s no closure, no goodbye, no resolution. Just silence. And in that silence, pain.

My daughter carries an immense, quiet pain that is hard to put into words. Around the same time our son was disappearing from our lives, she lost her grandad and her nan, two anchors in her life gone within the space of a year. The weight of those losses, layered on top of her brother’s absence, has left her feeling unbearably lonely. I often wonder if our son is struggling with those losses too, unable to cope with grief on top of everything else. Maybe that’s part of why he turned away, why he vanished into silence.

At home, my wife, daughter, and I talk about him often, sharing memories and hoping that he’s okay somewhere out there. But my wife and I also have quiet, private conversations filled with fear, fear that we may never hear from our child again until the worst possible news arrives at our door. We tell our daughter there is always hope that he’ll reach out to her again, but deep down, we know that hope might never be fulfilled.

This isn’t a story of blame. It’s not even a story with a clear ending. It’s a story of love stretched to its edges. Of parents trying to do right by their child, even when that child walks away. Of a family learning how to hold on, not to control, but to care, from afar.

If you’re living something similar, please know you're not alone. This kind of heartbreak is quiet, invisible, and rarely talked about. But it’s real. And you’re allowed to feel every bit of it.

We carry on, with wounds that may never fully heal, but with love that refuses to fade.

Thanks for reading,

Lotte x