I can still see myself sitting on the floor of my 3-year old daughter’s room and helping her play dress up. She’s wearing her favorite outfit ― a cat leotard with kitty ears ― but wants my help to change into the magical butterfly with a wand. Before I can slip on the butterfly’s sparkly wings, she decides the outfit doesn’t work. Then comes the line that will haunt me for years to come.“Can I be a boy?”She stared at me waiting, as if the answer to the question was as simple as a change of clothes. “Do you think boys have more fun?” I asked. Even at that time, I knew my words were an opportunity to let us both off the hook. She took the bait. I mentioned the exchange to no one and silently hoped it would never come up again. Over the years, I’ve played that scene in my head again and again. It surfaces with every introduction to a new therapist, doctor or even acquaintance who asks, “When did you first realize your kid suffered from gender dysphoria?” When I answer that it took me until he was 12 or 13 — and not 3 like in the story — I worry that people judge me for not acting sooner. More often than not, I judge myself.I always considered myself progressive and did my best to bring those values into my parenting approach. “My kids can be anything or anyone they want to be,” I said when they were small, and I thought I meant it. However, if I’m being honest, I secretly hoped that the emotionally paralyzing disconnect between my son’s mind and body that hit with puberty would turn out to be a passing phase. Looking back, there were so many signs that it was not a phase. There was the way he meticulous plucked out his eyelashes in the third grade and the curious terror he expressed about turning 10. COVID lockdown stress, I told myself. He said he “liked girls” at 11, something I already suspected and supported. What I didn’t expect was when I asked what pronouns I should use, and he sheepishly replied, “he/him.”I cringe thinking about some of my statements at that time, like, “Why can’t she just be gay?” or “Why does she need to go right from ‘she’ to ‘he’? Can’t we spend some time in ‘they’?” I worried he was sick or confused, a victim of peer pressure or our own progressive environment. One of my close friends once remarked, “Maybe this is her only way to rebel.”I quietly agreed and decided to bide my time. I played the supportive role, but admittedly we lived a dual life: boy at home, girl out in the world. The mental energy required to adjust the way I spoke about my child, depending on my audience, often left me emotionally depleted. I slowed down my normally quick speech and chose my words methodically, like a lawyer defending her client, but still messed up. One Shabbat dinner after I’d made a number of pronoun mishaps, my older son took me aside and warned, “You need to do better.” I fought back.“I pushed that baby out of me a girl! My brain and body need time to catch up.”By the sixth grade, his look began to change. He stopped wearing the wool skirt that came with his school’s uniform in favor of the boy’s grey polyester trousers. He cut his long blond hair short, then dyed it darker colors, then shaved it all off. He wore one sports bra, then two, then a chest binder over tape. I once walked in on him with his friends, and he was drawing a mustache above his lip with a pen. Still, I looked for a clear sign — some conclusive evidence that would tell me that this transition was more than a passing phase. His middle school began respecting his new pronouns. Still, his emotions were trigger sensitive, and it took only one family member at a get-together asking him if he “had a boyfriend yet” to send him into an hourslong tailspin.“Hold me,” he’d demand when we would return to the safety of our home, and I’d rush to his room, eager for the chance. Cuddling him was an opportunity rarely offered to me since puberty hit. But after a few moments, he’d pull out of my arms and go limp, his face expressionless.“Now go away,” he’d say, and gently push me out the door. Months would pass, and we’d find a new normal. He’d wear baggy clothes that revealed nothing, and he kept his voice low, but between hobbies and homework, we seemed to find our groove. Then I grew complacent and carelessly stepped on a live wire. “My friend called me a ‘baby girl,’” he said one night, staring at his phone as I walked in to dim the light before bed.“Is that so terrible?” I asked.“I’m neither a baby — nor a girl.” His voice grew louder as he stared at me with the wild eyes of an animal caught in a trap: “I’m a man.” “You’re not a man,” I said, too quickly, surveying the stuffed dolls that surrounded his gold-trimmed canopy bed.“You’re not an adult anything. You’re a child,” I added. But it was too late. The damage was done.A coolness descended in our house after that night, and I increasingly wondered who this child was that lived under my roof. He barely spoke as we moved between school, doctors and therapists. “You always made me dress in girly clothes,” he said in one session. I thought about the years he refused to leave the house without a JoJo Siwa bow in his long hair and wondered how much of this was true. At night, I’d scroll through old photos of us on family holidays: my little girl sucking on her finger as she slept on my chest beneath an umbrella that hid us from the sun. Photos of beaches and museums, and tables messy from arts and crafts. So many donuts and brownies and hot chocolates in so many different locations. That girl went missing, and I wasn’t sure how to replace her in my heart.“You need to get rid of the dream you had of her,” a writer friend told me while we were on a retreat. And until she said it, I didn’t even realize that dream was there, clouding my vision. Meanwhile, my son grew more confident, and I’d get a passing glimpse of the child I recognized. At a restaurant, the waiter called him “sir,” and we exchanged a secret smile. A girl at school professed her love.We made what I thought were movements in the right direction. A new school. A new name. Coming out to his grandparents and having his old world Eastern European grandfather say on day one, “I guess this means I have a new grandson — how wonderful.” But it wasn’t enough. The transformation was never complete. As time went on, I realized that my darkest fears had nothing to do with his identity, but that I’d fail to help him. And if I gave him everything he said he wanted, what if it’s never enough? What if he grows up into a man that still hates his body. What then?“How much longer do I need to be unhappy?” my soon to be 15-year-old son asked me as we left yet another therapy session, and I detected an alarming note of exhaustion in his voice. “We’ll talk in the car,” I said and hid my hands in my winter jacket. As usual he wore only a sweatshirt. I’ve often wondered if his severe gender dysphoria has somehow forced him to dissociate from his body, making him impervious to the freezing cold. As I turned the engine on, hoping to quickly warm him up, something in his tone kept gnawing at me. I had been stringing him along until I believed I had the right answer to his problems, but he had been telling me all along how to help him. He needed to medically transition but until now, I wasn’t ready to let my dream of that little girl go. What a mistake. “I’m so sorry,” I said, turning to look at him in the backseat. “Can you ever forgive me?” I must have repeated it a dozen times, like in a Yom Kippur service. “It’s OK, Mom,” he whispered. But it wasn’t. And in that moment, I decided I would give anything to my child to save him right now. I stopped worrying about the future; I just needed him to have one.That week we asked his doctor for a referral to a pediatric gender clinic. The waitlist is long, but at least we have a plan.I began to think more about my own body. What made me inherently female? If I could wave a magic wand and start again as a human blank slate, what would I choose? I’m just me, and my son is who he is, who he always was — I just didn’t see him the way he wanted me to.Now when old images of my daughter pop up in my camera feed, they remind me of the photos that come preloaded inside new picture frames. Sometimes I allow myself to be transported back to the moment the image was taken, but they feel more like a movie I saw long ago about a child who disappeared, and her parents moved on, eventually giving birth to a new kid. In my version of the film, I stop looking for the girl and live in the moment with my son.Honestly, I miss her less now. For the most part, I don’t even think about her at all.Leah Eichler is a lifelong journalist who turned to fiction writing and memoir. She writes a regular column for the Globe and Mail on language and culture. She lives in Toronto with her partner Isac, two kids and two dogs — not necessarily in that order.Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.