Thirteen-year-old Sami (not her real name) was in the gender cult for three years and came to regret her choices. She wants to tell her story to prevent other children from making the same mistakes.

Like many teenagers Sami was introduced to the idea of gender identity through Tik Tok. When she was only 10 years old, she posted some head shots and found out about the LGBTQ+ community. A couple of months afterward a couple of students in her class came out as bisexual. Sami decided she too was bisexual, and then she became pansexual.

Then puberty hit, and Sami became extremely uncomfortable with her body.  For the next year or so, from grade five through the beginning of grade seven, she tried to escape the feeling of not belonging in her body by declaring that she was non-binary, and then finally transgender.

She came out to her class as a boy at the end of grade five and adopted a shortened version of her name. Her school in the York Catholic District School Board was more than willing to play along. A teacher overheard her talking with a classmate about her situation and asked her if she wanted to use different pronouns. She used the boys’ changeroom for gym.

At 12 Sami’s concerned parents took her to a doctor about chest-binding. The doctor told them it was healthy and normal and then offered to start her on puberty blockers.

This time, her parents said no.

Initially this gave Sami a sense of relief, but then she settled into a serious depression. She hated her parents because she thought they didn’t love her if they could not accept and support her identity.

“I felt different from everyone else and like no one would ever accept me,” Sami said.

She began having suicidal thoughts which escalated to a suicide attempt. The hospital doctors turned on her parents and told them this was their fault and that going forward they must support and affirm her male identity.

Her parents, however, remained resolute despite these terrible pressures. They showed her pictures of de-transitioners and bought her a book, Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, that explained why de-transitioners choose to stop living as the opposite gender.

Now thirteen and in the first half of grade seven, through the love and support of her parents, Sami became convinced that she too should go back to her former identity. She chatted with some de-transitioners online and they told her she was the victim of a manipulative scheme to confuse children about their identities.

While first and foremost Sami blames her entrapment in this culture of deceit on misinformation spread online, she also blames the York Catholic board for going along with it. “They should have told me this was nonsense,” she said.

Sami has done something to try to push back the tide of gender ideology in her school board already: she wrote to the school board from an anonymous account and told them that they should not allow the pride flag to be flown at school.

Sami is lucky to have all her body parts intact, and for this she is now grateful to her parents. Asked if she still experiences depressive symptoms, she says no, though she still experiences some anxiety.

“How are things with your parents?” I asked her.

“Better, we have a really good relationship now,” she said.

Sami wants to warn children what can happen to them before they get sucked into the hype around gender transition, and she hopes her story will above all give hope to parents who are embattled in similar situations with their children. She encourages parents not to affirm their children and to recognize that their children can still “get out of it.”

Sami hopes to encourage parents to be proactive when their child begins to transition and explain the dire consequences that accompany a medical transition, as hers did for her.

Sami’s story underscores the essential role parents play in helping their children through the worst of times and the most grievous pain. Thanks to her courageous parents, Sami didn’t subject herself to needless butchery. Without parents who refused to allow a gender transition Sami’s story might have been very different. Parents must stand up for their right to be informed at school about their children’s gender transitions and against the spread of gender ideology at school.

If you live in Ontario, please sign our petition asking Premier Doug Ford to protect parental rights in Ontario! We are asking him to take urgent action in to prevent the spread of gender ideology in schools, to stop children from making premature, irreversible decisions about their health without parental approval, and to protect women from damage in competitions with transgender athletes.