When Amethysta Herrick nervously told her 11-year-old son she was transitioning gender in August 2022, she feared his rejection. Instead, she received an acceptance that would transform their entire relationship and set her child on their own path of self-discovery.
The Moment of Truth
Sitting on the bed she shared with her wife, fidgeting with an estrogen patch, Amethysta spoke the words she had kept hidden for decades: 'That's what I'm trying to turn into: a girl.' The conversation came weeks after she began her gender transition, prompted when her son walked in as she applied a patch to her thigh.
'I was embarrassed, defensive; unprepared to explain that gender transition was the right decision,' Amethysta recalls. She worried her son would feel betrayed by the father she would never be, remembering the years she had been distant, quick to anger, and often depressed.
After asking her son to sit down, she prepared for the difficult explanation. What happened next stunned her. Her son sat quietly for a moment, glanced up and solemnly declared: 'I'm so glad you found what's going to make you happy.'
'Tears flooded my eyes,' Amethysta remembers. 'I felt accepted and seen for the first time in our relationship.'
A Lifetime of Waiting
Amethysta's journey began decades earlier in 1970s Los Angeles, where she grew up in a conservative household with three sisters. By age 12, she knew she would transition gender, but her Silent Generation parents had no patience for a child's self-expression.
'In their minds, I was a boy, and they treated me as one,' she explains. 'But I knew very well I was a girl - just like my sisters. I wished to play with Barbie, not toy trucks. I yearned to read fashion magazines. I despised sports.'
Having been taught not to question her parents' decisions, she remained silent. 'It seemed easier to hide who I am.'
In the late 1990s, while teaching chemistry part-time at a university, she met the woman who would become her wife. On their first date, Amethysta shared that she was transgender, and found immediate acceptance.
With her support, Amethysta began investigating gender transition in 2001 but abandoned it as she struggled to find work. A decade later, married and settled in Colorado, they decided to have a baby.
The Son She Never Expected
By then, her career was too lucrative to consider transitioning. Instead, she prepared to channel her 'roiling femininity' through their daughter - convinced they would have a girl given her family history of predominantly female births.
When the ultrasound technician declared their baby was a boy, Amethysta felt 'real fear' at the prospect of raising a son. 'I didn't know anything about being a boy, raising a boy, doing boy things with other boys,' she admits.
Deep down, she resented her unborn child. 'I felt my one chance at expressing my femininity had been stolen from me by a fluke of genetics.' She faced what she saw as 'the rest of my life as a milch cow - providing for my family, never expressing my femininity again.'
Determined to be a good father, she adopted a brutal mantra: 'Boys need fathers, and fathers are men.' As the enormity of a life unfulfilled became apparent, she sank into a dark depression, withdrawing from her family over ten years.
The Turning Point
Her wife watched her 'endure years of portraying a person who earned money at the cost of happiness.' When Amethysta was 'broken and hollow at 52,' her wife encouraged her to transition gender.
Initially resistant, Amethysta feared transitioning would harm her son's chances at growing into a man. 'I wondered who would be the appropriate masculine role model,' she worried, despite recognising she hadn't been that person anyway.
Despite her concerns, she applied her first estrogen patch on 7 July 2022. Within weeks, she felt 'calmer and clearer. I felt alive. I felt hope.'
As she began to heal, her son's support grew alongside her transformation into a woman. Their relationship blossomed until - at age 13 in 2024 - her child came out as nonbinary.
'The conversation was casual, almost nonchalant,' Amethysta notes. 'As if they knew I would accept them immediately. And, of course, I did accept them immediately.'
The Gift of Authenticity
Amethysta realised she hadn't harmed her child by transitioning gender. Instead, she had given them 'the gift of freedom to express themselves exactly as they are.'
'Before transitioning gender, I was miserable. I wished I didn't exist,' she confesses. 'And my relationship with my son suffered for it. They could sense my pain before I transitioned gender.'
The experience taught her crucial lessons about parenting. 'I learned that tough love doesn't work, and the best gift we can give our children is our own authenticity.'
Today, Amethysta describes herself as 'vibrant and happy. I see a future ahead of me. I want to live.' Through her writing and videos, she encourages everyone to 'look deep inside, find who they are, and make it real - right here, right now, today.'
Her final declaration resonates with hard-won peace: 'I am Amethysta, and I am here.'
