Thursday 1 March 2012

A Very Busy Few Months

So much has been going on recently that I seem not to have time to blog much.

Another sadness. My Aunt Sue who lived in Long Island New York passed away just over 2 weeks ago. She fought a long hard battle against cancer but did not win the fight. My father booked his flight on the sunday morning to try to reach her before she passed, and sadly my aunt passed away that evening.
I feel sorry for my father as Sue was his only sibling, not only that he has lost his wife (my mother) and his youngest daughter (my sister) and now his own sister all to the same terrible disease CANCER.
May Allah give him strength to bear this sad loss.

I continue to have serious problems with my daughter. My daughter is 8 years old and has Gender Identity Disorder, which I have written about before on my blog. Basically she is 100% female but her brain is telling her she is male. It is not a phase she is going through, she is not just being a Tom Boy, she really does have a serious problem and is totally tormented being in a female body.
Recently the crap daily rag "Daily Mail" wrote some really terrible articles on GID (Gender Identity Disorder) and ripped apart the wonderful Tavistock Clinic in London which my daughter attends. Basically the article said that this is a label parents and doctors give kids who really should just be classed as Tom Boys or a bit infeminant. It also claimed the Tavistock drugs everyone to delay puberty and then puts further ideas in their mind that the kid was born the wrong sex. Of course all the numpty armchair critics (ie the small minded general public who post in the comment section) jumped onto the bandwagon, all giving their opinion most claiming they knew kids who liked to dress as the opposite sex but they turned out ok.

GID is NOT about dressing as the opposite sex, its about torment, of self harm and many other factors that make live misrable for the child. Imane now has hair cropped so short, we had to let her have it cut like a boy because yet again she took the scissors to her hair and hacked it to pieces. Then she got hold of a razor and sliced half her top lip off trying to shave. She talks about not wanting to live sometimes if she gets breasts when she is older and also tells me often that her vagina is ugly and it needs to be sewn shut with a needle and thread. That is what GID is about.
Often once purberty hits the child either stays as they are or they start to embrace being the sex they were born as. As a very last resort they may use Puberty delay drugs. Its a long process of therapy and can take years. Right now my daughters doctor talks to her on a monthly basis trying to get to the bottom of why she feels that she is in the wrong body. Was it something growing up that triggered that feeling or is her brain wire mapped as a male? We wont know for a long long time and until that time I have to support my child as best I can.

Of course being muslim it is hard, a lot of the muslim community including my daughters birth father are small minded on these subjects and cant accept it believing an Imam at the mosque will sort her out. SO NOT TRUE.

On top of the GID my daughter may have Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome which you can read about http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/related-conditions/pda-pathological-demand-avoidance-syndrome.aspx. I have been trying for years to find out what is wrong with my daughter and on doing many months of research came across this syndrome which is on the autism spectrum and when I read the symptoms it was as though it had been written for my child. It is my daughter 100%. Now her doctor in London, her school and our own doctor in Brighton are fighting to get seen by CAHMS in Brighton so she can get assessed and hopefully diagnosed. However so far we have been refused by CAHMS because they say my daughters problems are too complex. Please pray for my daughter and also pray for me because sometimes I find life very difficult and worry oneday I am going to crack from the stress of it all.

On top of all that we are going through a massive restructure at work with the Housing Service about to change drastically. Our jobs will be changed and we probably will not be working with the people we have worked alongside for years.

But HEY HO, at least I am alive Alhamdulillah.

2 comments:

dust n roses said...

sending u lots of positive energy and duas...

Abdullrahman.Az said...

May Allah give you the support and the strength you need. GID is a serious Issue. I personally suffer from it ( But in my head I'm ok Allah had a massage to deliver to people by me which I still didn't know what is it). I'm 31 years old, female from the out side male from the inside (brain). I tried to kill myself twice when I hit puberty and one year after. tried to live as the people see me outside home and somehow me at home and I didn't even knew what i'm suffering from. all I did is knowing the killing myself is "haram" i tried not to do that but i was praying to Allah to have cancer in the parts that I identified as a girl. I forced myself to get married and I got a molar pregnancy( which is not a real pregnancy and happen to 1 of every million. its very rare, which related to my hormones and I personally believe it is because of the way my brain works). I got divorce and hate the whole situation of forcing myself to be accepted by everyone and i forget my own acceptance. sorry if I make it to long but I hope I could help you deal with the problem. when I got 30 I decided that I have to find a way to solve this issue and I prayed to Allah and he guided me and put signs in my road even if i haven't solve it completely at least i took some of the weight on my shoulders. All I want to said is try not to push your daughter to hate herself and accept the way she is express herself be by her side and wait until she could stand by herself and be stronger than now because she is a child then you'll know that you took away years of sadness pressure and misery. the second thing you should know how to teach her that Allah didn't found her in the wrong body but the is a massage and we know that Allah could made her a boy the same as he made intersex and normal people but because she is strong and not like other she is special. and this is for you to be stronger in islam their is a solution for intersex people but not a clear own for GID people which is the boy or the girl who are intersex should wait until the grow up and see to what side they feel closer so they change their sex based on what they feel. on our prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) there were men who feel like women and they used to be female community and female should not be covered because of them however they were treated like females however, a man who were one of them was ordered to leave the female community and be with the males because he was telling men how female look like which show the way his brain works and her is not a female inside. if your husband community is a muslim community i know it is to hard but their is a lack of knowledge among them which i personally experienced but you and your husband should make the family aware and the rest will happened eventually. there are special cases were "Imam or mufty " allowed the transition for many because in the future they cant be in female communities and vis versa. I'm sorry again for taking so long but I wanted you to know that its not going to change if she is in the same case as i am. it may get worse. but I hope that my experience could help even little. Peace!

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Louise
Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom
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