Content warning: suicidal ideation.
Author Heather Hester’s son Connor came out at age 16 to her and her husband. Despite the unconditional support they gave him, he struggled with anxiety and depression and tried to die by suicide. Hester sought resources to help, but they were scarce. She therefore launched Chrysalis Mama, which provides support and education to parents and allies of LGBTQIA adolescents, teenagers, and young adults, including through the podcast Just Breathe: Parenting your LGBTQ Teen. This book is a distillation of the lessons she has learned, informed by her own family’s story, and organized around four pillars: Embrace, Educate, Empower, and Love.
She offers suggestions for how parents can process their own feelings while being supportive of their child; how they can practice self care, from guided breathing and meditation to proper hydration; and how to keep communication channels open with their child through active listening and validation. She explores the coming out process for LGBTQ people, using the stages of the Cass Identity Model developed by psychologist Vivienne Cass in 1979 (though Hester is perhaps a little too definitive in saying “your child will…” while explaining each stage of the process), and also outlines a similar process for adults.
Other topics include navigating faith and spirituality and deepening your spiritual growth; managing extended family relationships; finding support for yourself as a parent; connecting with your intuition; setting healthy boundaries for kids; and ways of loving yourself, practicing gratitude, and showing kids that they are loved. Each chapter concludes with questions for parents to “ponder and reflect” on about their journey.
There are tips here, too, on how to advocate for your child in the wider world, but the focus is mostly on the internal work that is necessary in order to be the most effective parent for your LGBTQ (or any) child.
A few parts could have used further editing, such as this unwieldy sentence with a triple “because”: “Faith and spirituality are first on the list because not only do many of us keep them in our support toolbox but also because I know you may have felt worried or scared when your child came out as LGBTQ+ because of what you have been taught.”
A list of resources at the end also feels poorly compiled, with book titles not italicized and URLs inconsistently formatted (sometimes with https://, sometimes without). And the inclusion of Rainbow Railroad not only in the resource list, but also in the section on “Community and Support Groups” feels wrong. In fact, the organization helps LGBTQ people escape state-sanctioned violence—important work, to be sure, but not the kind of organization a U.S.-based parent seeking support for their LGBTQ teen needs.
Nevertheless, the book offers advice that may help some parents of LGBTQ+ teens better support them. Not every reader will resonate with every suggestion for mindfulness, meditation, and therapy, but others will appreciate the guidance on ways of first helping oneself in order to better help others.
