This story is a sneak preview into the upcoming book:

Northern Lights, Northern Lives

Theo’s and Maeve’s Story

Gender: transgender boy and his cisgender mom 

Pronouns: he/him and she/her 

Cultural Identity: Alaska Native

Home: rural Alaska 

            Photographer’s Perspective: About eight months after starting All the Genders Photo Project, the darkest fog of a PTSD crisis had drawn this work to a slow slog. This work started to seem less important to me with each passing day that engulfed me deeper in traumatic flashbacks. An emotional Facebook message from a stranger barely registered through my fog, but succeeded in gently pulling me back towards a sense of purpose in this work.

The message was from a mother, who I’ll call Maeve, in a remote Alaskan community. She had found the story of a man in the photo project, who was living a full life as a visible transgender person in his Alaskan community. Her friend had shared the story with her and encouraged her to talk about it with her young transgender son, Theo, so he would see what his future could look like. 

Maeve expressed in her message that she had been crying as she spent the morning reading more stories. It gave her comfort that there was hope ahead for her young transgender son living a full life as he was. He was being bullied mercilessly by kids at school and other family members. She was feeling ostracized by their church and cozy community – a place where strong community bonds are essential to survival. Yet, there were no visible transgender adults in their community to give them hope that Theo could survive and thrive. Maeve unknowingly spoke to the heart of this project – the importance of visibility. And her spark of hope was also the glimmer of hope that I needed at the time. So the following year, I got myself together and flew out to their tiny community to learn more about Maeve and Theo’s journeys together. 

This is a short snapshot into the time I spent with them…

Theo excitedly swung across the monkey bars. He was ecstatic to have a new friend with a camera who was recording his acrobatic skills, reaching to grab the farthest bar he could, then zipping across in only a few moments. He then dashed to the next obstacle, attempting to scale a pole to reach a slider. Maeve gave him a boost to reach the top, where he put all his effort into generating enough swinging momentum to glide across. Theo was initially shy, but warmed up quickly and grinned from ear to ear as he told me about his math homework. “He really likes math, A LOT, it’s his favorite subject,” said Maeve. On our ride back from the playground, she pointed out where he loves swimming in the grey, icy sea.

Theo mostly played by himself as other children in the small community kept their distance. A little girl happily chattered with Maeve, while Theo expended his energy with a singular focus on the playground. Maeve told me that the girl used to come to the house all the time to play with Theo, until her grandmother no longer allowed it. “He’s very alone … parents tell their boys not to play with him because he’s not a boy, and tell the girls not to play with him because he’s a boy … he likes using the boy’s room at school even though he’s not supposed to, so one year a teacher let him use the teacher’s bathroom …” She described Theo having supportive teachers one year and not the next – they never knew what to expect.

When I asked if they’ve lost connections because of embracing Theo’s gender, she said plainly, “Everyone.” Maeve said not everything was bad though – they still had some supportive connections. In remote communities with long winters, it truly takes a village of connections to thrive.  

The day before she took me out berry picking on the tundra. We left Theo behind as Maeve could sense his attention span might be too short that day to endure slogging through the soggy tundra. I struggled to keep up with Maeve zigzagging across the boggy ground, as she honed in on the bright orange salmonberries that had a short and abundant picking season before winter rolled in. “We need to pick further from the road to leave the closer berry patches for the elders,” she said. It was reflective of the sharing culture that is deeply rooted here. 

I peppered Maeve with questions about her life and Theo’s, slowing the pace of the berry picking. “I tried dressing Theo in girl’s clothes, and when he was old enough, he refused. He said he was a boy and would only wear boy’s clothes. I would let him … but this was harder when he started socializing more with other kids and going to school. He wanted to be on boy’s teams and still dress like a boy. It became harder and harder for him, so I took him to a psychiatrist when he was four … the psychiatrist was very good, and told us we needed to let Theo be a boy so he could be a healthy child.” Maeve went through a period of mourning the idea of her future daughter, but this period was long over. 

Now she openly supports her youngest child in his expression of self. Giving him this space and determining how to create a safe and affirming life for him is not easy though. She struggles with the best way to do this, sometimes questioning if they should stay in their home community. Her energy is also spread thin with multiple major life stressors constantly demanding her attention and time.  

When I asked about her own gender and cultural expectations tied into social gender roles, she seemed at a loss; so much of her life’s energy goes into helping her children thrive. There didn’t seem to be much space in her current reality for consciously celebrating her own identity as a woman, yet she fully steps into social roles as a woman and mother that value putting everyone else first. She takes seriously her role of creating safe space for her trans child to just be a child; a child who loves math, playing on the playground, and diving into the icy sea.

** This is the only more anonymously presented story in this book. Other anonymously presented stories will be shared as part of the book’s accompanying zine series. It was written from my perspective as a photographer due to a range of challenges competing for this busy mother’s time. The names in this story have been changed for privacy and the playground image was created from a photograph I took with Theo.