Mother of a transgender child explains her struggle

In February 2015, Mimi Lemay wrote a letter to her son, Jacob, on his fifth birthday.

She explained how she’d evolved as a mom. She wanted him to know how she’d come to know her second-born, who had originally been named Em because he was assigned to the female sex at birth. But Lemay loved and recognized him fully as the boy he had proclaimed he was since the age of 2 ½ .

She posted the letter online and it went viral, becoming the basis for her book, “What We Will Become: A Mother, a

Son, and a Journey of Transformation,” published in 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Lemay will give a free virtual talk at noon Wednesday as part of the annual Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival, sponsored by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and the Simon

Family JCC.

The book digs into how Lemay and her family grappled with the reality that their child was transgender and how that struggle stirred up emotions she had while trying to live her own authentic life growing up. Lemay, who lives in Massachusetts, was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and eventually made the difficult choice to leave the faith and the strict gender roles it required.

Lemay is now a member of the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council at Human Rights Campaign and was named one of the Commonwealth Heroines of 2020 by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.

Visit bit.ly/Jewishbookfest or federation.jewishva.org to register or for more information on the festival. For a quick look at upcoming and past speakers, see Books, Page 6.