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    New Memoir Shows One Mom's Poignant Journey From Uncertainty To Advocacy For Transgender Son

    Mimi Lemay's new memoir, "What We Will Become," tells the story of raising her transgender son.
    Nov 07, 2019 7 minutes
    "Mama I have long known, is not just a title, but a promise." Jacob on the eve of his 5th birthday. (Courtesy of Mimi Lemay and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

    When nine-year-old Jacob Lemay stood up to address Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren at CNN’s LGBTQ Town Hall last month, attendees were struck by his confidence.

    But a new memoir, “What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation,” by his mother Mimi Lemay explains her transgender son wasn’t always that way.

    To recount her family’s journey, Lemay uses the pseudonym M to refer to Jacob during the time before he picked his new name. He also gave his mother permission to use the pronoun she to refer to him until the moment he transitions.

    By age three, the child Lemay thought was her middle daughter was showing signs of depression and declaring, “I am a boy.” For the next year, the child’s symptoms of depression and anxiety deepened as his parents’ fears intensified.

    “I think M had lost her courage in some sense — like she had gotten signals from us and from people in school that she was expected to be a girl,” Lemay says of her son before he transitioned. “She was giving

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