Jynx Geneviève de Lygh is a mother of five, a veteran of four combat tours, a helicopter mechanic and cybersecurity specialist, a transgender activist, and now a recording artist, Jynx has lived several lives before arriving at the woman she always knew was somewhere inside her. But perhaps the most remarkable part of her story is not how many battles she has fought, but how she has continued to find new ways to turn those battles into something meaningful. Music was there long before transition. As a young person growing up near Ithaca, New York, Jynx found something resembling peace with a guitar or a microphone in her hands. While the rest of the world seemed to be telling her who she was supposed to be, music gave her somewhere to breathe. Then came 23 years in the military, four combat tours, marriages, motherhood, and decades of trying to fit into a life that never quite felt like her own. At forty, Jynx finally began her transition. And, in what seems almost like a metaphor for her entire life, she refused to do things quietly.
After vocal feminization surgery, she was told she would never sing again. For someone who had spent much of her life finding herself through music, that could have been the end of the story. Instead, Jynx treated those words as a challenge. For years, she worked on her voice, experimenting, practicing, cracking, squeaking, improving, and sharing much of that journey publicly. Today, she is not only singing again, she has released Dysphoria Riot, a deeply personal album that transforms dysphoria, grief, anger, love, resilience, and transgender existence into music. What I find especially fascinating about Jynx's story is the contrast between the different worlds she has inhabited. The military and the punk scene. Motherhood and activism. Vulnerability and toughness. Dysphoria and joy. The disciplined world of helicopters and cybersecurity, and the wonderfully chaotic world of music. And perhaps that is why the title Dysphoria Riot feels so appropriate. Jynx has spent much of her life being told what she could not do, who she could not be, and even, quite literally, that she could not sing. She answered by finding her voice. So today, two transgender women are simply sitting down and talking, woman to woman, about identity, motherhood, transition, femininity, music, love, loneliness, activism, and what it means to finally stop living somebody else's version of your life.
Monika: Jynx, I have to start with your name because "Jynx deLygh" sounds like the name of someone who was destined to end up on a stage! How did you choose Jynx? Does the name have a story behind it, or did it simply feel like you?
Jynx: That’s a fun one, well, fun in a military-dark-humor way. Jynx started as a nickname, not a compliment. I was active duty Air Force back in 2001, and my friends noticed trouble only ever seemed to find us when I was around. Actually, trouble found me even when they weren’t around. I remember going to the movies with a close friend and, real talk, a bit of a crush and the preview for A Series of Unfortunate Events came on. My friend looked at me and said, “I didn’t know they made a movie about your life.” After that, they started calling me a jinx to be around.
When I left the Air Force and transferred into the Army in 2006, the nickname followed, but it changed meaning. After surviving two helicopter hard landings and auto-rotations in sandstorms; a roadside bomb that flipped our HMMWV because it was buried too deep (I took an ammo can to the face); a ricochet to the knee instead of the face because I turned to scratch my leg at exactly the right second; and a 132mm Katyusha rocket that crashed through the corner of my CHU, knocked out the busted AC, and never detonated. Jynx became less about bad luck and more about being a cat with nine lives. For a while it was my callsign. Even after the name faded from use, it never really left me.
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| "I have five kids from three marriages." |
Jynx: The last name deLygh (people usually just say Lygh) goes way back. It traces to the ancient family line in medieval England, around 898 AD. Lygh, sometimes written Legh or Leah, described an area in Cheshire called High Legh; the people who lived there were the Lyghs. So Jynx deLygh literally means “Jynx of the High Legh.” The surname split into four interchangeable forms; Lygh died out, but Leigh, Lee, and Lea survived and made their way to the US as early as 1640, abolitionists, statesmen, soldiers in every American war including the Revolution. Our family name is on the University of Pennsylvania Library.
So yeah, the name found me, then I built a home in it.
Monika: You came out and transitioned at around forty, after decades of living a very different life. Looking back, do you ever wonder what might have happened if you had found your voice earlier? Or do you think all those previous chapters somehow helped create the woman you are today?
Jynx: I don’t think I’m any different from the next trans person here: yes, I have absolutely wondered, and cried about what my life could have been if I’d been brave enough to claim myself as a teenager. All the trauma I could have avoided. The abuse. The toxic people I never would have met. The joy I could have had in my youth if I’d been allowed to live as myself. That is a tender, aching place, and I know so many of us carry it.
But I also know, deep in my bones, that the life I was given shaped the woman I am now. I would not trade a single moment with my babies for a different timeline. And while most of my life has been punctuated by loss, suffering, abuse, and pain, it’s the brief, brilliant interludes of joy, love, connection, and pride that made the whole brutal ride worth enduring.
Those experiences and even the people who shaped them made me brave. And that bravery is what finally let me take off the mask and become myself.
Monika: You were a mother of five long before you transitioned. How did becoming yourself affect your relationship with your children? Did they have an easier time understanding their mom than you perhaps expected?
Jynx: I have five kids from three marriages. My oldest is twenty-four now, from my first marriage. I lost custody for a while after the marriage ended, but despite deployments, school, and everything else, I fought to stay in his life. I eventually got full custody in 2016 and helped him through the end of middle school and all of high school, he’d been held back more than once, and I was determined he’d make it. I actually began my medical transition about a month before he graduated, but I was still in boy mode; he didn’t know yet.
When I came out to him (because hiding it was becoming impossible) he pulled the classic teen move: “Dad, I don’t care if you’re a trans.” But it did hurt him. He felt betrayed that the “man” who taught him so many skills and gave him so much advice wasn’t a man at all. He moved away to stay with friends, and when that fell through, he moved to live with his other parent. It broke me, because I knew why he’d gone.
Monika: And then, several years later, something changed. What happened that brought the two of you back together?
Jynx: About three and a half or four years into my transition, he called me right after I’d bought my new home. He apologized for how he’d reacted and told me he’d kind of always known something was different about me. He said he’d spent years thinking about it, and after watching my social media posts and seeing how happy I was, he realized my being myself didn’t actually hurt him. He told me he was happy for me and proud of me. Then he admitted it was weird to keep calling me “Dad.” I asked what he wanted to call me instead. He said, “I think Ma works.” We rebuilt our relationship from there. Now I’m putting him through college here in Texas.
Monika: Your second oldest came from your second marriage.
Jynx: Yes, my second oldest is from my second marriage, a marriage of convenience that didn’t last long, but it gave me another sweet child with a smile that could power a small city. By the end of that marriage I was a ball of stress, and I can honestly say I sabotaged the relationship to escape it. There was a lot of animosity, but I did my best to see my child as often as their mother would allow: weekends, pool trips, chalk drawings on the patio. Then I deployed to Iraq for sixteen months and couldn’t see either of my older kids. When I got home, I tried to make up for lost time. Later, when I moved to the East Coast with my third spouse, visits became expensive and difficult, but I still managed a few holidays, I have the cutest pictures of them playing at the beach.
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| "When I started coming out, I knew I had to come out to the mother." |
Jynx: When we moved back to Texas, we bought an old ranch house in a rural area because it was what we could afford. We completed our family there. My second oldest would visit on weekends or longer, playing outside with their older brother and baby sister. They were wildly creative and always telling stories and inventing the most fascinating scenarios.
Monika: I guess when you began coming out, you also had to navigate your relationship with your second child’s mother.
Jynx: When I started coming out, I knew I had to come out to the mother. That became the worst day of that year for me. I officially came out to her on the phone in September 2021, though she’d already found my “girl” Facebook account. She told me it was unhealthy behavior and not good for our child. She said our child would need time to come to terms with losing their father. I accepted that, and I hoped for the best.
That future never came. I went nearly five years without seeing or hearing from my child, just a few sporadic texts from their mother with minimal updates, some coordination about birthday or Yule gifts. That was it. Even after my child attempted suicide in 2025, I couldn’t get in to see them. I was turned away at the psychiatric center because I wasn’t on the approved visitor list. The last time I’d seen them before that was May 2021. My family tried too; they were allowed two supervised visits, ten minutes or less.
Monika: Were you able to see your child again?
Jynx: Eventually, after my child was cleared by a therapist (or so I was told) I grabbed my littles and rushed to meet them for lunch at a ThunderCloud Subs. When I saw how big they’d gotten, how much older they looked, I started to cry. My little ones ran up and hugged them and had a million questions. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The visit lasted about thirty minutes. At the end I asked if I could hug them. They said yes. I told them I missed them and loved them. I haven’t seen or spoken to them since. They’re eighteen now, still a senior in high school. I don’t know what the future holds, but my heart hurts every single day.
Monika: Your story with your three youngest children seems very different. They were little when you transitioned, and they experienced your journey from a completely different perspective. How did you introduce the idea of your transition to them?
Jynx: My three littles are from my third marriage. It began on the East Coast with my only daughter and, back in Texas, gave me two happy little surprises, my boys, born in 2018 and 2020. I began transitioning after talking it through with my wife at the time and medical professionals. The littles were still small, but they never objected. If anything, they were fascinated. My daughter used to walk around saying, “My daddy is pretty.”
For a while, all my kids still called me Dad, and I was fine with that. Then about a year and a half into transition, my daughter asked to talk to me. I bent down, and she said, “You don’t look like a daddy anymore. You look like a mommy. So I’m going to call you Mommy, and I’ll call Mama, Mama!” My heart melted. I cried a little. I looked at my wife for approval, and she smiled. From then on, I was Mommy.
My littles never had any issues with my identity or my transition. To them, it was simple: they had two parents who loved them and were happy. Despite losing so much, I have a full, joyful relationship with four of my children. They are a huge, positive part of my life, and I am of theirs.
Monika: And what about your own mother? When you came out, did she embrace you as her daughter? Do you see anything of her in yourself, perhaps in the way you look, carry yourself, or even in your personality?
Jynx: At first? No. I came out to my mom on the phone while driving home for R&R from some Central and South American missions. I asked if she was sitting down, and I came clean. There was a long, awkward silence, a few follow-up questions, the sound of her holding back tears, and finally: “I have to go. I love you, [deadname].”
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| "For a while, all my kids still called me Dad." |
We didn’t really talk for a while after that, not in any depth, until my wife left me the first time. That’s when my mom had her aha moment. She told her close friends what was happening, and they said something that shifted everything: she wasn’t losing a son; she was being given the chance to finally have a relationship with the daughter she’d always had. My mom told me it was hard. That it felt like burying her son forever. I understood. But I told her, “You’re burying an empty casket at a grave of your own making.”
Since then, my mom and I have built a wonderful relationship. She’s my biggest supporter and biggest fan. She tells me how proud she is and how much my story has impacted people back home. Yeah, she brags about her daughter.
Monika: Do you remember the first time you met another transgender woman in person? Sometimes seeing another woman like us for the first time can have an enormous impact. Was there a moment when you looked at someone and thought, "Maybe I am not the only one"?
Jynx: Where I grew up, there was a small but vibrant underground ballroom scene. A very, very gay friend of mine (if gay were a superpower, this kid would have been setting off every alarm in a five mile radius) took me when I was fifteen. It was the first time I’d been that far downtown, and the outside was creepy and intimidating. Inside, though, people were relaxed and absolutely fabulous. The clothes, the music, the diversity, the glamour, it was like walking into a living, breathing work of art.
Everyone in that crappy old storage facility looked happy and gloriously different. Every kind of person seemed to be represented except cis heteronormative people. My friend grabbed my hand and said, “This place has a hell of a lot more to offer you than your girlfriend Gabby does so come look.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but I followed him toward the dance floor and performance area. I watched the competition start. There were these tall, beautiful girls with gorgeous clothes and glamour for days. I asked who they were. My friend glanced over and said, “Oh, those are the dolls. They’re confused gay men who think they’re women.” Transphobia was rampant in the gay community in the nineties, and my friend definitely didn’t like the dolls.
But I looked at those women, and the first thought that crossed my mind was: “Is… is that even possible?”
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Jynx Geneviève de Lygh.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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