Jeneen Lilith is not easily reduced to the phrase “mother of a transgender daughter.” A former nurse, artist, therapist and queer activist based in Liverpool, she has built a life around creativity, community and the conviction that stories can change the way people see one another. Her professional work now centres on creative therapy and Interfaith spiritual ministry, while her public life has increasingly brought her into LGBTQ+ activism. Then there is Luna, her transgender daughter. When Jeneen first encountered her daughter’s transition, she says she felt fear and paralysis. She knew no one in the trans community and did not know how to help. Over time, the search for answers became something else: an education, a community and eventually a form of activism. The people who once gave Jeneen hope became a model for the kind of person she wanted to be for other families.
That transformation has taken her from the private work of being a mother to the public work of protest. She has spoken out about trans rights, written and performed a protest song in Liverpool following the UK Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling, and confronted the complicated position of being a cis parent whose life has become inseparable from her daughter’s experience. But perhaps the more interesting story is what happened in the other direction. Supporting Luna did not only change Jeneen’s understanding of her daughter. It made her question assumptions she had carried about herself, eventually leading her somewhere she had not expected to go. Jeneen describes herself on Instagram simply enough: “Creative soul. Sacred activist. Spiritual musing.” It is an economical description for someone whose life has moved between nursing, art, therapy, motherhood and activism, and who now finds herself helping other parents navigate a world she once entered without a map. In this conversation, we talk about motherhood, fear, the strange education of becoming an ally, art as a form of resistance, Liverpool, anger, identity and the moment when supporting someone else can quietly rearrange your understanding of yourself.
Monika: Jeneen, welcome to The Heroines of My Life! You have been a nurse, therapist, artist, activist and, apparently, a mother who somehow acquired a second career in learning everything she never expected to need to know about being the mum of a teenage trans girl. At this point, do you feel qualified to write a parenting manual, or would you rather warn people not to try this at home?
Jeneen: Gosh no, ha-ha. I have resigned myself to knowing nothing about parenting. Every time I think I know something, either she changes through age, her life experiences etc., or I change through mine, and we go back to the drawing board. I am halfway through writing a book, but it is based around 100 other family experiences of raising trans and gender diverse young people too.
Our journey might be similar to other family stories, but it won’t be the same, so yes, I’ve gathered lots of nuggets of information, lessons etc., but I’m only one person and could never be an expert to be looked to for advice for someone else’s family. The only thing I know for sure is that every parenting act should come from love, which requires us to listen, to be brave and to continually check our own systemic beliefs. I would recommend that part at home.
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“Every parenting act should come from love.” |
Monika: You have spoken about feeling frightened and paralysed when you first realised Luna was trans. What was it that frightened you most at the time?
Jeneen: I had a preconceived notion that she wouldn’t be loved and she wouldn’t be safe. As soon as she was born, this miracle baby that I had always wanted became my heart outside of my body and my whole reason for being, but I had also not long left a violent relationship with her father and had been through the family court system to prevent his parental responsibility rights. I was a single parent, tired, healing, and I doubted my abilities to advocate for what I thought would be a difficult life.
Monika: You knew very little about the trans world then. What was the first thing you did that genuinely helped you move from fear to understanding?
Jeneen: I had some knowledge about childhood development and clinical pathways for gender incongruence in children (from working as a nurse with a lot of clinical psychologists), so my first act was to print off the NHS pathway, which told me that current best practice was to request a referral to the specialist gender clinic at that time. I took this to our doctor and he believed me and made the referral.
I then spoke to her teacher at school and she believed, and agreed, that Luna was presenting with gender incongruence and that school would support a referral, and Luna in school. Those two points were pivotal, both in practical terms and in validating my child’s experience, so that I could move forward knowing I wasn’t making it up in my head. But the most impactful acts were meeting other parents of trans children, and meeting trans adults who had love, safety, and wonderful, very normal lives.
Monika: Did meeting transgender women in person change the way you understood what Luna was experiencing, or help you see your daughter in a different light?
Jeneen: Back then it didn’t make me see Luna in a different light per se, because I knew that what she was experiencing was consistent and persistent; it was very real for her. But it did change the way I was feeling and, in turn, how I was able to advocate for her. All of the trans adults I met gave me unbelievable hope, which is a very powerful tool and allows you to advocate through love and joy rather than fear.
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“My parenting style has always been to try and listen.” |
But they hadn’t transitioned during their childhood and hadn’t had to navigate the current systems within childhood services. I found information regarding that through other parents who were further on in their journeys, things like how to support school to meet her needs, what to ask for in health services, what her rights were as a young person accessing clubs etc. As Luna has grown (she’s 15 now), I have received a lot of wisdom from my trans female friends that Luna hasn’t verbalised herself, things around the subject of dysphoria, relationships, intimacy etc.
Monika: Was there anything you initially believed about being transgender that you later realised was completely wrong?
Jeneen: YES! That it was binary, that certain words were acceptable, that everyone lived in fear, that she was ‘born in the wrong body’ (which I strongly dispute), that it was my fault and something I caused in utero, that trans people had only existed in the last century, that trans people shouldn’t be in sports, that life couldn’t feel ‘normal’. I could go on…
Monika: Every mother has that moment when she suddenly looks at her daughter and thinks, “There you are.” Do you remember the first time you saw Luna truly glowing?
Jeneen: I remember at the beginning of ‘allowing’ social transition to expand outside of our home. She always wanted the princess dresses, she had them all, and would wear them every second of being at home, but she wanted to wear them outside.
We went to Disneyland Paris for her birthday, and she bought the biggest, pinkest dress she could find and spent all day in the park wearing it. She twirled and smiled at everyone. She glowed in a different way, and it was noted! That spurred me on to follow her lead more. Now she’s 15, and she has had a really tough few years on top of being a regular teen, so the ‘glow’ can be elusive. But it always comes back when we go to Disney, that free inner child pops out and shines.
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“Luna is also acutely aware of how trans people are treated in the world.” |
Monika: What did you see in her in that moment that you hadn’t seen before?
Jeneen: It’s the being comfortable in her own skin and not caring what anyone else thinks. She had that before puberty, but as I said, it’s rare to see it now unless we are at Disney. I think every teenager goes through the phase where their peers’ opinions matter most. Luna is also acutely aware of how trans people are treated in the world, so she is always extra on edge on top of very normal teen angst. I know she will get there when she is older though. There will come a point when she doesn’t worry so much about how she is perceived, and she can glow from being truly her most authentic self.
Monika: How did your relationship change once Luna was able to live more openly as herself? Did you become closer, or did you have to find a completely new version of your relationship?
Jeneen: It didn’t really change, not due to her gender identity anyway. She was five when she started to socially transition, after communicating for a year or so before about ‘being a girl’, and that lasted for a few years. My parenting style has always been to try and listen, to hear her, and to support her wishes (within reason).
As a parent, your relationship with your child is always changing as they grow and develop, as their personalities and likes/dislikes increase etc. Her being trans hasn’t impacted our relationship in that way. I would say the biggest change in our relationship happened as she became a teenager and we had to, and continue to, navigate independence from each other.
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“I didn’t buy into the ‘boys do this, and girls do this’ rhetoric in any fixed capacity.” |
Monika: Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated even without transition. Did you find that some of the old mother-child dynamics stayed exactly the same, while others suddenly changed?
Jeneen: No. I could maybe understand how that could happen if a child transitioned as an older teen or adult and suddenly you go from having a son to a daughter, or vice versa, or non-binary. But for us, because Luna was young, I had only been parenting for a few years anyway. I didn’t buy into the ‘boys do this, and girls do this’ rhetoric in any fixed capacity. I haven’t got any other children, so I can’t compare parenting a teenage son to parenting a teenage daughter. I just assume parenting any teenager is pretty much the same. We worry about safety, who their friends are, what is causing them stress, their education, their health, if they are a good human?
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Jeneen Lilith.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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