Nicole Watson started a youth support group after her son came out as trans

Hometown Hero Nicole Watson has a lot on her plate these days — with a trans son who recently came out, and an LGBTQ+ youth group she started along with a parents’ spinoff, and hitting the local school board “hard” in support of a proposed GSA — but she found time a few nights ago at a local restaurant in rural Monroe County, Illinois where she lives to help educate a total stranger.

“I have a little white satchel and it’s got, like, a heart on the front and it says, ‘Love is love,’ and it’s got the rainbow, you know? And he’s like, ‘So let me guess, you know someone who’s gay.’ And I’m like, ‘As a matter of fact, yeah. I’m bisexual.’ And he says, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Women on women is hot.” And I’m like, yeah, so this is getting creepy.”

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“So I’m starting to get ready to gather my stuff together before I say something wrong — my full-time job is as a prison worker, and I’m pretty blunt — and he went on to say, ‘Well, at least gay people are better than transgender people.’ And so then I stopped gathering my stuff and we had a nice conversation.”

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Their talk revolved around Finn, Watson’s 17-year-son, who declared to his mom last year, “‘Hey, I’m just gonna throw it out there, man. I am transgender.'”

“And I’m like, ‘Hey, okay,'” recounts Watson. “So, you know, where do we go from here?”

“I have a lot of learning to do,” she remembers thinking. “I have a lot of reading up to do, you know. My child was not themselves anymore. Finn used to be so happy-go-lucky and outspoken. Then everything was kind of introverted, and there’s a lot of bullying going on at school. So I went to one of my good friends, who’s married to a woman, and I said, ‘Hey Kat, I’m gonna need you, because I want to start a youth support group.'”

“We got so much flack over it,” Watson says, “from a lot of different people. But me being me, I’m like — excuse my language for this, but I really don’t give a shit, you know? These kids have a right to be who they want to be and who they are. And I don’t need anybody else telling them that they can’t. It’s basically showing that we love you and we support you. Not trying to guide you, but, you know, trying to give you what you need, as you’re going through what my child did for the first two years that we didn’t know.”

The group, called the SAGE Project, for Sexuality and Gender Equality, attracts about 25 LGBTQ+ kids for their regular meetings, and as Watson and her partner learned more about their needs, they grew their services in support. Now clients can easily find access online to mental health assistance, a suicide prevention hotline, and other resources through partnerships with groups like Midwest Youth Services in Jacksonville, the county seat, and the Phoenix Center out of Springfield. She’s had yoga instructors demonstrate meditation and breathing exercises for stress reduction and brought the Health Department in to talk about safe sex.

For Watson, connecting with the community is another way of connecting with her son.

“As a mother, seeing the face of my child telling me that they’re transgender and almost being like, ‘I know that you’re gonna be mad at me’ — you know, it’s that look? I said, along with his dad, ‘We love you, no matter who you are.'”

“But it has been challenging at times. As a mom, raising a kid up until, you know, 16 and a half years old, to not call them by their dead names? Yeah, I have messed up. I have said ‘she.’ I’ve corrected myself. I point at them and I’d be like, ‘Hey!'”

“I said, you have to give me time. I’m going to mess up. Our family is going to mess up. It’s just the way that it is.'”

“I’ve got a French bulldog shirt that has the transgender flag as bulldog colors, and I get, ‘Would you please stop?’ You know, you try.”

As for the conversation with the stranger so interested in her purse? “I wanted to punch the guy, to be honest,” Watson says, but she kept things amicable.

“I ended up showing him pictures of my child and explained that my son has never changed. I gave him his birth name when he was born because he wasn’t able to talk and tell me what his name was. He wasn’t able to tell me how he felt. You know, he’s going to be 18. He knows who he is and knows where he wants to go in life.”

“And I said, ‘You know what? My kid is planning on making a difference in the world.'”