I became a mother young. My eldest daughter, Chiara, was born when I was 25. I separated from her father when she was very young, and I raised her alone from then on. Like many women of my generation, I unconsciously bought into a story: the story of a beautiful, feminine, sweet daughter who would one day find a good man to take care of her and they would form a happy family. It was a simple, traditional story, but it gave me a certain peace. A kind of guarantee that I hadn’t had. I, who had grown up in a harsh environment, marked by violence and silence, needed to think that my daughter would have something different. Something easier. And I clung to that idea with a force I didn’t realize… until it shattered.

On my 43rd birthday, I was cooking, happy, preparing shrimp to celebrate. And in the middle of that domestic scene, Chiara approached me and said with absolute clarity: “Mom, I’m getting my breasts removed.” I thought she was talking about a reduction. I said something like, “But why? You look beautiful.” And then she replied, “No, you’re not understanding. I’m getting them removed.” She was 17, about to turn 18, and had already saved up for the surgery. I didn’t know what to do. I went straight to denial: “Today is my party, we’re not going to talk about this.” I drank three mezcals. I thought she’d get over it. That it was just a phase. But no. That night, something began that wasn’t her transition. It was mine. Leo—formerly Chiara—had told me years before. Three, maybe four times. She hinted at it with phrases, with gestures, with silences. But I didn’t want to see it. I completely dismissed it. I thought it was a phase, that it was social media, that he was confused. I used every excuse possible not to listen and not to look.

And it wasn’t that there weren’t signs. He was always an imaginative, very sensitive, very talented child. He was fascinated by mermaids, unicorns, and fantastical animals. He drew all the time. Drawings with multiple identities, creatures that were neither one thing nor the other. I would see them, they touched me, but I didn’t understand them. Later, when he started consuming audiovisual content about queer and trans people, that’s when I couldn’t ignore it anymore… but even then, I did. I already had a story built up about who my daughter was. A pretty girl, with many attributes that made her “fit” the mold of femininity. And since I came from a difficult life, I projected onto her everything I didn’t have: a protective husband, a “normal” life, a clear path. And of course, when Leo started to break that mold, my response was panic. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t seeing my son. I was seeing my fears. I was projecting everything I hadn’t healed, all the wounds I hadn’t wanted to name. That was the hardest thing to accept: that the problem wasn’t him, it was me.

After that conversation on my birthday, we started looking for professional support. I thought we were doing it for him. That he needed guidance, support, maybe to “correct his course.” We approached two or three people, but it wasn’t until we found Hugo Gómez—a therapist specializing in LGBT+ issues—that I heard what no one had ever told me so clearly. He looked at me calmly and said, “Leo understands perfectly. You’re the one who needs help.” That was the first mirror that confronted me with what I didn’t want to see. Until then, I believed I was reacting out of love, out of care. That I was afraid something would happen to him, that the world would attack him, that he wouldn’t find protection. But what I was really doing was projecting my own traumas. Everything that hurt me, everything I had silenced for years—especially what I experienced with my mother—was now coming out disguised as concern.

From there, my real journey began. Leo didn’t need me to correct him. He needed me to see him. That’s when Hugo, the therapist, explained something that completely changed my perspective: gender transition is not an illness. More than a decade ago, the World Health Organization had already depathologized it. It wasn’t a disorder. It wasn’t a phase. It wasn’t a mistake. It was simply how my son recognized himself. In therapy, I had to ask myself a question I deeply resisted: where did my fear come from? Not the obvious fear, but that deeper, visceral fear that paralyzed me. I found the answer in my mother’s story. When I was 16, my mother was a pensioner with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), and, like every month, it was her turn to collect her pension. That day, she was going to take me with her. I overslept. I didn’t go. She had a routine: she was supposed to be back by three or four in the afternoon. But she didn’t return. By eight o’clock that night, my siblings were already alarmed. We didn’t hear anything that night. The next day, we were notified that she had been admitted to the hospital in an emergency.

They told us she’d been mugged. She came back bruised. And she told us a kind, protective story: that she’d hidden the money in a Nido milk carton, that the thief hadn’t found it, and that maybe a street child had found it. It was an impossible story, but I wanted to believe it. Sixteen years later, days after my mother’s death, when I was 31, my brother César told me the truth: our mother had been the victim of a sexual assault. He never said anything. He never named it. She died with that secret. Years after the attack, my mother began to get sick. She was diagnosed with hepatitis. Her health deteriorated until she died in 2006. The assault was linked to her illness, but I think what killed her was the silence. The unspoken trauma. The shame that wasn’t hers, but that she carried until the end. And then I understood that what hurt me most wasn’t Leo’s transition, but that I felt I wouldn’t be able to protect him. That he had already failed once. That the world was dangerous, and that someone who didn’t fit in would be even more vulnerable.

I wanted to put Leo in a “safe” life: a beautiful woman, with a good man. But I realized the most painful contradiction: that story didn’t save my mother either. My resistance to her transition didn’t stem solely from prejudice. It came from the ancestral fear of loss. From the unhealed wound of a daughter who also couldn’t protect her mother. I studied film, but before anything else, I was a reader. My brother was a writer, and I grew up surrounded by books. I wanted to write screenplays, to tell stories that had meaning, that connected with something deep. At first, I thought I would make fiction, but over time I discovered documentary filmmaking: more human, more direct, more honest. And that’s when I knew that would be the beginning of my path. During the pandemic, I was about to start another project in Monterrey, but the lockdown stopped everything. And then the inevitable happened: Leo’s transition gained a force I could no longer deny. We were all at home. I was in the middle of my master’s degree in documentary filmmaking. And I thought, “Perhaps this is the story I’m meant to tell.”

My initial idea was for Leo to narrate the film. I thought that if he spoke from his own experience, we could generate empathy, open a conversation. We started filming, and for a while, he allowed me to do it. But one day, he set a clear boundary: “Mom, I don’t want you to keep filming me. I don’t like it.” He said it firmly, and rightly so. I felt like that was the end of it. I thought: if he’s not in it, there’s no film. It was then that one of my mentors, Joshua Gil, told me something that completely changed my perspective: “The film doesn’t have to be about Leo. He already knows who he is. You’re the one in conflict. The film is about you.” That comment was a turning point. I realized that everything I had been carrying—my resistance, my fears, my family history, my mother’s silence—also needed to be told. That there was a story behind my inability to accept. A story that many other people, mothers, fathers, families, might be living in silence, just like me.

Telling this story was incredibly difficult. I had to learn to split myself in two: to be Leo’s mother and also the character in my own film. It was therapeutic, but also exhausting. Reviewing the footage, writing the voiceover, watching my gestures, my mistakes, my moments of fear and my moments of tenderness… it was like exposing myself without a filter. But it was worth it. Now the film exists. It’s called “On the path to Leo.” We’re showing it in private screenings throughout the country; it had its international premiere at FICC Cuenca and now its award at the 20th DocsMX. Every time a screening ends, something magical happens: people don’t just talk about me, or about Leo. They talk about themselves. Someone dares to share something they’ve never said before. Someone cries. Someone hugs. Someone says, “This is happening to me.” And that’s when I understand that we didn’t just make a film. We created a space to talk without fear.

I never imagined this experience would teach me so much about myself. I thought I was already an analytical, structured, even empathetic person. But deep down, I hadn’t learned to truly listen. Motherhood was taught to me as something top-down: you know, you decide, you’re right. And I believed it. I believed I knew what was best for my son. I believed I was protecting him. But in reality, I was silencing him. Today I know that being a mother isn’t about always having the answer. Sometimes it’s about having the humility to ask questions. Sometimes it’s simply about being there, listening, without trying to force the other person into your own story. Leo has taught me more than I could have ever imagined. His transition wasn’t just his. It was mine too. Because to see him as he is, I had to learn to see myself as I truly am: with my wounds, my prejudices, my contradictions… but also with the capacity to change, to ask for forgiveness, to start over. To those experiencing something similar, I can only say this: listen with your heart. Don’t react out of fear. Examine your own history. Perhaps it’s not about understanding everything immediately, but about being willing to look. And, above all, to look at yourself.