I’ll never forget the moment when I realized what being a mother meant. It wasn’t the 18 hours of labor or crying out for the nurse to hand me my newborn daughter or that I held her to my chest for a full two weeks after I brought her home. No, it was the day she walked behind me, and I dipped my toe in the pool. When she copied me, she fell in. I didn’t realize it at first, but then I didn’t hear her behind me anymore. I turned around to see her in the pool starting to sink.

As I dove in to save her and felt that superhero strength all mothers are born with, I knew at that moment there was nothing I would not do to keep this child safe. I wasn’t just a mother, though. I was a Mama Bear. You know, the most feared animal in nature? No one messes with a mother grizzly. They know what will happen if they do.

Mama Bears are not born, they are made. It’s a pilot light that is only ignited when danger is near. Even now, with my daughter grown, just try it, pal. Just TRY IT. We are Mama Bears because we know it’s a dangerous world in many ways. No one can guarantee a life free of car accidents, mass shootings, random explosions or violent crime.

We never had a man around to protect us, which would have been nice but for me, it was my boot camp. I had to keep her safe. At some point, I had to let go and allow my daughter to live her life. But I sit here, across the country, with a pilot light forever lit. Just try it, pal. JUST TRY IT.

I knew I had to leave the Democratic Party in 2020 because I believed they’d lost their minds and lost their way. I could no longer align myself with people who believed all of this country, its government, its culture, its economy belonged to them - the party of the elites.

It wasn’t until I started venturing out of my feedback loop of the New York Times, MSNBC, and NPR that I began to see things I’d never heard about before. Had I not been listening to Blocked and Reported, I would never have heard of “gender-affirming care” or the rising crisis of children sucked into what I now believe is a cult.

I knew some kids were trans. It didn’t become a thing until my daughter was in high school. Only one of her friends said she wanted “top surgery” and to now be referred to as a boy’s name. But when she went to college, two of her roommates had swapped genders, a boy she had a crush on had fully transitioned to female. I did start to wonder, what’s going on?

The more I heard about it, the more I began to panic. Young girls were showing off scars where healthy breasts used to be. Young men being castrated and all of them losing their fertility long before the age of consent because of puberty blockers? And worse, there was a growing ideology that children as young as toddlers should be able to decide their gender.

But it wasn’t until I heard the stories of detransitioners that I knew we were facing a once-in-a-generation medical scandal, and everyone was too afraid to say anything about it. If you mentioned it, you would be attacked and even, at one point, banned from Twitter.

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