Julie Tarney, Author of My Son Wears Heels: One Mom’s Journey from Clueless to Kickass, Will Speak at PFLAG NYC Upper West Side Meeting in April
In 1992, Julie Tarney’s two-year-old child, Harry, told her, “Inside my head I’m a girl.” So begins Julie’s tale of what it was like to raise her son in a time when terms like “gender non-conforming,” “gender-creative,” and “transgender” were rare or nonexistent.
It was a time when there were no books to guide her and Google and the internet didn’t exist, so there was no easy way to find information or community.
Mainstream “experts” theorized that a “sissy” boy was the result of a domineering mother. Many PFLAG parents have been there and will empathize. Julie refused to believe it. Without role models and fearful of being judged as a mom who was making her son “too feminine,” Julie embarked on an unexpected parenting path.
My Son Wears Heels is the story of Julie’s journey. She shares how she was guided by unconditional love and one rule: as long as Harry was happy, she let him lead the way. Julie eventually realized that Harry knew who he was all along. Her job was simply to love and support him unconditionally, allowing him to be his authentic self.
Come hear Julie read from the book and talk about her experiences at PFLAG NYC’s regular Upper West Side meeting on Monday, April 24, at 7:00 p.m. at the JCC Manhattan. (This event is rescheduled from January when it was cancelled due to a winter storm.)
“Tarney does an exceptional job of tracing the zigzagging line of [her child] Harry’s self-identity and recalling the inevitable questions asked along the way.” — New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Julie Tarney is an active member of PFLAG NYC, volunteering regularly as a speaker in our Safe Schools Program. She has written about her first Safe Schools Program experience on her blog, and also more recently about her experience speaking in a school the day after the November 2016 election.
Julie was recently named a “Favorite Queer Hero of 2016” by Huffington Post. She is also a board member of the It Gets Better Project, blogs for the Huffington Post’s “Queer Voices”, and is a contributing writer for TheParentsProject.com and the True Colors Fund’s Give a Damn Campaign. A longtime resident of Milwaukee, she now lives in Brooklyn.
Event Details
Author Reading & Book Talk with Julie Tarney
My Son Wears Heels: One Mom’s Journey from Clueless to Kickass”
Monday, April 24, 2017 – 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th Street
Manhattan
[Map] [Transit Directions]
The event is free and open to all. Doors will open at 7:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served.
RSVP to info@pflagnyc.org – not required, but helpful to us for planning. For more information, please email info@pflagnyc.org
