Father, Mother and Activist: A Transgender Journey

LOS ANGELES, CA - The impulse was unexpected but overwhelming. And so Michaela Mendelsohn stepped into oncoming Los Angeles traffic.

A successful business leader, a devoted father of three, Michaela recently had begun the late in life transition into a woman. Initially, this change felt like freedom.

“For first time in my life, I felt tremendous peace because my body and mind were working together,” said Michaela. “But it was very difficult for my family.”

Michaela realized just how much her family suffered one night when she attended parents night at her 13-year-old’s school.

On the wall, Michaela saw a poem by her daughter.

“When I was three, I sat on top of my daddy’s shoulders,” it began.

“Now the sound of his voice makes me sick,” it ended.

“It hit me like an arrow. I needed to end my life because I was hurting my family too much,” said Michaela. The next day she stepped into traffic.

Her son, 19, however, pulled her from the brink.

“He put his arms around me and said, ‘Dad, I don’t care what gender you are, this family needs you,’” recalled Michaela. “The feeling had come on so suddenly. I thought I was helping my family, but it would have been the worst thing to ever happen to them.”

Michaela’s metamorphosis is deeply personal and yet mirrors the struggle playing out on the national stage. As the transgender community fights for acceptance and equality, many are forced to rethink their understanding of gender norms. Toward that end, Michaela is using her odyssey to further the fight for acceptance. She founded the California Transgender Workplace Program, which promotes transgender employment opportunities and works with companies to create trans-friendly job conditions. She was recently named the first transgender board member of the Trevor Project, which provides crisis and suicide prevention for LGBT youth. In June, she will become one of the first transgender women to go through a naming ceremony at her synagogue in Woodland Hills.

'Pushback'

While transgender celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner have helped to raise acceptance, Michaela doesn’t see it trickling down to the lower socioeconomic segments of the community. She sees lawmakers’ efforts to legalize discrimination or ban transgender people from using the bathroom of their identity as a reaction to the battle for acceptance.

“Suicide and violence against the transgender community is at an all-time high,” she said. “It’s pushback.”

Michaela has seen the backlash firsthand.

The CEO of Pollo West Corp, one of the largest franchises for El Pollo Loco restaurants on the West Coast including six in Los Angeles, Michaela hired her first transgender employee four years ago. In doing so, she discovered a calling to help transgender women in the workplace.

The employee, a transgender woman, had been forced to use the men’s bathroom at her previous job, and she was sexually molested in the men’s room. After that, her boss allowed her to use the women’s room only if it was empty. But one day, a customer entered the bathroom behind her and complained, prompting management to fire her, Michaela said.

“That’s when I realized the importance of a program like this,” said Michaela. “We are working now with the California Restaurants Association and the service industry to educate employers on laws, human resources and understanding of trans employee needs.”

Michaela now has eight transgender employees.

“We get so many compliments on our transgender workers, and we have lower turnover,” said Michaela. “When trans people are working a job where they can be out, they grow so much as a person.”

'A Way to Survive'

Born in 1952, Michaela grew up in the Bronx.

“Back then there wasn’t much talk about transgender, and I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I had. All I knew was that I was different,” she said. “I always gravitated toward wearing my sisters’ clothes, but I would do that in private.”

She tried to fit in. She didn't.

At 13, Michaela awoke most mornings with the knowledge she’d be kicked and punched that day.

“In 9th grade in the boys’ shower, I was urinated on in front of all the other boys by the class bully,” recalled Michaela.

That’s when she began her first transition. She worked out four hours a day.

“It was a way to survive. I started dating popular girls, and guys would accept me as a jock,” she said.

The beatings stopped, but the conflict inside her raged.

Michaela married a dancer, and they had three kids together during their 30-year marriage. She excelled at extreme sports and started successful businesses.

“Overachieving at everything I did was the way to make those feelings go away,” said Michaela. “But if it’s really strong, it will catch up to you. Suppressing it makes you really ill, physically ill and mentally .... One morning I woke up and thought if I didn’t face my gender issues, I wasn’t going to make it.”

Michael started by reading books about the transgender identity and saw herself on every page.

So she transitioned again.

She began taking hormones and dressed as a woman. It was the first time in her life that she felt peace with her body. But while her inner turmoil quelled, the peace within her family shattered.

“My wife and kids meant the world to me. Every day of their lives I wanted them to know and feel like they were loved. They looked up to me like I was a hero figure,” said Michaela. “But when I came out to them and started transitioning it was very difficult for them. I fell off that pedestal. They didn’t want me to be a part of their lives. My children didn’t want their friends to see me. They didn’t want me to come to their school events.”

For a time, it seemed like Michaela had sacrificed her family, once so central to her identity. Michaela’s wife divorced her.

“It took me a couple years of dealing with who I was and realizing, at some point, that what they had lost was even greater than what I was going through,” said Michaela.

Understanding her family’s loss helped Michaela to forge new bonds with them.

She remarried to wife Carmel and is now the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old. Her adult children dote on their young sibling, and Michaela is close friends with her ex-wife.

“I am so grateful for what I have in my life,” Michaela said. “That’s why I spend most of my life helping others.”

The Ritual of Change

Several communities of faith have undergone dramatic change as they embrace the transgender community. Last year, the Union for Reform Judaism issued a sweeping resolution supporting the equality and rights of transgender people, and temples across the country are adapting.

“As clergy and communities, we should be opening our arms to everyone,” said Temple Kol Tikvah Rabbi Jon Hanish. “It falls into Jewish tradition of welcoming people especially as they go through a change and transition. We create rituals within Judaism and all religions as a way to celebrate transitions in life.”

From Bar Mitzvahs, to weddings to funerals, rituals are a way of saying, let’s take note of these moments when we are changing, Hanish said.

In June, Hanish will perform a naming ceremony for Michaela. The ceremony, typically performed for babies and new converts, will be the rabbi’s first transgender renaming.

“I think Michaela is a very amazing person who is on a true journey of self-discovery that I think many would be afraid to take,” said Rabbi Hanish. “It’s a journey of self discovery that we can all learn from.”

Photo Courtesy of Mona Elyafi