A letter to my neurodiverse daughter on her third birthday

Today’s Sunday musings is a special Fathers’ Day edition dedicated to my daughter on her third birthday.

Dear Mallory,

Three years ago today, you arrived.

You did not cry right away and I remember holding my breath, waiting for a sound.

When it finally came, small, sharp, defiant, I cried with you.

You were tiny, perfect, unknowable and from that day on, I have never stopped trying to understand you.

A year ago, we were told you had global developmental delay. Possibly autism. The room did not spin. It just... sank. Because suddenly everything we thought we knew about your future, about what life would look like, dissolved.

Would you go to school? Would you talk Would you be safe in a world that doesn’t understand people like you?

I could not breathe for weeks and at the same time, I came out as genderfluid. Just like that, people who once shook my hand now second-guessed my presence.

When I wore a skirt, men stared like I was a threat and cleaners tried to chase me out of bathrooms.

Some friends grew silent and some family distanced, but in Singapore, where “fitting in” is survival, I chose truth.

Because if I could not live authentically, how could I teach you to?

You see, Mallory, I did not just come out for me. I came out for you because I never want you to feel like you need to hide the most honest parts of yourself just to be loved.

And so, I began building something new.

I left my job with no plan, savings, just desperation because no job could give us what we needed like time, presence, therapy, hope.

We scraped together funds for speech therapy, occupational therapy, play therapy.

Four sessions a week, and each meltdown, each tear, each progress note became my reason to keep going.

And when the invoices started to outweigh our income, I built a one-person business from scratch. Not to get rich, but just to give you a chance.

Every podcast I host, post I write and cheat sheet I publish, they are love letters to a future you.

To the day you are old enough to ask, “Why don’t I talk like other kids?” Or worse, when someone else asks you that, and it hurts. I want you to find me and hear the voices of my guests and I in those episodes, and to feel my heart in those words.

To know that you were never alone. And yes, of course, I wish you would call me “Dada.”

I ache for it.

But I have also learned that love does not need sound to be loud, because you already say so much, with your eyes, your hands, your hums at bedtime. I know your language and I’m fluent in you.

People still ask if we will get you a formal diagnosis this year, but we don’t know because there is no right answer. Just a series of choices we pray will not close doors for you before you have even had a chance to open them.

It is not the life I imagined for you, but it has taught me more about love, strength, and purpose than anything else.

Mallory, my entire life I was taught to fear difference. Church taught me that love had limits, that who I loved was a sin. That skirts were for girls, and boys should pray their queerness away. So I tried, for years, where I begged God to make me “right.” But God stayed silent.

And now I understand God was not punishing me, she was waiting for me to meet you.

Because you, too, will grow up in a world that does not always understand difference, celebrates sameness, rewards compliance, and punishes complexity.

And that is why I fight.

Why I wear skirts in public even when I am afraid, why I hold hands with your mama even when people stare and why I post, write, speak, because silence is what made me feel small for so long.

I want you to grow up in a home where questions are welcomed, where we role-play what to say when someone is unkind and where you see queer families thriving, not just surviving.

I want you to know that gender is not a prison, that identity is not a problem to solve and that your difference, which is your neurodiversity, is not a burden, but a superpower.

I also want you to know being misunderstood does not mean you are broken, it means the world has not caught up to your brilliance yet.

I want to teach you to defend yourself, too. Your mama and I train in Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu, and we pass it on to you. Not because we expect fights, but because we want you to stand your ground in your body, in your truth and in your life.

Every decision we make now is shaped by you. Our community is built to reflect the future we want for you, our faith is found in spaces that welcome queerness, and our home is a safe haven for curiosity, kindness, and courage.

You have never made us smaller, instead, you have made our lives wider, deeper and realer.

And so today, on your third birthday, here is what I want you to know you don’t need to say “Dada” for me to know you love me, you don’t need to fit anyone’s definition of success and you don’t need to be “typical” to be extraordinary.

You just need to be you.

And I will spend the rest of my life protecting that truth.

With all my love,
Your Dada
(sometimes Mama, sometimes Shawn)
She/He/They