We All Want Our Kids To Be Loved: Muriel Pierce

In the summer of 2010, Muriel Pierce’s son Luke married the woman he loves, Dori. During his toast at the rehearsal dinner, the bride’s father confessed that his long-held private anxiety was simply whether Dori would find someone who would love her for who she is. But seeing how happy she was with Luke, he said, his fear was put to rest.
Muriel had the same fear for her son, who is transgender.

“That was the only concern really, when he transitioned: are you going to find a person to adore you in the way we all want our kids to be loved?” she says. “I feel so lucky that their paths crossed. It’s magic.”

Luke had previously come out as transgender to Dori’s parents, and they fully embraced him. As Muriel recalls, they told him, “Whoever you are, if she loves you then we love you.”

The couple now makes their home in Western Massachusetts, where Luke, 31, is completing a Master’s in Social Work from Smith College. His passion for social justice began in high school, when he started his school’s first Gay/Straight Alliance.  Since then he has worked with LGBTQ communities on issues from homelessness to HIV to substance abuse. Most recently, he founded a community center for transgender people in San Francisco. Dori is a clinical herbalist and teacher.

Luke is the youngest of Muriel’s three children. Now living in Somersworth, she raised him in Durham, where she teaches Special Education at Oyster River Middle School.
Luke’s transformation from daughter to son was gradual, and began in high school. By the time of his senior year at Brown he was identifying as transgender, being referred to with male pronouns, and was known to friends, family and the world as Luke.

Muriel struggled at times to understand the transition her child was making, but her love and support never wavered. “Honestly it was all new territory for me,” she says. “I grew up in a small town and I just never really thought about it.”

When Luke decided to undergo medical treatment related to his gender transition during college, she accompanied him to San Francisco to lend moral support and care for him during his recovery.

“I was really glad he allowed me to go with him,” Muriel says, noting that she encountered many other transgender people seeking treatment from Luke’s doctor who were alone. “A lot of them were just terrified.”

Now, when people ask how her daughter is doing, Muriel simply tells them about Luke. “I feel like it’s a little thing I can do to educate people. I’m not embarrassed. I’m proud of him,” she says. “He has more integrity and more honesty than any person I know,” she adds. “He really does—and it has not been easy.”

While Luke has created a happy and healthy life for himself, Muriel is aware of the hostility and violence that transgender people continue to face in society.

“I guess my remaining fear for him is that something’s going to happen, that somebody’s going to beat him up, that he’s going to be found out by somebody who can’t deal with it,” she says. “That’s my big fear.”

Putting her fears for Luke’s safety aside, Muriel says she feels blessed to have a son who has so courageously worked to live his life authentically and who has been rewarded as a result.

“I love him so much and I know that his road was really difficult, and he did it on his own,” she says. “He was the one who had to be scared and make these decisions and come out to people and all that, but it’s worked and now he has a life partner and he has a new family, too, that loves him.”