Hollywood Book Festival Honorable Mention 2021!

Testing expectations of motherhood and faith, this haunting and breathtakingly-honest depiction of the transformation of a family through the mystery of gender questioning and identity is a dual story of awakening: of the heart of a mother towards her transgendered child, and of the child’s awakening to his, her, their fluidity of gender.

For years, her son kept a secret. A big secret.

The bombshell, delivered shortly after he left for college, left author C.A. Gibbs questioning everything. What was real? Was she being a good parent? Through fear, anxiety, faith, loss, and grief, Gibbs shares the remarkable experiences triggered by the discovery that her adult child isn’t—and maybe hasn’t ever been—the person she thought.

In The Picture Wall: One Woman’s Story of Being His Her Their Mother, Gibbs lifts the curtain on life with a child who lives outside societal norms and expectations.

From her earliest desire of wanting nothing more than to be a mother, to facing her own life-and-death medical diagnosis before it was safe to get pregnant, to the self-doubt and push-back from others when she expressed concern over her toddler’s development, Gibbs finally comes to terms with the fact that the picture-perfect life displayed in her scrapbooks and on her family picture wall wasn’t reality.

At least it wasn’t the full picture.

The Picture Wall: One Woman’s Story of Being His Her Their Mother takes us on an intimate and emotional journey toward healing as Gibbs comes to terms with raising an autistic child, parenting a transgender adult child, telling family a child is transgender, letting go as children grow up to live authentic lives on their own terms, and embracing being empty nesters.

Narrated by Boni Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books.