The Gifts I Didn’t Expect

I began my journey as a therapist at Stonewall's Counseling Center in Chico, CA.

It was a wonderful counseling center that provided a lot of good to the community, and was open to anyone who fell outside of boxes. This meant people who were transgender or elsewhere on the gender spectrum, parents and families of transgender or queer people, and people who couldn't afford the cost of regular therapy and had fallen through the cracks of the system.

My transgender and queer clients taught me so much, and I am grateful to them for sticking it out with me while I learned. My biggest takeaways: the gift of working with the transgender population, helping to bridge the gap between transness and queerness and the straight and cisgender world, and the importance of being fully human in the therapy space — especially when working with trauma and dissociation.

The Gift My First Transgender Client Gave Me

First and foremost, working with him taught me that transness is a gift that is not honored nearly enough in our society. Talk to any transgender or GNC person, and you will come away with a different perspective on life — in the best way. Follow someone like Alok on Instagram, and you will begin to genuinely deconstruct the assumptions our society makes about gender and the rigid boxes we are all forced into from the start.

From our very first conversation, he taught me how to begin with transgender clients. I apologized in advance and acknowledged I might get his pronouns wrong. He very kindly told me "it's okay. I can tell the difference between someone who is trying and someone who is being hateful." His response gave me the encouragement to try anyway even knowing I would make mistakes along the way.

Those on the gender spectrum offer us a mirror, if we are open to it.

Building Bridges, Not Walls

So often, the therapy journey begins at some kind of transition. An aging parent with a new dementia diagnosis. The ending of a marriage. A child coming out. Finding that someone you love holds different beliefs or values than you thought. So often in the work I do around identity, we are looking at ways to build bridges. How do we help connect you to a sense of community and belonging — to people who look or live like you do? An ever-increasing challenge these days.

At Stonewall, I often was helping to bridge the gap between someone who is queer or trans and the people who love them.

If you aren't transgender — full disclosure, I'm not — you can probably relate to a level of confusion around what it means to be on the gender spectrum. You might have so many questions. You might even carry the belief that it is "wrong." And yet, when someone you love tells you they are on the gender spectrum, your world gets turned upside down.

Some people begin combing through every micro-interaction, feeling guilt or shame and asking: is this my fault? Others find the pronouns or the change of name disorienting. Because while your loved one is coming out and stepping into their identity, you get to make the conscious choice to transition alongside them.

Transitioning alongside them means acknowledging and embracing the mistakes that are inherent in growth and change. It means sitting with a grief that feels nebulous. How do you grieve something so intangible — like the past of a person who is sitting right in front of you, asking you to call them a different name?

As a therapist, I can acknowledge that my position as helper is a bit of a privilege. I'm not navigating the lived complexities — like how grandma knows your loved one by their deadname (the name someone was given at birth, before transitioning) and the pronouns they no longer use. How you worry about their safety out in the world. The difficulty of holding memories of them from before, and not knowing what to do with them now.

As their loved one, you are the most important source of support in their life after coming out. Your love, acceptance, and support can make the difference between having a safe place to run when life gets hard — and choosing to end their life because the person who meant the most to them refused to accept them in a world that is primed to be hostile towards them.

How The Gifts Pay Dividends in My Work Now

What strikes me most is how much my transgender and queer clients already know exactly who they are from the first moment they walk into my room. The work isn't about "finding themselves." They know, and probably always have.

What they are doing — often against enormous odds — is allowing themselves to be known. Stepping out of a shell they built for survival, in a world that has given them very good reasons to stay in it.

That takes serious courage. Grit. A willingness to be seen in the face of actual risk.

And I'll be honest: thinking about it now, I feel angry on their behalf. Angry that anyone could ever meet someone who is transgender or queer and believe this is a choice — one that they could equally choose not to make. It is so clearly not a choice. Very clearly who they are. What is a choice — and a courageous one — is allowing themselves to finally be known in a world that is primed to meet them with hostility.

In my transgender and queer clients, I've been introduced to the true face of courage.

The greatest work any of us can do as humans is to learn to know ourselves, and then allow ourselves to be known. My transgender and queer clients do that work every single day, and they make that courage look easy. It is a privilege to be in the room when it happens.

To every client who has trusted me in my journey: thank you. This work has been a gift.