“A lot of times, parents with straight kids, they think like, ‘You know what? That would never happen to my kid so why would my kid need to learn something like this?’ And I think the key is your kid doesn’t need to be LGBT. As long as your kid is perceived with any trait associated with LGBT, they can be bullied. They can be made fun of. Your kids can be a victim of any of that.”

He adds that parents of transgender children go through a difficult emotional process of their own.

“Parents, they have to go through different stages themselves,” he explains. “In the beginning, they tend to deny it. They hope their kids will grow out of it. They are having a tough time. They have to grieve over losing a son or a daughter and welcoming a new gender of a child. And I think that’s a process. It’s not easy for any parent to accept that because no parent has a kid and then think that this kid may be a transgender kid…. It’s tough… [when you have] a dream for your kid and all of a sudden that dream vanishes, and you have to recreate a dream for your kid[’s] future, and at the same time, knowing that society is not so tolerant out there. And I think that is very tough [for] a lot of parents to accept that.”

He advises parents who have transgender children to talk as much as possible with other people about these issues.

“I really think that [they should] talk to people about it, talk to other parents about it. And don’t just talk to one person. I would talk to multiple people. Talk to the school principal, talk to the counsellors, talk to the professional psychologists or social workers…even family doctor[s], so they can know there are people like this out there, they are not alone, and they can get help.”

Good advice all around.

FORGE is looking to identify trans-savvy individuals in Boulder, CO; Iowa City / Cedar Rapids / Johnson County, IA; Boston, MA; and the state of Maine who are interested in working in coalition with professionals from agencies serving sexual assault survivors to ensure these services are culturally competent about and accessible to transgender survivors.

Multiple studies have found that over 50 percent of transgender people have experienced sexual assault at some point in their lives. Many transgender survivors live with the long-lasting effects of trauma. Yet few transgender people access sexual assault healing services.

Supported by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime, FORGE will help form coalitions in these four jurisdictions (Boulder, CO; Iowa City, IA; Boston, MA; and the state of Maine) to identify their own community/state barriers and develop and implement a work plan to reduce or eliminate those barriers. Work will include disseminating surveys, participating in at least one full-day in-person meeting, and carrying out follow-up work as the coalition determines. The timeline is roughly October 2011 through summer 2012.

There is no monetary compensation for coalition participants; however, your involvement will help change services and attitudes, which will result in the reduction of pain carried by people in the transgender community. You will also make valuable local and national connections that will be personally rewarding, as well as being part of ground-breaking efforts to improve the ability of transgender survivors to access competent healing care.

If you are interested, please send a bio, resume, or other statement of interest to mmunson@forge-forward.org.

Teleconferences to discuss the project and answer questions are scheduled for October 12, 2011. Please click the link next to the time you would like to attend. (It is not necessary to attend the teleconference in order to participate in the project.)

October 12, 2011 — 12:00 p.m. noon CENTRAL TIME — https://cc.readytalk.com/r/119pteu40e8i
October 12, 2011 – 8:00 p.m CENTRAL TIME — https://cc.readytalk.com/r/slhisdm5du1f

For more information please contact FORGE staff Michael Munson (mmunson@forge-forward.org) or Loree Cook-Daniels (LoreeCD@aol.com). FORGE can also be reached by phone at 414-559-2123.

This project was produced by FORGE under 2009-SZ-B9-K003, awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this teleconference are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position nor policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

First: Please remember that there is always someone to call.

A few weeks ago in a town near Appleton, a young gay man did the same. A local man named Paul Wesselman was so touched by this student’s lost life and the pain his friends were in that he wrote a piece for them, young people who were struggling with being who they are. I found what he said smart and true and asked if I could reprint them here.

1. This is awful.
You are going to feel lots of emotions, and it is going to be difficult for some time: you’ve probably already figured out that being a teenager means lots of complicated, conflicted emotions. Add the suicide death of a friend and the mix of grief, anger, confusion, frustration, sadness, and devastation becomes even more cruel. Your family and friends may not always say or do the “right” things, but I suspect they are mostly motivated by a sincere desire to ease your significant pain. The sad truth for us is that we cannot erase your anguish, because this is just awful.

2. Things will get better.
Don’t hate me for saying this, and I’m not saying it to diminish the extraordinary pain you currently feel. This probably occupies every second of your life right now. Next week you will likely still think about it every few minutes, and for weeks after that you may still find yourself reminded of Cody or of the loss every hour of every day. Eventually, your heart and your mind find a good place to store the positive memories while the grief (which never disappears entirely) will fade into the larger quilt of life.

3. Positive things can evolve from horrible situations.
There is nothing we can do to bring Cody (or my friend Steve) back, and we cannot go back in time and change the circumstances that led up to these awful deaths. We cannot change these tragedies. AND: we do get to choose how we respond to them. I’ve noticed how frequently you post such kind, loving, AMAZING words on each other’s walls. Those heartfelt expressions are profound to all who see them and are tiny examples of the light that may come out of this extreme darkness. (Please note I’m NOT saying “God did this for a reason,” or “This tragedy happened so that good things could happen.” I personally don’t agree with either of those statements. I do believe that when blechy things happen which are beyond our control, we can, if we want, CHOOSE to make sure positive things come out of these awful circumstances.)

4. What you do next is up to you.
After my friend Steve died, his mother Judy transformed the grief and frustration into energy and passion to prevent future suicides by creating LifeSavers. http://TheLiveSavers.net/ has helped thousands of students to become caring listeners and observers. I found these words posted on their website:

USE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE WISELY
Choose to love . . . rather than hate.
Choose to laugh . . . rather than cry.
Choose to create . . . rather than destroy.
Choose to persevere . . . rather than quit.
Choose to praise . . . rather than gossip.
Choose to heal . . . rather than wound.
Choose to give . . . rather than steal.
Choose to act . . . rather than procrastinate.
Choose to grow . . . rather than rot.
Choose to pray . . . rather than curse.
Choose to live . . . rather than die.
-from The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

Not only do I hold you in my heart, I also have deep compassion for the tremendous pain that he must have been experiencing. My high school and college years were significantly challenging and I thought about ending my life frequently. I tried more than once. The excruciating pain I felt seemed insurmountable and never-ending. I’m so glad I lived to find out that neither of those were accurate. With time, healing, counseling, and considerable help from a remarkable tribe of friends, I found the strength to face and conquer the darkness and I believe that I eventually found success and sustainable joy not in spite of those hurdles but in part BECAUSE of them.

I share these words not to take away the pain you are feeling, nor to fix what cannot be fixed. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone, and that by relying on your friends and family, your inner strengths, and other resources (school, church, community, etc.), you will remember something that Christopher Robin once reminded Winnie the Pooh:

You are braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.

What I want to emphasize is that plenty of us left high school and were surprised by how much more power we had in the world than we thought. Not record-breaking power, but the power to find friends we liked, who would support us; power to live where we wanted, where we felt safe or interesting or amazing; the power to make decisions about who we would be and how.

& Finally, to close out Suicide Prevention Month in the hope that we won’t have to have one next year, and with the knowledge that many, many, many trans people struggle daily with grim, hopeless thoughts, here is a resource guide specifically for trans people & their allies put together by NCTE.

It gets better.

Their mission statement is as follows:
“The Trans Advocacy Network is an alliance of transgender organizations that work at the state and local level, coming together to build a stronger trans movement by facilitating the sharing of resources, best practices, and organizing strategies.”

The Trans Advocacy Network will serve local and state level trans advocacy groups that are both established and newly forming as well as support groups, college-based groups, and other organizations that are doing advocacy and policy work for transgender rights and protections. The
Trans Advocacy Network will assist these groups by sharing policy, training materials, resources, tools, and best advocacy practices. It hopes to foster leadership development, sustainability, and to make the movement for trans rights stronger and more effective. The Trans Advocacy Network will operate with a steering committee made up of leaders from state and local trans organizations from across the country. There will be a limited number of spaces on the steering committee for advisers from national organizations.

Plans for the first year of the Trans Advocacy Network include expanding the steering committee to include people who are not yet well-represented, connecting more state and local trans advocacy groups across the country, creating guiding principles, starting a list serve that all trans advocacy organizations will have access to, outreaching to other groups by region, creating a more cohesive communication network, creating a organizational survey to understand the needs, resources, and get a realistic view of where trans community organizations are across the country, and holding conference calls and webinars to share best practices and strategies.

The Trans Advocacy Network Steering Committee currently includes Gunner Scott of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Masen Davis of the Transgender Law Center, Marisa Richmond of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition, Lisa Scheps of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, Sadie-Ryanne Baker of the DC Trans Coalition, and Shane Morgan of TransOhio. Advisers to the Steering Committee include Lisa Mottet of the Transgender Civil Rights Project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Jaan Williams of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The steering committee is interested in additional members who represent predominantly people of color trans organizations and low-income trans organizations.

Contact Gunner Scott for more information or how to become involved at transadvocacynetwork@gmail.com.

You can buy a copy here, check out a t r u t h o u t column about it (& Caster Semenya), or check out the filmmakers’ website.

Less than a month after starting a 3-year, nearly $300,000 federally-funded project to improve the nation’s sexual violence and criminal justice professionals’ ability to respectfully and appropriately serve transgender survivors of sexual violence, FORGE has been awarded a second federal grant to provide direct services to transgender survivors and SOFFA (Significant Others, Friends, Family and Allies).

The second grant, from the Office of Violence Against Women, allocates $299,987 to fund three years of FORGE-run outreach and direct services to transgender sexual assault survivors (of all genders) living anywhere in the United States.  Under the new grant and with the help of member sub-organizations of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, FORGE will:

• Expand its existing peer support listserv and revamp and update its web-based resource center (www.forge-forward.org/transviolence) for transgender (and other) survivors of sexual assault and SOFFAs.
• Recruit, train, and supervise volunteers to provide individualized information and referral to transgender survivors of sexual assault and SOFFAs, and to staff a Buddy Program that provides one-on-one, ongoing support to survivors and SOFFAs.
• Develop and disseminate three guides: “A Self-Help Guide for Transgender Sexual Violence Survivors,” “A Guide for SOFFAs of Transgender Sexual Violence Survivors,” and “A Guide to Finding a Trans-Savvy Sexual Violence Therapist” (years two and three).
• Adapt FORGE’s existing Writing to Heal materials for delivery via the web and/or teleconference, to make these highly-rated services available to survivors and SOFFAs nationwide (years two and three).
• Provide direct outreach, materials dissemination, and/or advertising at transgender conferences.

Studies conducted by FORGE and other researchers have found extremely high rates of sexual violence against transgender people, with approximately one in two transgender people having survived sexual assaults.  This project is designed to closely meet the needs and preferences of transgender sexual violence survivors as uncovered by a national survey FORGE conducted in 2004.  Among the study’s key findings:

• Transgender survivors and SOFFAs have an ongoing need for support that may last more than a decade after the assault(s).
• Transgender survivors prefer to use individual therapists, friends, partners, and self-help materials as opposed to existing mainstream sexual assault services.  Because of this, SOFFAs of transgender people need significant education and support of their own.
• Transgender survivors often desire to have discussion and support around transgender-specific issues such as how a sexual assault history might impact (trans)gender identity and how to find a therapist that can competently address both a sexual assault history and a survivor’s possible desire to access hormones and/or surgery.
• Transgender survivors and SOFFAs often express a sense of hopelessness, isolation, and permanent “brokenness.”  The Buddy Program is designed to break this isolation and link survivors with trained peers who are further along the healing path and who can provide hope, support, and guidance.

FORGE was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Its Executive Director, michael munson, is available to answer questions about this or other FORGE projects.  He can be reached at tgwarrior@forge-forward.org or by calling 414-559-2123.