Transgender Day of Remembrance

I will join late, the long parade of bloggers, journalists and seekers-after-justice in general who have been promoting awareness of and participation in a global day of thought and action about some of the harder truths that many in the TG community face. Today, Saturday November 20, is the 12th annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Many of my online and real world friends are people who work through the ups and downs of their lives on blogs and in support groups. For many, the life of the gender explorer is more thorn than rose. Writing for an unseen audience, or circling the chairs and having a chat with like minded people is good therapy. In these gatherings, the rose comes in to better focus, and the barbed thorns are clipped. We prune and grow, and sometimes flourish.

Continuing sadly on this metaphor though, flowers of all varieties are too often seen at memorial services for T-People cut down too soon in life, in shocking, out of proportion numbers, gravely by their own hands, or brutally at the hands of others.

These people often lack the support, sense of community, and relief that is attended upon those of us who live parts of our lives out loud, or mutedly so here on line. Even with the benefit of such support some will see no better option than the irreversible option of suicide. Even with the benefit of such support, determined and happily liberated innocents will become victims of violence.

I am happy to see a well provisioned umbrella group publicizing events in so many cities and small towns in so many diverse countries around the world. I remain not so surprised to know that a need exists.

Cheerful an outlook as I have, I must say that I expect there will be a 13th, 14th, and years more to come of Transgender Days of Remembrance.

If you have the time to visit an event, show the flag, stand tall and quiet, that would be a nice thing. If not, take a moment to count your own blessings, or to measure your own relative trouble against the more acute sense of pain that somebody, somewhere, just now, this minute, is enduring.

Someday, surely, there will be less to remember, and more to look forward to.

You can find an event near you by visiting http://www.transgenderdor.org/

Thank you.