What was your life like when you were a kid?
I grew up in Bay City, blue-collar town about 100 miles north of Detroit. We were a Catholic, working-class family. My dad was a UAW foundry worker. My mom kind of cycled in and out of managerial positions at the local mall, credit unions, places like that. At times she would stay at home and make money babysitting the children of family and friends. I was the middle of three children, with an older and younger sister. And our extended family was very large. My dad had eight siblings and my mother six.
When did you realize you were a trans person?
Although I didn’t have the language to describe it then, I was about 5 years old when I began expressing that I didn’t want to be called by my birth name, because that made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to wear different clothes, and play with different things. That persisted until I was about 8 or 9.
What happened then?
I was told that this wasn’t the way people in our family acted, and that it had to stop. This was in the 1990s, before the internet, so people didn’t have access to all the information that is available now. So, it became a big internal secret until I came out in my mid-20s
What was it like, having to carry that secret?
Being forced to hide who you really are is tremendously hard. You are being told that there is something wrong with you, that you are not okay. You are holding in all this shame. It is a real burden, one I think a lot of trans people carry.
You survived middle school and high school, then attended Alma College. What did you study?
I majored in accounting. By my junior year in high school, I knew that was what I was going to do. The rules, the structure, the consistency – I really liked all that. It just really clicked with me.
When did you come out?
I was 25, living away from home permanently for first, as my first serious adult relationship was concluding. I had reached a unique crossroads and felt like the only choice I had was to come out.
What was that like?
It was terrifying. To secretly harbor something for so long, and then deciding to let the world see who you really are, is a tremendously difficult thing to do. You feel very vulnerable. and then, with a very large, extended Catholic family, it became a long and tedious process.
As part of your Equality Michigan profile, it notes you’ve too often had to rely on self-advocacy. What did you mean by that?
It is really what led me to the work I’m doing now. After college, I was working at the headquarters of a fortune 500 company when I came out. A major corporation with no policies regarding the protection of LGBTQ+ people, healthcare that failed to provide coverage needed by the LGBTQ+ community, things like that. It required me navigating through a lot of tough situations as I began advocating not just for myself, but for co-workers as well.
And that eventually led me to Equality Michigan.
Because?
I wanted to be involved in solving the same sorts of problems I was already dealing with, but on a much larger scale. Like that bio you mentioned also says, my passion now is in coalition-building, empowering fellow-LGBTQ+ Michiganders to enter the advocacy arena, and making sure the community is well-represented at the tables where decision-making is happening about their lives and well-being.
It is a tough job, but being here is a privilege. It’s also not a role I thought I’d be in when first came out 12 years ago.
Given the current political climate, your job must be particularly difficult right now. What’s it like?
There has been a relentless attack on LGBTQ+ community, both here in Michigan and across the United States. Trans people, in particular, are specifically, are the targets of very vicious attacks.
When you have the U.S. government, which is massive in its size and scope, trying to take away our access to healthcare, our access to employment, to academic settings and sports, our access to inclusion – they have a big army to do all that with, so it is definitely a hard, uphill battle. The family members and others joining us in – all of us – are showing incredible strength and resiliency.
I’ve been so impressed by the way the community has stepped up, and am honored that I get to play a leadership role in all of this, and spend so much time on the ground interacting with these folks.
As a leader, what is one of the messages you think is important to get across?
The most common questions I get from people are about what I expect is going to happen. How far will this administration take things? Where will it end?
I wish I knew the answers to those questions, because the uncertainty creates a lot of stress. But I don’t know the answer. There's only one scenario where I can predict the outcome with 100 percent certainty, and that’s the scenario where we stop showing up and stop fighting. That is the one way we are sure to lose.
What we need to do is keep showing up, and then see what happens from there.
Shifting gears a bit, since this is Pride Month, is there a book you would recommend people read?
One book I read that meant a lot to me is Redefining Realness, a memoir by transgender activist Janet Mock. The subtitle is: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. I think about it a lot, especially a portion of book where she talks about having to sneak away from home to get access to hormones. It reminds me that, in that regard, gender affirming care is like abortion access. We know that with both, making necessary health care illegal doesn’t stop people from pursuing it, it just makes obtaining care less safe.
How about a movie?
There is a movie many people have never heard of called Gun Hill Road, which came out in 2011. It is about a very masculine dad returning home from the carceral system to find his child, which he thought was a son, coming to terms with being transgender.
I don't know if I've seen a film that really gets the experiences of women and trans femme people who grew up in a macho culture, in families where there were really strong expectations for how boys should be. This movie really captures the fragility and tension of what it’s like to step outside those expected roles. It is a film I would recommend to lots of folks.
Finally, what has you feeling hopeful these days?
The way people keep showing up. In spite of it all, they keep showing up, right?
We just had our fourth annual statewide LGBTQ+ Capital Day in Lansing that Equality Michigan hosts, and for the second year in a row, we’ve had record numbers of people attending from every part of the state.
Economically, things are tough. It is not easy for people to take a full day off work and travel to Lansing like that. But they did. Whole families showing up, ready to be involved.
Yeah, that gives me a lot of hope.