S. Wilson Cole, who writes under the moniker Your Trans Cousin, recently posted a note on Substack asking fellow trans and nonbinary people how we are coping right now. “Because this shit sucks.”
I thought I’d share how I responded. But first, what do we even mean by “coping”?
Coping is the art of living alongside pain, softening its sharp edges, holding steady when emotions surge, and finding footholds amid uncertainty. Coping approaches don’t erase our struggles; instead, they offer ways to lessen the weight of the impacts these struggles — ways to preserve the clarity of who we are and ways to stay anchored enough to remain engaged in our lives. In other words, effective coping helps us tolerate, lessen, or respond skillfully to emotional pain, allowing us to stay psychologically stable in the face of difficult experiences that we may not be able to adequately change.
Here is a non-comprehensive, spontaneously-written and only minimally edited list of the ways that I’m coping as a trans American right now:
First of all not trying to invalidate my own fear and despair. As Your Trans Cousin said, this shit sucks and I don't want to try to cope by dismissing my feelings or reality
Making an effort to spend time with people who understand how hard things are but also don't want to spend all our time venting to each other, and facilitating spaces for this (like trans meetups where the focus is something besides politics/oppression)
Joyful movement — specifically, bikes and dancing these days
Finding ways to feel useful to my immediate community and to multiply marginalized trans folks who face more immediate direct threats (immigrants, youth, people in more hostile geopolitical areas) — sometimes this is just donating money but it's great if I have time and energy to do something with my mind and/or body
Recognizing resistance, non-compliance, and victories; and seeking these out because I know that mainstream media and social media algorithms are incentivized to bury good news and just flood us with rage- and fear-inducing content
Envisioning the things I'm looking forward to in the next month, and throughout the year (I wrote a whole substack is about this practice and how it can counter the neurobiological impacts of being in near constant states of dread)
Meditating on simple pleasures when I get the chance — like how my coffee tastes or the sun feels or the way the new leaves glisten in the sunny breeze
Rooting into our histories of gender diversity, survival, community, and love in conditions of oppression
Celebrating the energy of being a radical disruption to fascism: my very existence messes with their ways of seeing the world and controlling people — become ungovernable, untamable
Finding humor — both general opportunities for laughter and ways to specifically find humor about the tough parts of this: for example, trans creator made shirts and pins that say “the moral panic is about me” and I love those; I also recently got some stickers from a local trans artist that said things like “live laugh scream” and “here, queer, and full of fear”
Spending time in nature, meditating on the long life of the natural world, and connecting with its resilience
How are you coping these days? What’s been helpful and what’s been less so?