- [Narrator] This program was made possible with major funding from Central Outreach Wellness Center.

(inspiring music) - When a person decides to undergo social transition, they are essentially stepping out into the world and saying, "This is who I am."

- [Speaker 1] Our goal is to make everything more accessible for trans people so that they can get the things that they need to live a good quality of life.

- [Speaker 2] You are either gonna accept me or you're not, but either way, you will know who I am.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - My name is Elis O'Marehen.

My pronouns are she and they, and I am a therapist specializing in trans mental health.

Social transition is whenever a person starts to present themselves to their family, to their peers, as their identified gender.

It is usually where you see them changing their hair, changing their clothes.

It's where people start taking agency over how they present themselves and finding that congruence between who they are inside and how they present themselves to other people.

Medical transition can be inaccessible for a lot of people.

Social transition allows people to experiment with their identity, to really get a feel for who they are now that they are choosing to be authentically themselves.

- My name is Jessica Janine, and I'm a transgender woman.

In my middle age, I realized I was trans.

The first time I stepped out as Jessica, as my true self, I was petrified to walk out the door over to a bakery and order some bread.

It was supremely awkward, and it was also unbelievably exhilarating.

How was your day?

- It was good.

- I had this conversation with my partner of almost 25 years.

I told her that I was thinking of transitioning and she said to me, lovingly, "You have to find out what this is."

She saw it in my eye.

She saw that I was, I was, I was scared.

I thought, have I lost my mind?

I'm questioning my gender at 53.

When I told my partner, I was met with love and somebody that saw me, somebody that was there to support me, and there's been some really rocky patches and there's also been unbelievable euphoria of having a partner, of having someone that supports me.

- I'm gonna be doing trans family with open spaces on Thursday.

- Okay.

- In Transforming Families, I work with parents and partners of people in transition, and we really go through the experiences related to supporting someone in transition.

People come and they have a space where they feel free and safe to ask the questions that they may not feel comfortable taking to their trans loved one.

And so it serves the community twofold in that it helps the people supporting the person in transition be a better support system.

And it helps the person in transition carry the load because they have a community that can meet them where they're at.

For trans people, community is everything where institutions fail us.

Friends and family save us.

- Social transitioning, it's like a whole revamp, a rebirth and refining of yourself.

Having a community and network is important as part of that, right?

We stand at the intersection of community health and wellness as well as art.

So we create platforms for our community members to creatively express themselves, but we also bring meaningful life resources to the public.

Things around like HIV Prevention, STI awareness and emergency housing.

- You can come to us because we've already navigated the services that we have to navigate to get the resources that we have.

- The LGBT community is one of the most marginalized communities.

These people are reaching out to us.

They don't have food, they don't have housing, they can't get their hormone shots.

That was what prompted us to even launch our emergency housing program.

In that program, we were able to satisfy over 80 trans and/or non-binary community members with 40 of them living on site, and the others receiving resources offsite.

Lots of times we find ourselves stuck in emergency mode, where we're figuring out where we're sleeping, where we're eating, and ultimately that is the barrier to providing the access or opportunity for people to grow.

- We're all like a big family.

Having a space that is ran by Black LGBT folks for Black LGBT people is just powerful to me.

There's still a lot of race within the community as well.

Having these spaces for us by us, it allows us to help our community in the way that we know best, to educate folks on who we are, how we want to, so that our narratives are not changed for other people.

- Transition goes on and on and on.

People would always ask me like, are you sure you want to do this?

Like as if it was a hair color.

It wasn't a decision, it was an imperative.

It was do this or suffer.

Early on, I asked myself, what are you willing to lose?

And I answered, everything.

And that was really hard.

And I told my partner about it.

I said, this is where I am now.

I'm going to live my life as a female, and I want you to be with me.

I want you to come along for this ride, I love you.

If you can't do it, I understand, if you can, thank God.

I had that same guiding principle with my employer.

The same thought with family members.

My mother was sick.

Everyone knew that my mom was heading towards death.

I decided I needed to come out to my mom.

I needed to share this with her.

And so I came out to her one day, and she was concerned.

She said to me, first off, your life's gonna be hard.

And I said, mom, my life is already hard.

It's going to be different.

I'm gonna face different challenges.

She was in my corner almost immediately.

One morning I was with my mom and she was in her hospital bed and grabbed my hand and said, I wish I would've seen this in you earlier.

And she called me her beautiful daughter.

This is three days before she passed.

And I assured her that she had been an amazing parent.

I assured her that she had done everything right.

I said to her, you made me the man I was and the woman I'm becoming.

And it was true.

(inspiring music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible with major funding from Central Outreach Wellness Center.