"This is not a moment, it's a movement"

Please sign the WHO petition here.

I live at the confluence of two great rivers in the middle of the United States. The Missouri river and the Mississippi river. The Mississippi passes by my home a mere 2 miles away. At this point in its journey it is a wide muddy constant in our lives. It seems timeless. But as the Indigo Girl’s sing, “the Mississippi’s mighty, but it starts in Minnesota, at a place that you could walk across, with five steps down.”

I reflected on the Mississippi over the past few days as I watched people mobilize, meet, create letters, and a petition in response to the WHO. The petition is linked above.

Some of you who might read this were there at the start of this movement, when this river was once a small stream. Many of you knew the river existed but never saw it, or were not yet ready to gaze out or even throw in your own stone. We felt fear, or confusion, or a lack of connections.

Some of us had a perilous path to reach this place, bodies scarred, careers destroyed, families torn apart.

2024 begins, and this river has already traveled hundreds of miles from its start. We have a long way to go.

The waters we are going to travel down in 2024 will require different kinds of work. We need to build organizations that have layers, boards that can raise money, leaders that can be humble yet brave.

We will need collaboration and confidence. We need to mature past the point of being thankful that we are no longer alone. We need to continue to welcome those who worked in this industry and our now ready to blow the whistle. We need to build real detransition medical protocols and supports. We need to continue to build new LGBT organizations like this coalition. We know that the goals are many for 2024.

But today is for reflection.

Today we wake up into this new year.

Today is for gratitude of those who have been in this for miles already.

Today is for really simply asks before we set out again. Today simply sign a petition, share a substack, like a tweet, and begin to think about the tomorrow.

Think about the great mighty river, which would be nowhere without all of the tributaries that flow into it. A movement which would be nowhere without each contributing drop, without each of you.