Holding On and Showing Up: Resilience Ahead of Pride
This year has felt heavier than most. I don't think I need to spell out exactly what's been happening, if you're trans, or close to someone who is, you've likely felt it too, that particular kind of tiredness that comes from watching the ground shift under things you thought were settled. And still, Saturday, I'll be at London Trans Pride, and so, I suspect, will a lot of you.
Why this kind of period might land the way it does
One framework that may help make sense of this is the minority stress model. It suggests that much of the mental health toll carried by trans people isn't rooted in being trans itself, but in external stressors, things like discrimination, non-affirmation, and the anticipation of exclusion, alongside more internal responses like bracing for the next difficult headline or conversation. Some research distinguishes between these as distal stressors, the external events themselves, and proximal stressors, the internalised vigilance and anticipation that can build up around them, sometimes even without a new event triggering it each time.
Seen this way, feeling drained or on edge lately isn't a sign of coping badly. It may be closer to a reasonable, fairly well-documented response to sustained external pressure, one that a lot of people are quietly carrying at the same time.
One way of thinking about resilience
Resilience itself gets talked about a lot, sometimes in ways that can feel like a demand rather than a support, as though the expectation is simply to keep enduring. One framework in psychology, sometimes called the Transgender Resilience Intervention Model, suggests something a little different: that resilience for trans people tends to draw on a mix of individual, community, and social resources, rather than being purely an internal trait some people have and others don't. Interestingly, some research also suggests that community connectedness may help buffer minority stress specifically, which is part of why community spaces, like Pride, may matter more than they might first appear to.
Within that body of research, community connection and social support appear repeatedly as one of the stronger correlates of resilience for trans and gender-diverse people, alongside things like identity pride and a sense of belonging. It's worth being honest, too, that some of this research also points to resilience carrying its own cost, the effort of continuing to show up and cope isn't free, even when it looks steady from the outside. So if you've felt tired underneath the "holding it together," that's not a sign you're doing resilience wrong. It may just be what resilience often actually costs.
What that might look like in practice
Showing up somewhere that already gets it. Community connection is one of the more consistently supported protective factors in this research, not just a nice-to-have.
Letting joy exist alongside the difficulty. Some writing on this frames shared joy, dancing, celebrating, simply existing loudly together, as a form of resistance in itself, not a distraction from what's hard.
Naming the tiredness rather than performing okay-ness. Resilience research increasingly separates "coping well" from "not struggling at all," they aren't the same thing.
Choosing your people intentionally. Chosen family and community ties seem to matter as much as, sometimes more than, formal support systems.
Allowing rest as part of the resilience, not a break from it. Sustained coping seems to depend on this rather than working against it.
Where this leaves me
I don't have a tidy answer for how to feel about the last few months. What I do have is Saturday, and the people who'll be there. If any part of this has been hard for you too, I hope you find your way to somewhere, or someone, that holds some of it with you. That, more than any single piece of advice, seems to be what actually helps.