Some of you already know me but for those who don’t, my name is Síofra. I’m a 32 year old Trans woman. I was born in NYC and spent the second half of my childhood in Ireland. I’m the founder of TRAN for NY and I work full time as a community organiser. I have a hard time talking to people (even those closest to me) about my financial struggles, but this week I learned that I will soon lose access to my housing, and I need help. I grew up in an unstable & often abusive home environment where housing & food insecurity were essentially a fact of life. I’ve worked extremely hard to try and find some amount of financial stability, while sharing what resources I do have with those around me. I have often given my last dollar away to my sisters because I believe deeply that our community is the only source of support that many of us have. In addition to working 80+ hour weeks on community mutual aid, for the past few months I’ve also been working towards three gender affirming procedures I hope to undergo this year, including a necessary revision to my Facial Feminisation Surgery from last year. Typically the amount of income I receive through grant funding for mutual aid work is at most a few dollars an hour. I am living at the very edge of my means and have struggled to keep current on rent and bills. Now, not because of my ability to pay rent but instead because I was taken advantage of and lied to by people I trusted, I’m facing even more financial insecurity and a very real potential for houselessness. This is something I have not experienced in several years and had hoped never to find myself faced with again. In the last few years I have experienced intimate partner violence, emotional & financial abuse, housing insecurity, food insecurity, sexual assault and a laundry list of other compounding traumas. It has been a difficult few years for me. I’ve struggled a lot to speak about it, and I am still struggling now. I want nothing more than to be able to get through the next year without constant fear. I want to finish off my major gender affirming procedures in as stable an environment as I can. I want to have the freedom to cement T.R.A.N. for NY as the important community resource that I know it has been and can continue to be. So much of what I want for myself and this community feels very nearly within reach but with this most recent setback I feel more powerless than ever. I have extremely complicated feelings about asking for community support. Unfortunately, recent events haven’t left me with a lot of options. I’m hoping to raise around $8,000 to allow me to find safe housing, cover my moving expenses, and help pay some of my rent as I recover from multiple surgeries. This will simultaneously allow me to continue building on my mutual aid work, giving me the space I need to work on making it sustainable long term (creating a path towards a living wage for myself and sustainable growth for the collective). My work over the last year and a half has changed my life. I am beyond grateful for the community it has helped me to build and the people who it has brought into my life. Thank you for reading and for helping me to feel held through all of this. I love each and every one of you.
Artículos relacionados
