LISA SALAZAR — BLOG

Photo: The glowing screen of my laptop displaying the Facebook post that inspired this essay. A reminder that existence is not an argument. It is lived. On how a quiet truth can unsettle those who haven’t yet faced their own. The post was about the Williams Institute’s recently updated data showing that approximately 2.8 million Americans identify as transgender. The post was gentle in its simplicity. It did not petition, persuade, or defend. It only acknowledged that trans people are here, and have always been here, woven into the ordinary life of the nation.

A Life Behind the Fence, My Journey Toward Self-Acceptance AI-generated image of how I felt growing up What happens when the loudest voices in your life are the ones inside your own head?  The Muddle Huddle is a distilled memoir of inner conflict, dogged questioning, and the long road to self-acceptance. Through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and storytelling, I revisit the voices that shaped, and often silenced, my journey as a trans woman. But this isn’t just a trans story. It’s a shared human one, about what it means to make peace with yourself, one truth at a time. This piece was inspired by a poem I wrote for a 2017 NYT feature on Trans Lives; I adapted it for the Prologue below.

Disgust is a deeply human emotion. At its core, it has helped us survive—steering our ancestors away from rotting food, diseased bodies, and potential threats. But as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio program  IDEAS  recently explored, disgust is more than a survival mechanism. It is also a double-edged sword, wielded by cultures, religions, and politics to define morality, enforce social norms, and exclude those deemed “other.” The  IDEAS  episode titled  Disgust: The Good and Evil  shed light on the complexity of disgust and its troubling potential to drive prejudice. Experts discussed how this visceral emotion, while rooted in evolutionary necessity, often misfires, turning instinct into irrationality. As a trans woman, I have experienced firsthand how disgust can be weaponized—how it fuels transphobia and justifies the dehumanization of people like me. This is not just a personal reflection but a societal challenge: to confront the ways...

What I’ve Learned from Science, History, Personal Experiences, and Meeting Other Trans Persons. Just like anyone diagnosed with a medical condition, I’ve dedicated significant time to educating myself about my reality as a trans person. Over the years, I’ve explored and contemplated my not-so-unique situation, accumulating valuable insights and personal experiences. Let me share what I’ve learned and discovered along the way. This knowledge has brought peace to my soul. Scientific evidence increasingly underscores what many have experienced and understood anecdotally: being transgender is not a choice, but rather a deeply ingrained aspect of identity. Some transgender individuals, who have participated in neuroimaging studies, such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), assert the presence of a "gender identity nugget" deep within the brain. This nugget seemingly signals gender identity, much like a fish instinctively understands the concept of water. The majority o...