LISA SALAZAR — BLOG

Based on a 2014 survey, this essay revisits what trans lives reveal about inner life and spiritual endurance at a time of renewed religious hostility. In the fall of 2014, I set out to ask a deceptively simple question: what does spirituality actually look like in the lives of transgender people?

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.

“No one should lose their child so that someone else can feel more comfortable in their fear.” What might be coming down the tracks as we look toward the dawning of a new day?

Why I No Longer Pray: This reflection isn’t a rejection of awe, gratitude, or the Sacred. It’s an honest exploration of why I’ve stepped away from petitionary prayer and toward reflection, responsibility, and embodied care. I offer it in a spirit of curiosity rather than certainty, and with respect for those whose prayers still sustain them.

  I am generally a calming presence, or so I’m told. I know how to steady a room, how to sit with grief, how to speak softly so others can breathe again. On the surface, I am unshaken. But beneath the surface, the mantle is active, and the lava is hot. Some days, the headlines I read cause tremors in me. The Supreme Court.  The GOP.   The Conservatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The endless cycle of “protecting children” that somehow always means coming after people like me. The slogans engineered to ignite panic. The campaigns that treat our existence as if it were a cautionary tale. I see it. I feel it. I hold it. But I do not explode. Not yet. I have lived in Canada since 1973, and I was almost twenty-four. But I was already sixty-three when the DSM was revised in 2013, and being trans was finally removed from the category of mental disorders. Forty years earlier, in 1973, the year I arrived in Canada, Sexual Orientation had been removed. It took four ...

  ...And My Life Under Three Flags — My father’s story begins long before mine, obviously, but in many ways, it was already writing the script for who I would become, not just as his child, but as a trans woman who would one day have to find her own voice against the quiet pressures of conformity. His choices, his silences, and his small acts of defiance shaped more than our family’s path across borders; they became part of the map I would one day follow to claim my own existence.

On October 16, 2025, Statistics Canada released a report titled "Socioeconomic outcomes of transgender and non-binary people in Canada." It's the first comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic outcomes of transgender and non-binary people in Canada, using 2021 Census data. The findings are stark. They reveal not isolated gaps, but a clear pattern of systemic inequity.

Behind the memes and the politics lies something heartbreakingly simple: a generation of young men who feel like they’ll never have a future.

  This was a Facebook post from August 20, in response to a well-intentioned pastor offering her interpretation on minor inconveniences. It was bullshit with a cherry on top.

  On August 15, 2025, the YouTube channel "Breaking Bread" published a video titled "Female Trump Voters Shocked to Realize They Voted on End Women's Rights." What follows is a tragicomedy that practically writes itself: MAGA women suddenly realizing the men they’ve elevated are openly plotting to strip them of the very rights they take for granted.

  In January 2017, Avery Jackson appeared on the cover of National Geographic. Just nine years old, they declared to the world, “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.” For a moment, it felt like the future might finally open with hope for trans kids everywhere. Avery’s face shone as a symbol of possibility, and their family stood courageously behind them.

We struggle to find words that ring true, so we can make sense of our existence. Then we end up arguing about the words. On Threads, a story drew both praise and fury. A woman,  nomadnovelswithtea , described stepping in when police arrested her 18-year-old neighbour, a young man with mental health struggles. She calmed him, spoke to the officers, and went home safely. Why? Because she was white.  “My whiteness allowed me to speak to him and for me to speak to the police without me getting arrested,”  she wrote.

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.

Originally preached in 2017; revised in light of new insights from Terror Management Theory. When fingers cross and we say “God forbid,” what are we really protecting — God’s realm or our own sense of control? Two words that have policed countless bodies and identities under the guise of holiness. But what if the real scandal isn’t our embodiment, but grace itself?

Recently, a high school classmate of mine posted a meme on Facebook that he must have thought was clever. It read:  “Liberalism is when you think injecting cattle with hormones is evil... but injecting kids with hormones to change their gender is just fine.”  He meant it as a joke, but I felt more sadness than outrage. Not because I expect everyone to understand the complexities of gender-affirming care, but because this kind of mockery reduces a deeply personal, often life-saving medical decision to a punchline. That meme prompted me to revisit an essay on Medium.com, titled "HRT Rewires the Brain: The Neuroscience of Transition." It was written by Kira Ry, a trans woman, psychologist, and parent of two children. I’ve revised and expanded it here, blending in my own reflections and lived experience, not to argue with my classmate, but to offer a compassionate, informed, and honest picture of what hormone therapy actually means for trans people, children, youth, and ...

  Content Note:   This reflection includes mention of past sexual violence and gender-based trauma, and death by suicide. Please take care while reading. Living Openly, Growing Weary I live openly as a trans woman. I have for nearly two decades. I am not hiding. I do not lie about who I am. And I am not ashamed. I live in Canada, but grew up in San Jose, CA. And while I am grateful for the life I’ve built, I would be lying if I said I’m not growing weary. A Gathering Storm It’s not any one thing that weighs on me — it’s the convergence of so many. The political climate. The chilling laws being passed across borders. The ease with which people talk about us as if we are problems to be solved, threats to be managed, or ideologies to be banned. All of which has led to a rising sense of vigilance — a low-grade hum of alertness I’ve carried for years, now amplified by headlines and policies that feel like erasure by design. “Who gets to decide who matters?” Even seemingly unrelated...

A Reflection on Fear, Control, Transphobia and the Illusion of Certainty The recent surge in anti-trans rhetoric has left many asking, “Why so much now?” For me, the answer keeps circling back to something deeply human: our need for certainty in the face of fear. Especially fear of death, of change, of losing identity. In my studies as a Spiritual Health Practitioner, I’ve come across a psychological framework that helped everything click:  Terror Management Theory  (TMT), [1]—the idea that much of our behaviour is driven by our need to fend off the reality of our mortality. Terror Management Theory and Transphobia TMT was inspired by the work of cultural anthropologist and philosopher  Ernest Becker , whose Pulitzer Prize–winning book  The Denial of Death  argued that much of human behaviour is driven by our fear of mortality. Becker suggested that we construct cultural worldviews—religious doctrines, national identities, moral codes, to give life meaning and t...