Foreword: Who’s Not Viewed or Voiced
Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) celebrates the lives, creativity, and resilience of trans and nonbinary people. While the day honors visibility, it also calls attention to the disproportionate challenges trans communities face, especially in a time of increasing political attacks and discrimination.
Started in 2010 by Rachel Crandall, TDOV was a response to media narratives that focused only on violence and tragedy. Her vision was simple but powerful: a day on which trans people could be celebrated, not just mourned.
At AWAB, we wanted to join in that celebration by uplifting the voices of trans and nonbinary members in our association. This project features reflections, stories, and creative offerings from nine courageous creators each channeling something sacred, vulnerable, and true. We are deeply grateful.
We also want to name what’s missing.
This year ’ s submissions come largely from white contributors. While their offerings are important, we know that Black trans women and femmes—those most impacted by systemic violence are often the least represented. We cannot grow if we are unwilling to name where we fall short.
As we envision the future of this publication and of our collective work at AWAB, we remain committed to making space for those voices. And while they may not be present in these pages, we honor them by uplifting Black trans-led organizations doing transformative work in our communities today. (Page 2)
Visibility is not just about who is seen it’s about who we choose to center.
In Solidarity,
8 Black Trans Organizations You Can Support Today
The Okra Project
A collective that addresses food insecurity and mental health within the Black trans community. They provide free, home-cooked meals and fund mental health sessions for Black trans individuals.
Website: https://www.theokraproject.com
Brave Space Alliance
Chicago’s first Black and trans-led LGBTQ+ center. They offer food and housing support, job readiness, health resources, and culturally competent services. Website: https://www.bravespacealliance.org
Black Trans Travel Fund
A grassroots initiative that helps Black trans women travel safely by providing funds for transportation, reducing exposure to harm. Website: https://www blacktranstravelfund com
For The Gworls
A collective that raises funds to help Black trans people pay for rent, gender-affirming surgeries, and travel to medical appointments, often through community-centered parties Website: https://www.forthegworls.com
Black Trans Advocacy Coalition (BTAC)
A national organization focused on housing, employment, healthcare, and education equity for Black trans people through advocacy, training, and direct support. Website: https://blacktrans org
G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society)
Founded by Ceyenne Doroshow, G.L.I.T.S. creates housing and healthcare solutions for Black trans folks, with a focus on long-term, sustainable support Website: https://www.glitsinc.org
Sisters PGH
A Black trans-led nonprofit based in Pittsburgh that offers housing support, advocacy, and direct services for trans and nonbinary people, especially those experiencing homelessness. Website: https://www.sisterspgh.org
Black Trans Futures
An initiative that amplifies and funds Black trans-led organizing, wellness, and communitybuilding projects across the country. Website: https://www queer-art org/black-trans-futures
About “Viewed & Voiced” Submissions
The submissions in Viewed and Voiced are presented just as their creators shared them with us. AWAB has not edited or altered any of the content because this is a celebration of trans and non-binary expression in its purest, most honest form.
Names and pronouns are listed exactly as requested by each contributor
We invite you to set aside expectations of grammar, structure, or formatting, and instead engage with these offerings as what they are art. Art that invites reflection. Art that opens us up to feeling. Art that, in its rawness, helps us discover more about ourselves and one another.
We hope you leave this publication feeling seen, stirred, and inspired—and that you’ll consider adding your voice next year, as AWAB continues the work of ensuring that all queer siblings, especially the least visible among us, are truly Viewed and Voiced.
In December 2024, I needed two things: a design for a bookplate to mark the books in my collection, and a reminder that hope is not only possible, but obligatory "Dreaming of Atlantis" is both. From its origins in the Bronze Age collapse through myriad storiessome philosophical, some more action-driven - to the conspiracy theorists of the present day, the myth of Atlantis has an enduring staying power. The myth of the Lost City - that once, there was a place where everything was better - resonates with people.We all like to imagine that people can be good, that society can be just and compassionate and prosperous, but the world around us often does its best to dispel that notion. So we look to the past, thinking that we've fallen from great heights to become what we are today. (Fallen with a capital F, perhaps.) In "Dreaming of Atlantis," I chose to reimagine the Atlantis myth in the reverse direction, to conceptualize Atlantis as something yet to be: the kingdom of God. Jesus spoke often of the kingdom of God in His earthly ministry, and in his interrogation by Pilate in the Gospel of John, states: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36, NET) My belief is that the "kingdom" in question isn't a state as we think of them, or any other structure of power, but rather a way of living There is - there must be - a place where human beings act with justice, with compassion, and where they prosper for it And that place is anywhere and everywhere where we dare to be the kingdom of God. That lost Atlantis, that new Jerusalem.
Old Cambridge Baptist Church
Dreams of Atlantis
“Theimageisthebookplatedesignincorporatingthepoem.Itdepictsahuman eye,withthetextof"DreamingofAtlantis"writteninadensespiralformingthe iris,andafuturistic,floatingcityfillingtheeye'spupil.It'sintendedtoconveythe
Morgan Guyton aka Starchild Druid
They/Them
Williamsburg Baptist Church
Starchild (they/them) is a queer autistic somatic psychotherapist, poet, musician, and ex-pastor. They have three poetry books: Becoming God (2022), Almah (2023), and Shipwrecked Viking (forthcoming, 2025). Their music album Dolly For President (2023) is available on all streaming platforms.
Their new music album Butterfly will release May 17th, 2025 on all streaming platforms. They believe that the second coming of Jesus can be found among the weird kids who don’t fit in with empire
Click Here to Listen to Starchild’s song “People Who Are Strange Are Not Unsafe
“Messiah”
A poem from Startchild about Jesus as a trans man with no human Y chromosomes
My messiah is exactly the kind of man you’d expect without a human Y chromosome: offensively delightful; utterly
gorgeous when he’s angry; a carpenter’s hands with fingers soft enough to open eyes that were blind from birth;
every movement of his muscles a dance in which he retunes the wavelengths of the energy around him
so when he tells a mountain to throw itself into the sea, it obeys him casually as though the universe were his poetry;
“Messiah”
the way his eyes shift so quickly from fierce to delightful like a child who is also the ancestor; his chocolate skin when he swims in the nude with his fishermen friends and when he hunches over a fire, his muscles glistening as he makes breakfast like the mother hen he always talks about being, especially while chasing the street children around in made up games that proper rabbis don’t play with children.
Men with human fathers understand that religion is serious business that has nothing to do with children
who are born totally depraved and need to have their wills broken by fathers who are not afraid to use the rod.
But some men don’t have rods and children know instinctively they are safe with them because children are the ones
who know the way to heaven, which is what he tells us all the time as he sits with half a dozen little bodies climbing all over him, their mothers knowing he will never harm them because they see the way he talks to animals and the ferocity with which he denounces the powerful whenever they trample on his little ones, being himself
a shepherd who walks like a young lamb in adolescent confidence entirely synchronized with ancestral wisdom as though
true wisdom never ages but only grows in its prankish myrth so the highest enlightenment is to become a child at play
The best moments of my many lifetimes have been lying next to the fire with his arms around me as we gaze into
eternity together without words. And in those moments, I feel his heartbeat in my body and I know I am the disciple whom Jesus loves.
willlow carter
She/Her/Hers
Calvary Baptist Church of Denver
willow carter is a trans woman and Master of Divinity student at Iliff School of Theology. In this piece—an adapted version of her final paper for a theology course she explores the metaphors of resurrection and transition, and how our understanding of one can shape the meaning of the other.
resurrection is transition, transition is resurrection
McFague describes a metaphor as “ a strategy of desperation, not decoration; it is an attempt to say something about the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, an attempt to speak about what we do not know in terms of what we do know” (McFague 33). When looking at the key Christian metaphor of resurrection, tension emerges from the fact that mortal humans have little familiarity or knowledge with the process of dying and rising again from the dead We are left with uncertainty as to how resurrection actually occurs–does one return in the same body, a transformed/perfected one, or a new body entirely? Is the process an immediate one-time event, or a long and gradual one?
The resurrection of Christ, the primary pattern upon which the eventual resurrection of humanity would be modeled, is told in several conflicting ways. In John’s telling of the Gospel story, a key part of the narrative is that Jesus rises from the dead in the same injured physical body in which he was crucified and buried – the Apostle Thomas only believes it is truly Christ who has returned when he is able to examine his wounds. “But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe”” (John 20:25, NIV).
The Gospel of Matthew does not give any physical description of Jesus’ resurrected body, and most intriguingly, early versions of the Gospel of Mark do not include an account of the resurrection at all! Versions of Mark that do include a description of the resurrection mention that “Jesus appeared in a different form” to his disciples, indicating that he has risen in a new body (Mark 16:12, NIV). The Gospel of Luke has a unique account where Jesus’ disciples initially “ were kept from recognizing him” when he first reappeared (Luke 24:16, NIV). However, when Jesus identifies himself to his followers, he instructs them to “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39, NIV). While this account parallels the way that John’s Thomas needed a fleshy verification of Jesus’s identity, the focus is just on the presence of the flesh itself–no explicit mention is made of the wounds on the hands or the feet
Over and over again I have been told that part of the process of theological education is to have your faith broken down and rebuilt - an implication that the death and rebirth of your understanding of divinity is a necessary step in the journey of “mastering” it. Jennings speaks of theological education in terms of “formation,” referring to the process of educating people as a “unique dance,” and observes that watching the change in who students are, what they think, and where they direct the attention at the beginning and end of their educational journey is “remarkable, even spiritual” (Jennings 2) While we are often reluctant to speak of higher education in such directly mystical terms, we do treat it as a form of rebirth in the sense that someone emerges from a painful, arduous, passionate(!) process with a new title, capable of holding new positions in society. At an accepted students day for Iliff, I remember being told that the one uniting factor across our scholastic community was an experience of change, of departure, of interruption - of leaving behind a previous career or community, and forging a new path. Our spiritual education is not an instant one, but a process of reinvention that lasts several years as we gradually change some parts of ourselves and retain others.
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Ilán Carlos Pabellón-Román
He/Him/His
Comunidad Mesa
Abierta
This song is to bring hope in times were hope is so hard to find in our community. A time where we are being ambushed from people in position of power.
Let us remember that LOVE prevails. We will not be erased. We are beings of love and as this song reflects, love is in me, love is in you. Love is in each and every one of us. As long as we exist, love exists and as long as love exists, we exist It doesn't matter how dark it is outside, the light of love will never extinguish. ( Original song by Song by Lea Michele)
Josie Zanfordino She, Her, Hers First Baptist Church Ithaca
Your Smile is God’s Smile
When I share a joy you greet me You smile!
When I express a sadness you greet me and offer support. Kind smiles come.
There is no other consistent place in my beautiful queer life that gives so much love and so many smiles
Whether I am speaking at Joys and Concerns or attending a Church meeting, or ushering, or taking minutes. Smiles occur, naturally.
My soul makes me smile often.
I feel you being attentive to my words, my efforts
You hold me tight and affirm me. This beautiful soul feeling. This all loving presence.
You grant me being! Being, as in I am heard and loved. Appreciated.
My friend Margie said, “We need to support each other at this time.”
A resounding “Yes” came into me and I expressed it.
Margie heard me and smiled. Smile now. We understand.
willlow carter
She/Her/Hers
Calvary Baptist Church of Denver
In this second submission, willow carter offers an adapted essay from a Hebrew Bible course in which she presents a transfeminine reading of the prophet Jeremiah. Through this lens, she contextualizes modern queer and trans distress as a prophetic response to structural terror.
jeremiah ��
In Are We Not Men, Graybill begins an examination of the queer embodied nature of prophets in the Hebrew Bible She argues that “prophecy is staged on and through the body, and cannot occur without it,” and that “however much prophecy depends upon the body, it also makes demands upon it” (Graybill 5). Expanding on the relevance of these bodily demands of prophecy, she explains that “prophets do not pass through prophecy unaltered,” giving the specific example that “to read the prophetic narratives with close attention to the body is also to perceive a series of challenges to the norms of masculinity and masculine embodiment” (Graybill 5) Using a queer, and more specifically trans-feminist lens of analysis, Jeremiah’s various confessions and lamentations become not just as a series of challenges to the prophet’s masculine embodiment, but rather as a transfeminine expression of her gender dysphoria. Reading Jeremiah as a trans woman provides a new context for understanding both her embodied and social role, creating the space to recognize modern queer fear and political despair as prophetic.
One of the “challenges” to the prophet’s masculinity that Graybill identifies is the particularly feminine nature of Jeremiah’s lamenting voice. She argues that “the voicing of suffering is typically associated with female speakers. Female vocality is deemed appropriate for grief and lamentation,” that “to vocalize pain and suffering is to use voice as a woman ” (Graybill 78)
One scholar who Graybill references, Barbara Kaiser, takes the argument a bit further - Graybill notes that “Kaiser has argued that the feminine features of prophetic discourse are best understood through the model of the prophet/poet as ‘female impersonator’” (Graybill 79).
Kaiser writes that “Jeremiah becomes the woman Jerusalem experiencing the anguish of childbirth in Jeremiah 4 (echoed in Jeremiah 10),” specifically highlighting the blurred gender and identity boundaries between the prophet and the female personification of Jerusalem (Kaiser 166). Kaiser immediately distances herself from any actual implication of Jeremiah’s gender variance or alternate presentation, but makes the case for why it wouldn’t be out of the question:
“The portrayal of Jeremiah as a "female impersonator" is, of course, a metaphor suggesting that the prophet seriously and deliberately adopts the female persona Jerusalem in his poem in Jer. 4:19-26, 31 and its companion, 10:19-21. But when one is dealing with a prophet who is depicted as walking around the city with an ox yoke on his neck (Jeremiah 27-28) and burying his dirty underwear on the banks of the Euphrates (Jeremiah 13- either a literal or "pretend" Euphrates), it might not be inappropriate to imagine Jeremiah dramatizing his aesthetic identity with Daughter Zion in some equally shocking way ” (Kaiser 174)
An examination of Jeremiah’s complaints allows a queer reading of the text to cast the prophet’s gendered voice and “impersonation” in a more nuanced light. Understanding Jeremiah’s laments as those of a dysphoric trans woman mourning the unjust and hateful society around her creates a path for modern readers to understand contemporary queer distress at political corruption as prophetic insight. In Jeremiah’s vocalizations of distress and suicidality, and most specifically in her repeated regrets about being announced as a boy, trans women can read an eerie reflection of our own experiences of gender dissonance and dysphoria. Reflecting her coming out process, transfeminist scholar Serano describes “the persistent body feelings I experienced that informed me that there was something not quite right with my being physically
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Joel Dugan
He/Him/His
FBC Pottstown
“I use art as therapy. It helps me get the negativity of the side ways looks and under the breath comments and outright disrespect, out of my head When I am creating something I feel a closeness to the Creator in a different and comforting way. It puts me in a place of acceptance, and sometimes that's what you need in order to keep on keeping on. ”
These two paintings were inspired by the poetry of the creation story in Genesis 1
Tohu vavohu, the Hebrew for the wild and waste of the chaotic deep
M'rehephet, the word for the spirit hovering over the waters.
“This
series of sketches depict mother and child. These sketches remind me of how important it is for LGBTQIA kids to have the support of at least one parent.”
– Joel Dugan
According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 25 to 40 percent of LGBTQ+ youth homelessness is driven by family rejection. But as research from The Trevor Project shows, parental acceptance can significantly reduce that risk affirming homes help keep LGBTQ+ youth housed, safe, and supported
Transgender and nonbinary youth who reported high family support had significantly lower rates of suicide attempts (17%) compared to those with low or moderate family support (30%) (The Trevor Project)
Why Did They Sew Me Closed?
This is a strange question for a four year old to ask. And even more so to ask the babysitter.
I didn’t have any sisters. I do not remember ever seeing my mother naked other than when she took off her top when I was 13. And yet this 4 year old child whose best friends on both sides of the house were boys knew that a girl had a vulva and a vagina.
Lorileah Monet She/Her/Hers
First Baptist Denver
How did I know? I could feel the ridge of tissue in the perineal area And in my 4 year old mind, I knew that after surgery you would have a scar. Since I could feel that ridge, I presumed that somehow along the line that I had to have been sewn closed People ask how we knew And all I can say is we know from a very young age that we were born into the wrong body or that there was something wrong. We have this feeling. It’s an intuition if you will, that this is not the correct way we should be. Now I can understand that if I had sisters I may have at one time seen a vulva. But even at four years old, we would not know that our sister had a vagina. We would not know that, in a normal American household, she did not have a penis. Or at least in my world because we ’ re German and we do not discuss bodily functions or body body parts in any manner.
And no, I was not groomed as they say to become who I am. In fact in the real world I was groomed in just the opposite manner. I was told that as a boy I could do what I wished. I could be who I wanted to be. I had power over females. I grew up in an abusive household where my mother was in fear all the time of what my father could do or would do especially when he would been drinking. Now just a side note right here, my father never did anything sexually abusive to me or my brothers. And when I say that, I keep being told by psychology people that we have buried ideas or thoughts. But, I do not ever remember being abused in that manner.
I participated in sports but when guys were pounding their chest or bumping their heads or thumping each other or smacking each other on the ass… I felt nothing. I did not feel the excitement; the power; the rush that they evidently felt. When I did something good in sports, my mind said that’s what you were supposed to do. Not that I am “the man ” ; I am the greatest; I am perfect. Because I was never perfect.
But getting back to the original idea, I remember my first cognizant thought of being transgender even though I didn’t know what the word was at the time. I remember at four years old walking into my babysitter’s house and asking her why did they sew me shut. I also remember my babysitter, Dolly, looking at me with questioning eyes and wondering where that came from. And when she asked what do you mean I said “Right down in between my legs I can feel the Ridge. I can feel the Ridge of skin that I know was where they sewed me closed. Where my opening should be as a girl.”
Now you may ask, and I do ask myself frequently, how does a young boy who has no sisters, whose mother did not ever walk around naked, whose neighbors were boys except for two houses down and I did not see those two girls naked, how did I know? This was 1950s and 60s, so this was not something you saw on TV. My feeling that I had lost my vagina odd. We were young and naïve. We were uneducated in the facts of life especially at a fouryear-old or five year old child
And yet, I remember falling asleep at night and wishing, and praying to God, that I would wake up the next day as a girl Of course it never happened But I did that anyway as a young 4- 5- 6 year old child every night going to bed wishing that in the morning God would make me who I really was. Every morning waking up and finding nothing changed.
When we visited friends with girls, I enjoyed playing with dolls. Given a choice, I usually ended up with the girls because it was more fun.
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“We love you. ”
“We are glad you are here."
Reflections of a Transgender Woman on her Experience at Baptist Church of the Covenant
Elaine Stephens she/her/hers
Where all are welcomed.
Kindness, love, affirmation, acceptance
You’re made in God’s image. There’s room at the table.
Love your neighbor no exceptions
“What can we do to make other transgender people feel welcome?
Dead to my siblings and totally rejected by my children and grandchildren, my family of faith became my chosen family and lifted me up when I was down
“We miss you when you ’ re not in your regular seat.”
“I knew you would not be there today, but I looked for you where you aways sit.”
“If other transgender individuals come to our church, how should we treat them to make them feel welcome?”
Asked to take part in the worship service many times over the years
Asked to take a leadership role and serve on the Staff Committee.
For an AWAB service was asked to read the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch then asked to help serve communion
“I appreciate you because you have helped me accept my transgender cousin.”
“Can we talk sometime? I have a transgender relative, and I am not accepting it well.”
When the President signed the 1st executive order, my pastor texted....” Love you, Mama! Holding you in the light this week ”
Whenthe1stexecutiveorderwassigned,myformerpastortexted....”Didyouknow thatIamprayingforyouwithloveinmyheart?Staygrounded” “Ihavebeenthinkingaboutyouallweek.Youknowyouarelovedbyalotof people”
Andsomanymore!
Reflections of a Transgender Woman on her Experience at Burlington Baptist Church
Dana Weistra She/Her/Hers/Elle
I don’t believe I would be where I am today without the faith in knowing that God loves everyone. After I had transitioned, I would often drive by Burlington Baptist Church before and after work. Every time I passed by, I would feel an enormous feeling inside to stop and enter the church. The feeling was so strong, that one day after coming home I reached out to the pastor, Dave of the church to ask some questions.
We met and after being assured that the church was not only accepting but also affirming, I decided to attend. On a Sunday shortly afterwards, I attended the service. During the service, I began to weep uncontrollably, and members of the church helped me get through a very emotional impactful moment The power of Jesus that day was overwhelming for me, and I felt a huge burden being lifted as I prayed.
Looking back, it’s not the only time I prayed. As a teenager I would often pray that I would wake up “normal” or wake up in a girl’s body, so I could feel at peace. It took me a long time to find that peace. Today I embraced who I was created to be, one of God’s children.
To all the members of the church who supported me through this time in my life by accepting me I owe you all a big, THANK YOU! Knowing that I have allies who will stand up for me when I can’t is comforting and helps make us all stronger.
“This is a series of sketches inspired by a trans kid I mentor. It started as an affirmation of their legal name change to Crow. I know how much just that can improve your mental health. It kind of took off from there.”
Joel Dugan He/Him/His FBC Pottstown
We offer our heartfelt thanks to the nine courageous creators who gave their time, talent, and truth to this publication. Your voices are sacred. Your offerings are powerful. You remind us what it means to be Viewed and Voiced.
SamanthaStarbreaker-Azyl
MorganGuytonakaStarchildDruid
willowcarter
IlánCarlosPabellón-Román
JosieZanfordino
LorileahMonet
JoelDugan
ElaineStephens
DanaWeistra
�� Share It
Pass this along to your church, your friends, and anyone who needs to see trans and nonbinary people held in sacred space
�� Support the Movement
Give to Black trans-led organizations doing life-saving work (see page 2), or make a donation to AWAB to help us continue uplifting queer and trans voices in faith spaces at awab.org/support
�� Start a Conversation
Use the stories, songs, sermons, and art in these pages as reflection prompts in your congregation or small group.
✨ Make Space
Encourage someone in your community to submit next year. Sometimes all it takes is one invitation to help someone feel seen.
⛪ Be the Church That Sees
Let this be the beginning not the end of how we live out visibility, love, and liberation.
The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists