Week 47 - Burnout & Endings

Spoken by Ezrah Sommers for Trans Awareness Week hosted by CAG

There’s this undue pressure on Trans folk. To be the educators, the knowledge holders and act as a monolith for all things trans identity. I’ve seen friends and family suffer from burnout and chronic pain due to this. I’ve seen incredible, bright, young trans youth suffer under the expectations that they must be activists for themselves and all others.

I've seen burnout rampant and destructive. People trying to be everything for everyone. You can't be. You're one person.

There are other people that can and are doing the work you can't. That's okay. You do not have to burn yourself out for your cause, you do not have to grapple with not being enough, you are a person, part of a collective of people who fight for different things.

This Trans Week of Visibility, we have to acknowledge all of the fights for progress and change, but also we have to acknowledge that we cannot be a part of all of it. We have to trust in the people that fight. And support the people that fight. But we cannot be on every front line, all the time.

Today you will here from various Transgender and gender diverse speakers who work on various different fronts of trans liberation.