I'm a trans veteran. Service members like me need a lifeline more than ever.
Loneliness is one of the leading risk factors associated with veteran suicide attempts – especially for LGBTQ+ veterans.
I’m a transgender woman who medically transitioned while on active duty service. But today I logged onto my Veterans Affairs profile and found that I'm now marked as “male” in my medical records.
I’ve gone through worse. I served for 20 years in the Army, first as a repairer on Apache helicopters and then as an Army X-ray technician. While I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and passed away 12 months after I got home, and I became a single parent to our two children.
I was always open about my identity with my family, but in 2016, when President Barack Obama announced that transgender members of the military were allowed to serve openly, I came out to the military. This freedom only lasted a year, when President Donald Trump announced his intention to reverse this policy.
To make matters worse, I was assigned to a base in Missouri, where many people did not welcome me. I was frequently told by fellow soldiers, “Don’t go to this part of town. They’ll kill you.” One day, someone stood in my driveway and shot into my car. My kids were inside the house and witnessed all of it. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.
I know what it feels like to be celebrated as a trans military member. Too many don't.
This was when I found an organization called Community Building Art Works, an arts organization for service members based out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that had recently gone online.
I joined their program More Than One Story, which helps female and nonbinary veterans process and share their stories through writing and art workshops.
Community Building Art Works is one of the first organizations that welcomed me into their community. They didn’t do it because a presidential order or government policy said they had to be inclusive. They did it because a few brave people understood that there is no worse feeling than feeling like you are completely alone. During a time when I had to hide who I was both at work and in my community, they said, “We want you here. We’re glad you’re here.”
In 2021, I traveled to the Military Women’s Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, where our creative writing group was invited to perform a collaborative poem we had written. Not only was it a “pinch me” moment as a transgender woman to be honored at a Women’s Memorial, but it was also the first time I would meet the women from the group in person.
I was the last to arrive. Until the day I die, I will remember walking into the “green room” at the memorial in my service dress uniform. Every single person in the room stood up and applauded me.
Trans veterans are seven times as likely to attempt suicide. They need a lifeline now.
Right now, programs like More Than One Story are essential, as transgender individuals face an unprecedented wave of hate and discrimination. Transgender men and women can have all the representation and support in the world in movies and media, but what matters the most is having someone tell you person-to-person: “Your story matters. You’re important. And you’re not alone.”
This is especially vital for transgender veterans, who are seven times more likely than U.S. civilians to attempt suicide during their lifetime.
Community Building Art Works, like many other arts organizations, is the recipient of a Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant, given to community-based organizations that prevent suicide through innovative and unconventional ways.
Since 9/11, the number of service members and veterans who have died by suicide is four times higher than those lost in combat.
Research has proved that artistic expression can be a powerful deterrent to suicide. Writing programs for veterans have existed since World War II to help service members make sense of their military experience.
They work: One review of 31 scientific studies found that creative writing significantly improved depressive symptoms.
Inevitably, many programs that serve transgender individuals will lose their government funding over the next four years. This is a tragedy. Loneliness is one of the leading risk factors associated with veteran suicide attempts – especially for LGBTQ+ veterans.
Programs that combat these feelings of loneliness, through the arts and other unconventional ways, are lifelines.
The freedom to be who you are is incredibly powerful. For a brief period in my military service, I was fortunate enough to have that freedom. So many who are serving right now don’t.
That ongoing freedom is under dire threat for those serving openly and for those who are enrolled with the VA. I’m so afraid that bigotry and loneliness will push them to the edge, and no one will be there to save them.
They can’t speak up, but I can.
Alleria Stanley is a retired U.S. Army servicemember, advocate and member of the LGBTQ+ community. She is a board member of Transgender American Veterans Association.