One of the attendees of our residential wrote a beautiful poem, which they are happy for us to share:

And they are like the extended family,
You only ever meet on special occasions.
The kind who need a little patience,
To adjust their voices,
As they crackle,
And wobble,
And jump higher than intended,
When a sneeze,
Or a laugh escapes from their bodies.
Their faces are beginning to take on,
Facial hair,
Sprouting in patches,
As their body shifts,
Into something they can live in.
Something they can breathe in.
Voice settling in chests,
And projected into rooms,
Where they are finally heard,
Considered and respected too.
It is the trans women able to gush,
About flowing dresses,
And adjusting bra straps,
Walking in heels,
That they were born to walk in.

It is a room of young and old,
Everything in between,
Where non binary peoples,
Pronouns are never questioned,
And everybody fits in!
It is a room where laughter echoes,
Top-tips are swapped,
And everybody has company.
The weekend in this room,
Stretches into other parts of the building too.
Annexes filled with noise,
From a voice coach and her students.
Rooms where feelings are never skirted around,
But rather welcomed into the room.
Validated,
Reassured,
And broke down,
Echoes of “You can do that!”,
And explanations of “this is how-“.
It is a building,
Where people slink off to bedrooms,
For time to decompress,
A day of being believed in,
Understood,
And their identities aren’t put to test.
It is a place,
For trans women,
To sit with cuppas,
And breathe.
A place for non binary people,
To express themselves openly.
Pronoun badges,
Preventing the repeated,
“It’s they/them please!”.
It is surrounded by nature,
By long stretches of canals,
For trans men to wander around,
In groups,
Like the childhood they never had,
Of just being young goofy lads.

It is a safe bubble,
A break from a world,
Where nobody quite understands,
The waiting lists stunt every plan,
And the windows,
Seem to rattle,
And the doors seem to crash,
And the walls begin to close in,
And you think there’s no helping hand.
It’s a place to stay,
Safe from the storm.
To recharge,
Before going back out,
Into the big wide world.
Saying:
“This is me.
And it is exactly who,
I was supposed to be.”