Donate for my Friend's Life-Changing Surgery

We’re almost there. My husband has spent his entire life fighting for the chance to live in a body that feels like home. After eight years of medical transition and setbacks, we’ve saved everything we can, but we still need help covering the final stage. We’re asking for your support to raise $20,000 for life-changing gender-affirming surgery, recovery travel, and housing. Every dollar brings us closer to peace, health, and finally being able to live without pain.

Note: This fundraiser is being managed anonymously by a trusted friend to protect our privacy. All funds go directly toward my husband’s surgery and related expenses.

My husband is a kind, intelligent man with a stocky build and a great smile. If you met him, you’d instantly know how lucky I am. What you wouldn’t know is that he was born with a condition that remains misunderstood medically, socially, and legally. Some call it transgenderism or transsexualism, or simply being trans.

From the time he was a toddler, my husband knew something wasn’t right with his body. At five years old, he told his parents he would not grow up to be a woman as they expected, but a man. They refused to believe him. Worse, they denied him healthcare and subjected him to abuse in a violent, fundamentalist Evangelical household. Forced to live the wrong life, he did whatever he could to survive.

At 19, he was finally able to begin hormone therapy. For the first time, he felt like himself. Some of his constant anxiety lifted, but his body still needed healing. Gender-affirming surgeries, expensive and often not fully covered by insurance, were the only path forward.

He has spent the last eight years working toward that goal. Together, we've lost friends and family because they were abusive and did not accept us. In order to even maintain contact with them, let alone receive any hope of support from them, we would have had to give up our identities, values, and autonomy, and instead hand control over our lives to them. And so we left for our own safety. We've faced homelessness and fled an oppressive red state in our search for safety. But we’ve made it through, and we’ve completed all but one final surgery.

Now, we are so close. We have stable housing, a surgical date, and a trusted surgeon in San Francisco who offers the procedure he needs. We’ve saved $8,000 toward the cost, but we’re still short of what we need to make this happen.

This 2-stage surgery is across the country and tremendously expensive. We’re asking for your help in raising $20,000 to cover the remaining expenses: surgery costs, travel, and lodging near the surgeon during recovery. The exact amount we’ll need depends on whether both stages can be completed within one insurance year, but we can’t let this opportunity slip away. Surgery dates book up months and even years in advance.

We’re doing everything we can, but right now, we’re out of options that don’t involve delaying this essential care.

Every single dollar brings us closer to peace, health, and a future where my husband no longer has to fight just to exist in his own body.

Please consider chipping in. No amount is too small. And if you’re unable to donate, sharing our story would still mean the world to us.

From the bottom of our hearts—thank you.