This last year has been one of great challenge, change, grief, growth & struggle for me. I’m finally coming to the point to ask publicly for the help & support I need, and to tell my story in hopes of it resonating with folx who may be willing/able to help me via financial support, connections, advice, resources & moral support while I work on moving some some imperative and time sensitive processes forward.

Something in particular I have not addressed publicly yet is the loss of my beloved Mom last August, and the overwhelming struggles I’ve been experiencing as a result.

More details about this below, and right now I am in a crisis moment, as her house in VA is going up for auction THIS WEEK unless I pay the backlogged delinquent mortgage payments in full. I also need to get everything out of her house in VA and into storage here in NC. I may be able to get a small amount of life insurance money, as well as doing an estate sale, neither of which will provide the necessary money in time to keep the house off the auction block, or pay for the moving and storage of generations of family heirlooms, art & keepsakes in time.

I also learned in the last week that my current work-trade housing arrangement will be coming to an end in a few weeks, and I will need to move (likely twice in the next few months) and start paying rent imminently. My finances are very tight as it is with my everyday life expenses, so I am asking for help.

In 2024 I was laid off from the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention lifeline for queer and trans youth, and have since been experiencing a great deal of instability around my own mental health (Autistic Burnout resulting in extreme executive dysfunction, crippling anxiety, functional freeze, self isolation, chronic pain & exhaustion as well as intense seasonal depression). With all of that, I have been struggling with financial & housing instability, showing up in relationships as I would like & overall existential crisis that has been building around how to move forward in the current socio-political climate, as well as what my future looks like facing especially complicated life circumstances.

About a year before my Mom’s passing she experienced the trauma of witnessing the murder of my step-father, her husband with whom she had been partnered for 15 years. Subsequently his estranged adult children contested his Last Will & Testament, in which the entirety of his estate would’ve been left to my Mom, resulting in a protracted legal battle, which continued until her death, and continues to date, which I am now responsible for.

As my Mom’s sole heir, one might think that the process of claiming her life insurance and becoming administrator of her estate (her house, land, and beautiful collections from her life and the last 3 generations of her family) would be a very straight-forward process, alas, it has been frustratingly complicated, and now a full 8 months after her passing, I have still not managed either, which is why I am here, hat in hand, asking for help.

The life insurance company required a death certificate in order for my claim to be finalized, and hence I was unable to use that money to pay the funeral home, and the funeral home would not file to have a death certificate issued until I chose a cremation plan and paid for it in full.

It came to the point where they essentially were holding my mom’s remains hostage, threatening to turn her body over to the county as “an unclaimed corpse” to be anonymously cremated in the county crematorium. It was an almost six week long back & forth process with the funeral home to finally move her cremation forward. I was in a position of having no savings, and just enough paid work to make ends meet.

I am forever grateful do my dear godmother (whom I have always called aunt), a lifelong bestie of my mom’s, who stepped up to loan me the money needed to pay the fee for the cremation. For a brief time I thought that things were finally settled things with the funeral home, with the death certificate and life issuance pending.

At this point Hurricane Helen hit, ravaging Western North Carolina (and other parts of the region). I awoke the morning after to find that the creek that runs through the gorgeous property where I had just moved in two days prior had gone from about 20 feet wide to 500+ feet wide, and there was 4+ feet of raging floodwater churning in the basement beneath my room. Power was out for weeks, cell signal was spotty and internet access was hit or miss, water was either out or unusable for months and mail service unreliable.

Eventually I received official copies of the death certificates in the mail, and found that they were improperly filed. In my interactions with the funeral home, as problematic as they were, everyone involved always used my proper name & pronouns. I got reassurance that my legal name would be used on all official documents, so one can imagine my shock when, ironically, the first government issued document to ever have my proper name on it was my Mom’s death certificate, rendering it inadmissible to courts and institutions, as no one by that name legally exists. Thus I have spent the last 9 months unable to access my mom’s assets, reliably pay her bills & mortgage, or get the deed to her house & land transferred to my name.

I am transgender. I’ve known this since I was 4 years old, and it took me almost 2 decades to come back to that realization & after coming out in my early 20’s and then going back in the closet for my own safety in a years long abusive relationship, I finally came out, stayed out, and have been living my authentic truth around this for many years since. I was, and am extremely lucky & blessed to have felt safe & brave enough to come out to both of my parents & for them to have been very supportive & accepting of me since.

I have not, however, in the many years I have been out, gone through the process of a legal name change. Over the years I have refined & gotten accustomed to a pretty standard script when dealing with administrative/legal processes explaining that the name on my ID is for legal purposes only. Folx in official positions have generally respected my proper name & pronouns, as well as done well to keep private my legal name in work environments & the like. Now however, I am embrangled in the process of figuring out how to prove that I am am who I say I am, that my legal name & chosen/proper name do in fact belong to the same person.

I have majorly isolated these last months (aside from being in the most amazing community choir ever! As well as the deep support from my partner & landmate Geri, who has been holding so much of this with me). This missive is an attempt to shift out of isolation and into the arms of my broader community. Please give in accordance to your abundance and share widely.