Help a Trans Woman Become a Therapist
Donation protected
My name is Kylie, and I'm currently on a break from training to be a therapist. In addition to the rising costs of school, in order to complete the education and become licensed, I am required to complete a full-year unpaid internship (while also taking classes). This means I won't be able to work full-time that year, and so to become a therapist, I need to save up for a year's expenses in my pricey city.
This is why it is extra difficult for people like myself, a trans woman who grew up in rural poverty, with no access to wealth, to become licensed therapists and provide much-needed mental health care. With multiple intersecting marginalized identities, the very life experiences that would add to my competence as counselor working with under-served clients also hinder my material ability to become licensed.
My plan was to take time off, get a higher paying job, and save up to be able to do the internship. While that is very much still my plan, I realized, in light of the current political reality, that I could ask my community to help speed up that plan. Saving on my own will take several years in its own right, followed by another two years of school and internship. But by asking for help from my community, I could become a practitioner before the current president leaves office. With your help, I'll be able to help others in need much sooner.
More about me
I’m a 32-year old bisexual, Jewish, and neurodivergent trans woman. I grew up in a trailer home in the woods, before moving to public housing in a small city as a pre-teen. In addition to poverty, I experienced multiple “adverse childhood experiences,” including watching my parents’ abusive relationship dynamic, and experiencing physical and emotional abuse and neglect myself while being homeschooled by my mother. I recognized that education could be an escape route, and after starting at a public high school worked to be an A student, getting into an upper-echelon college that would be able to give me a near-full scholarship. My mother, in her own words, “tried to squash the femininity out” of me; additionally, in poverty, I had minimal access to health care. With both of these factors, it wasn’t until after college that I allowed myself to be myself and started getting medical care as a trans woman. I’m also a survivor of both childhood sexual assault, and, as an adult, sexual assault in the context of intimate partner violence.
Needless to say, I spent much of my 20s undergoing my own healing journey. During that time, I got a Masters in Museum Education, where I began studying the potential for museums for wellbeing and mental health, in particular the therapeutic benefits of art interpretation. As an adult educator, it was clear to me what I liked best was helping people learn about themselves. This all led me to consider a career as a therapist, and in 2023 I started a graduate program to become a clinical mental health counselor. I’ve loved the coursework so far, developing my clinical skills and knowledge of psychology.
In addition to my studies, I am an advocate for trans people in health care. I have worked with students and faculty in both medical health and mental health care to increase their competency and awareness. I look forward to continuing this work, as it becomes ever more necessary while our health care is being criminalized across the country.
My clinical interests and possible future career trajectories include:
- Romantic relationship coaching, including working with clients with nontraditional relationship styles (non-monogamy) and survivors of intimate partner violence
- Bisexual health and identity development, one of my main areas of research. Bisexuals have worse physical, mental, and social wellbeing outcomes than straight, gay, and lesbian peers. We have lower resilience as we have limited access to communities where we feel belonging and the ability to fully be ourselves, and are as a result less able to complete identity development processes. In other words: we always feel like something is wrong with us, and that adds to our stressors and makes us more likely to have heart attacks (among other things).
- Poverty, including working with unhoused and formerly incarcerated clients. As a digital media educator, I worked with a public housing official to plan a program teaching digital media skills to people in the housing program. While the project never came to fruition, I loved the idea. Growing up in poverty, I knew first hand how important (and difficult) it was to feel successful and like I had skills, so teaching marketable skills has a multiply-beneficial effect. Additionally, many graphic designers are self-taught, and may not need a traditional resume or background checks for many freelance gigs. I’m interested in pursuing a similar program in the future, with the added support of social workers on staff.
- Therapeutic art interpretation, another of my research areas. Art interpretation and museum education strategies strengthen meaning-making and close-looking skills, potentially opening up an avenue for healing for depression and survivors of trauma.
- International trauma support. There are a number of organizations for mental health workers to provide services to for civilians in the Middle East. This work will be important and necessary for decades to come, and has been an interest of mine for as long as I've thought of working in mental health, and made ever more urgent by the current violence. My graduate program has a focus on race, power, oppression, and culturally appropriate care, that, along with my focus on trauma studies, would help prepare me for such volunteer work.
Funding Breakdown
I'm fundraising to pay for housing, utilities, health insurance/health care, and basic necessities during my internship year. I'll be able to have a part-time job to help offset some of these costs, but this is what I'll need overall:
- Rent: $1500 = $1250/month for 12 months (This is an estimate based on current rent prices and anticipated increase next year. Note this is cheap for my city, and I live with two roommates.) **This will be covered by a generous future donation from Jean and Jim Bourdon
- Food, utilities, transit, household supplies, etc.: $10,000 **Based on my projected savings, donations so far, and working part time during my internship year, this should be covered
- Health care incl. insurance: $10,000 **If I can get a stipend for my internship, courtesy of the Support for Behavioral Health Field Placements Program, this should be covered.
- Note - the remaining two years of my program, including courses and fees, will cost another ~$65,000, for which I'll be applying for educational loans and scholarships. (For the next year, that should be covered by Federal Direct Loans ($20,500) and the new Massachusetts Behavioral Health Workforce Scholarship ($12,500 and a requirement to work in MA for a year after graduation). Hopefully, these will be the funding sources for the final year of my program. And thankfully, Massachusetts also has a program to help behavioral health clinicians pay back loans while working with underserved communities in the state for a number of years, which would be approximately 5 years after graduation)
- Note there's no wiggle room in this plan - so I'll still be accepting donations to help me on this journey!
Organiser
Kylie Burnham
Organiser
Jamaica Plain, MA