This is turning into a full time job

Jan29

Many of you may be aware that I help coordinate a local Transgender support and social group. It is something I’ve been doing for the past four years or more.

The group has received much praise for the work it does and is well respected within the local community.

Through 2019, and especially toward the latter end of it, I felt that I was running out of the energy and motivation needed in order to continue to work for the group. I expressed my need to back away to the other Coordinator and we began to look for other group members who could step up and take over some of the responsibilities involved.

It was a slow process, but help was forthcoming and I was able to sit back in a more minor role and just keep my finger on the pulse.

Then, of course, 2020 happened.

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Online event: LGBTI+ Rural life during COVID-19

Sep15

Conflicting needs

Jul9

How does one reconcile conflicting needs?

I’m in a quandary and can’t make up my mind which route to take.

As regular readers will know I’ve been helping to run my local Transgender Support Group for over 4 years now and said a couple of weeks ago that I’d had enough and would be stepping down. I’ve actually been trying to step away from running the group for over 18 months because I find the mental energy that’s required is more than I feel able to exert.

But …

Every time something comes along that the group could get involved with in order to spread the word about transgender issues or to advocate for the LGBT+ community, especially in my local area, it fires up my internal inspiration and I feel that this is something I need to be doing.

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Your experiences of Pride Marches – Research project

Jul8

A student at St. Andrew’s University is currently conducting a research project exploring LGBT+ people and allies’ experiences of being involved in Pride parades.

For the project, she is conducting interviews via Skype and hopes to speak to as many people as she can from all across the UK, to make this study as representative as possible.

Unfortunately, she has not yet been able to interview many Trans people and so is concerned that their points of view may go unrepresented.

I’ve told her that I’ll be happy to participate, and if you would like to help out too then the details are in this poster along with her email address.

Any support would be greatly appreciated!

Time to say Goodbye

Jul1

This is not an easy post for me to write and it may be a little disjointed.

For the past four years I’ve been one of the Coordinators of our local transgender support organisation, a position which has meant so much to me because of the good that has been achieved by the group and the help that we have been able to provide to so many people at various stages of their journeys of discovery and awareness.

Unfortunately, due to personal difficulties that I have, I realised about eighteen months ago that this work was becoming too much for me and I made it clear that I needed to step down and hand over to someone who would be able to cope better with the demands of the position. That change never happened, and then along came Covid-19.

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Tonight’s the night, and it feels like the Oscars

Jun7

Here we are at last.

Tonight is the Awards Ceremony for the Fife Voluntary Action Volunteering and Voluntary Sector 2018 Awards in which the group I help run, Transgender Fife, is shortlisted in the Equality and Diversity section.

We were amazed to have been shortlisted so we’re certainly not expecting to win, and we know that the other candidates will all be very worthy of the award. We wish them all well.

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