Between 2022 and 2025, over 150 trans and/or nonbinary (TNB) people shared their experiences of relational trauma from parental figures with us. We interviewed 15 of them in-depth, learning both how they were impacted by their parental figures and began to heal from the harm.

We spent hundreds of hours carefully reading through each interview together, identifying themes to organize them into visual diagrams and theories. After this, we connected back with our participants to seek their feedback.

These collective processes guided our creation of a theory on how trans people heal from relational trauma with parental figures. This journey included many tears and also laughter with our participants, and we’ve had the immense privilege of bearing witness to our community’s pain and power.

This zine holds a major part of what we’ve come to understand through our collective research process: specifically that transness is an asset to healing from these traumas.

While we are currently writing multiple journal articles based on this research, we don’t want what we’ve learned to just be trapped inside academic spaces. We want everyone to have access to knowledge about our healing and strengths.

We also believe in art’s capacity to deliver the emotional depth of our community stories, so we commissioned multiple new art pieces by the artist Britchida inspired by our research, and invited participants to contribute their own healing-focused art. Those pieces are included in this zine.