Vidari DeGuzman, a youth worker and former student at Hetrick-Martin.
Making the connection:
The Hetrick-Martin Institute really changed my life, honestly. As a youth, I went there when I had nowhere else to go to. It was a place where they accepted me for who I was, and I always thought that if I had a chance to go back and help create a safe space for someone else, I would do so. When I was a youth there, the staff were like our mothers, our fathers. As a staff member now, I find that I take these kids home with me. I look at the young people as the reason I get up every morning.
How do you self-identify?
I am a transmasculine individual. I am a transman. It means that I was born female, but the gender I identify with is male. It took me a couple of years to decide that I wanted to medically transition. So when I was 21, I started taking hormones. And just this past year I had my surgery, my gender reassignment surgery.
On coming from a Filipino family full of nurses:
I feel like growing up I had such a strong resistance to being a nurse because mostly everyone was a nurse in my family. It’s really important to me to have more trans people and queer people in the medical field. I think in terms of when I had my surgeries, the nurses were amazing, but needed a little bit of coaching to deal with me as a patient. Having a trans nurse helping someone recover after surgery is important.
Read the rest, HERE.
