
What is "trans resilience"?
I love the word "resilience." Webster's has two definitions. The first is "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." The second one is more interesting: "the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress." At first look, it seems like that's more about materials science, or something, but I like to think about the "strained body" as, in a way, our bodies - not necessarily in the physical sense, but in the emotional and psychological sense.
Being trans or gender non-conforming in any way is stressful, often daily. Sometimes it has to do with ourselves - how our own sense of ourselves doesn't always match the body we're in. Sometimes it's external - people rejecting or judging us because of how we look, or if they find out that we're trans.
Cultivating resilience allows us to live our lives with happiness and joy - even in the face of dysphoria and transphobia.