LGBTQIA2S+ Adversity, Resistance, Resilience and Healing
June 21, 2026
Trigger warning: hate crimes will be discussed in this blog post, please take good care of yourselves dear ones.
As I write this very first blog post for Alchemy Arts Therapy 5 and a half years after its inception, I find it so fitting to do so during PRIDE Month! Not only fitting, but called, compelled, the destiny moved my body into inspired action. I write this blog post a year after finding myself in the midst of my own experience of an anti-LGBTQ hate incident that spanned over a year in duration, it was not the first time I experienced a hate crime though I hope it will be the last. It is a personal experience that I will spare sharing the unique details of, while using my power and privilege to name publicly because the experience of biased-motivated hate is unfortunately not unique in the lives of queer and gender-diverse bodied people in America and across the globe. And most important to name, is the adversity of queer and gender-diverse bodies most impacted by intersectionality. June is shared by both PRIDE andJuneteenth, where June 19th marks the end of slavery in the United States. And while our struggles of marginalization and brutality are vastly different, for those with intersectionality they are compounded. We, the collective we that this month honors, know what it’s like to be othered.
In 2025 the political polarization reached a fevered new high in the second landscape of a radicalized government, where so many different marginalized bodies across America were reeling from the painful atrocities of an infinite amount of bias motivated hate not just happening locally but aired nationally and pushed through the glowing phones glued to our hands. ICE raids were tearing apart Hispanic and Latino families in dehumanizing ways, Jewish people were murdered and having synagogues bombed, the list goes on. It was so much to take in. It was inescapable. It was personal. It hit us on all sides for most people deviating from the falsehood of the cis-white-het-christian lie of “normal” we are all fed.
For our queer and gender-diverse community in particular, hate crimes disproportionately impact the lives of those in Black and Brown bodies. And unfortunately despite the increased acceptance of LGBTQIA2S+ people through PRIDE (and countless advocacy networks) over the past 20 years there is a falseness in the whitewashing of acceptance. For instance, during the writing of this blog, while the stock images available by my web-hoster had some light skinned latino queer bodies, there were no photos to be found with dark skinned black and brown queer and gender-non-conforming bodies holding our flag without a fee. Still, in 2026, this is where we’re at (eye roll, pressured sigh, head shake, note on the to-do list to find a point of contact for fixing this).
A dear friend of mine who is a white straight ally that puts in the work uses the phrase “lemon bars” to locate the experience of the well-meaning-white-woman who genuinely wants to help but due to the lack of lived experience of specific marginalization unintentionally does more harm than good. We’re not supposed to use the phrase ”lemon bars” in conversation with her as it still stirs a shiver of anger and sadness up her spine from finally being on the receiving end of a well-meaning-white-woman archetype during a group crisis we were a part of that needed dire stabilization with fierce intentional community love by those of us affected. Group healing is undeniably potent medicine, where we don’t have to explain, but can just be in the raw unfettered processing of acts of violence with fellow bodies intentionally releasing the shared charge of harm through ceremony and ritual. I love her so much for her her-ness, and for coming to this ah-ha moment. Every white woman who wakes up will inevitably have a similar moment like this in our own unique way, myself included has been there too on both sides of the spectrum - of both inflicting harm and aghast with an internal “what the f” moment. As allies, we’re human and bound to mess up as awful as it is to do and to receive, but the most important things are how do we make amends, and how do we change, and how do we educate others forward to not repeat the same mistakes.
Many queer and gender-diverse bodies hold a lifetime of minority stress despite the seeming normalization of the phrase LGBTQ. The NIH houses a definition of minority stress as “minority groups experience stress stemming from experiences of stigma and discrimination, which in turn places them at risk for a number of negative physical and mental health outcomes. LGBT people experience forms of minority stress shared with other marginalized groups, such as discrimination, expectation of rejection, and prejudice-related life events (e.g., hate crimes), as well as unique stressors such as identity concealment and internalized homophobia”. When given the privilege to, many queer and gender-diverse people fiercely depend on networks of formed family to hold our resiliency in tact. This is how we survived the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s. While gay and bisexual men, and trans women, were being refused medical treatment, our lesbian sisters became providers of surrogate nursing care and blood donation. We built community support, mutual aid networks, and clinics in the face of government slander causing everyday widespread discrimination and harassment. We take care of Us. We are so grateful for the dissemination of this knowledge through movies and tv shows like POSE to validate our minority stress, celebrate our resiliency and strengths, and so our younger generations and allies can understand our collective trauma history without having to educate them in the face of harm.
Many of us queer and gender-diverse people are well versed in the language of “code switching” to create safety in our lives while making our existence more palatable for the cis-white-het majority that yields more power over (and potential harm to) our marginalized identities. For many of us white Gen-X or Geriatric Millennials this was a cultural norm as we came of age in the time of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and Lavender Marriages. And, as we see in the history of civil rights movements, it is the most marginalized of us who take the stand to push for change. On June 28th of 1969 Stormé DeLarverie, a Black butch lesbian was brutally beaten by police at the notorious raid of the Stonewall Inn, her cryout of “Why don't you guys do something?" is what spurred the riot involving Black trans activist Marsha P Johnson’s brick that eventually evolved into PRIDE. PRIDE started as an intersectional resistance to hatred and bigotry and violence and silence, it was never intended to be a glossed over term associated with whiteness without pain. We cannot forget our fallen, our elders who fought to live out loud and who pushed back against oppression, all with dire circumstances at hand. We are not a movement without our Black and Brown brothers and sisters and they/them’s, we are forever grateful and bound despite the differences in our trauma and oppression. As white allies it’s our turn to pick up the slack.
According to GLAAD, 932 anti-LGBTQ incidents occurred between May 1st 2024 - May 1st 2025th. It’s impossible to know how many events actually occurred, as with many forms of violence and harassment it often goes unreported. In one of GLAAD’s 2024-2025 reports it’s also identified that “nearly two in three LGBTQ U.S. adults stating that they have personally experienced discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity”. According to Advocates For Trans Equality, 48 trans lives were lost between November 2024 - November 2025 due to violence or suicide. The Trans Remembrance Project tracked in 2025 “out of the 17 trans women of color lost to violence, 15 were Black trans women”. Even recently here in Colorado we experienced a devastating hate crime in a queer night club where we lost the lives of 5 members of our LGBTQIA+ community, with numerous individuals injured, on November 19, 2022 the night before Transgender Day of Remembrance. A stark reminder that the work is far from over, and the most marginalized in our group are targets of the most vicious forms of hate.
How do LGBTQIA2S+ Hate Crimes impact Mental Health?
Hypervigilance: the victim may chronically scan environments for danger cues. Not only does the body not yet know the danger is over, but the mind is stuck on a loop. When a bias-motivated crime targets an individual’s inherent existence such as a fundamental part of why they are, it’s hard for the body and the mind to read a clear end-point or that the event was an event that ended. While car accidents can absolutely cause hypervigilance, the difference is that a new form of transportation can be gotten whereas a new gender or sexual identity, not so much so.
Collective Trauma Symptoms: if it happens to one of us, the fear is that it can happen to any of us with a shared identity. It reminds the entire group of their inherent vulnerability and can create a windfall of painful memories, safety seeking, isolation, self-sabatoge, avoidance, and numbing strategies (self-harm and/or substance use among others).
Relationship Challenges: when safety has been fundamentally violated by humans of the dominant culture, it can be hard to trust that those in our personal and professional and neighborhood circles won’t act in similar ways. Reinactments may occur. A fear of straight people or weariness around allies may arise.
According to the American Psychological Association, the definition of Resilience is “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, predominant among them (a) the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world, (b) the availability and quality of social resources, and (c) specific coping strategies. Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced”. This is a reminder that there is a hero inside all of us. And, while this definition isn’t a perfect definition and doesn’t account for every person’s unique limitations and forms of oppression, it’s the start of a map. Resiliency doesn’t mean we don’t get mad or sad, we feel those feelings in the therapy room and outside of it, and continue to reaffirm ourselves in the commitment to move forward into a whole and vibrant and more integrated life that may be better than what we could have strived for if the trauma did not occur.
To all the queer and gender-diverse bodies reading this blog post, I hope you can find an alchamization of the heartache from memories this post may have stirred by tuning your heart ears to the words and melody of queer icon and gender-bending self-identified heterosexual man Prince in the lyrics of Purple Rain. Prince offers us the apologies we were never given, while reminding us that our stories don’t stop at the shattering of our hearts - but continues on into the hopeful future where our sadness is fused with passion, where our anger is transmuted into the playful laughter of living in the moment at the arrival of our destiny…fully immersed, not holding back, saturated in the technicolor happiness we fought so hard to finally achieve. We shall rise, as we always have, just as with the dawning of the sun from the darkness of the night.
“I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain
I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend, hey
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It's such a shame our friendship had to end
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you underneath the purple rain
Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changin'
It's time we all reach out for something new, that means you too
You say you want a leader, but you can't seem to make up your mind
And I think you better close it and let me guide you to the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
If you know what I'm singin' about up here, come on raise your hand
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you, only want to see you in the purple rain”
How to heal outside of the therapy room?
Seek Affinity Groups in Community: as noted earlier in the blog, community healing is a fierce balm and antidote to pain. Isolation is a breeding ground for chronic symptoms to arise. Community can provide in-the-moment validation, thought correction, and support. Our vibrant queer community is known for its empathy and sass, that sass helps remind us who we are and where we came from, and that we are not responsible for the actions of perpetrators. When we can see ourselves in another of a shared marginalization status, we don’t have to explain why the pain hurts, they just get it. Talking to others is vastly different than repeating thought loops in our own minds, it helps us get outside of them much faster.
Educate: yourself on how to protect your safety from this specific type of crime. Do you need police reports, documentation logs, temporary shelter in another location, a door camera, signs, trainings, experts in a niched field of service?
Movement: vibration plates, running, biking, dancing, any vigorous type of movement to physiologically shake the trauma out of the body. Then rinse and repeat, day after day after day, more times than you think you need.
Lift Heavy (to your body’s ability): lifting heavy things is an external reminder of strength, that we can do hard things. If you don’t have a barbel, lift a heavy bag of dog food, a gallon jug of water, whatever you have around you.
Self-Defense/Boxing/Martial-Arts/Archery: Van der Kolk recommends self-defense classes after trauma for a reason, the body needs to re-member it can protect itself if need be again through muscle memory. Peter Levine studied the difference between the resiliency in wild animals and how trauma gets trapped in humans, our bodies need to complete incomplete actions, especially in the case of shock trauma, violence, and anonymous crimes.
Journal: your thoughts and emotions using art or words or both. Emotions aren’t always linear, and they don’t always make sense. The page will never judge you, instead it is your container to hold it all, it is your artifact of what was and eventually who you’ll become.
Affirm yourself: Validate the younger parts of you for their response and remind them that the older stronger you has got the wheel. Remind yourself of the vital role queer and gender-diverse people have played in the advancement of American culture. Listen to your favorite queer music, look at your favorite queer art, watch your favorite queer tv show or movie (if it’s not too triggering). We are important here, and your life matters.
Alchemy Arts Therapy is here to help you heal every step of the way through hate crimes, discrimination, diversity, and multicultural issues. While healing takes time, willingness, and dedicated action, recovery is not just possible, it is your birthright. You deserve to embody the vibrant life you were meant for.