A collaboration between Planned Parenthood and Metro Trans Umbrella Group has helped almost 700 gender-expansive folks in the region access gender-affirming hormone therapy in the past year and a half. The program, funded by a four-year grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, is called TRANSforming Community, TRANSforming Care, or TC2. TC2 prioritizes access for…
Wellness
A Listening Ear, and So Much More: SQSH to the Rescue
Sometimes, you just need someone to talk to. For Luka Cai, that someone was hard to find growing up in Singapore — especially when it came to their queer identity. “I never had any positive queer or trans role models growing up,” they say, “so I had a lot of internalized transphobia.” Cai — trans-masculine,…
Self-Care Tips from the Pros: Make Your Plan to Navigate the End of 2020
Fraught with expectations and heavy on the socializing, the end-of-year celebratory blitz can be tough at the best of times. And — let’s be real — these are not the best of times. So we reached out to a few counselors in the city for tips on how to best navigate the waning days of…
Moving Past Trauma: EMDR Has Helped LGBTQ Patients Overcome Toxic Feelings
When Jason Eccker finally sought counseling for the bullying he faced in grade school, it changed his life — personally, and professionally. Now, in his own counseling practice, he makes use of the specific type of therapy that helped him so much. It’s called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, or EMDR. It’s a proven…
Welcome Flow: The Bee’s Knees Yoga Offers Accessible, Inclusive and Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in O’Fallon
Yoga has come a long way from its origins in centuries-ago India. No longer solely the purview of impossibly twisty young boys bound for the meditative life, it’s moved into something else, and that something — skinny cisgender white ladies in $90 pants, for instance — may not be an improvement. But one woman in…
The Holiday Mask: Be True to Yourself
Have you ever had to hide yourself from others to avoid judgment, bigotry and shattered expectations? Have you ever had to keep the real you inconspicuous as a means of survival? Nothing stings more than having family that doesn’t want you — especially during the holiday season. Every year between October and January, many people…
Being a Fit “Daddy” Is Totally Doable. Just Ask This Guy
If you’ve been out on the prowl recently — whether that entails seeking Mr. Right, seeking Mr. Right Now, carousing in after-dark homo hot spots or exploring the internet’s ever-booming global gay boomtown — there’s something about gay men you can’t help but notice: As a group, we are aging. Unlike other groups, however, we’re…
At Last, a St. Louis Cycling Club Free of Alpha Males
Death. Taxes. Dudely bro-dawgs monopolizing bike rides. Some things you must endure, but others you can adjust. For more than four years running, a group of women has converged on the first Monday of every month for a social bike ride: the Monthly Cycle. They pedal a different fifteen-mile route each time through a mix…
World AIDS Day 2017
Today is World AIDS Day, and it’s worth taking a moment to take stock. First celebrated in 1988, it’s a day for people worldwide to show solidarity against the disease. The breathtaking devastation of the epidemic’s mysterious and stigma-filled beginnings in the 1980s is not today’s reality. Fewer people are dying and we understand far…
Why Miss Missouri 2016 Took on Teen Suicide
It’s a Saturday in a small town in Missouri. There’s a beauty pageant underway, and a young teen — we’ll call her Tya — is nervous. She keeps to herself all day long. She thinks she doesn’t fit in with the other girls. She stays at the edge of room, looking in. She has never…