It's my Re-Birthday!

November 15th is a very, very special day for me. I’ve shared parts of this journey before, but never all at once, and I think it’s about time.

I am of the belief that human beings are, at our most fundamental level, made up of a small collection of core stories that make us who we are. These stories may ebb and flow in their importance or interpretation over time, but to share them with each other is always the most human gift we can give.

This is the story at the innermost center of my being, and I did not decide lightly to share it with you all. I have been so humbled, so awed, so loved, so celebrated, so supported by the people in this community, and in short, this feels like a group of people worth sharing with. Thank you for being a part of my village, however long you’ve been here.

Content note: this post will contain small descriptions of my experiences with suicidal ideation. I hope to have handled these depictions with gentleness, and there is nothing graphic contained here, but only you know what you’re in the place to read today. The rest of the article will take a more hopeful tone, if you’d like to skip to that part.

While you read, would you listen to a song with me? Don’t worry—I’ll come around to explaining it later. For now, all you need to know is that it’s one part of this very special story in my heart.

November 15th, 2015

Frightened, alone, and out to only three people in my life as transgender, I began to experience very, very serious thoughts of ending my life. I could not see any world in which there was a future for me, and I didn’t want to wait around to hear the end of the story.

I told my best friend this, perhaps the only person who truly and completely saw me at that time, and he told his parents, who drove him over to my house right away. While he came to my bedroom to sit with me while I cried, his parents told mine everything he’d said.

Totally unsure what to do with that information and scared out of their minds, my parents loaded me into the car and told me we were going to the hospital to make sure I was okay. I was petrified, but more than that, I was furious at my best friend for betraying my secret to my parents. I vowed never to speak to him again.

Once at the hospital, they took my street clothes and the comfort items I’d brought and left me alone, in my gown, in an intake room awaiting a doctor’s visit. It was just before midnight.

Eventually, someone came in to ask me what was going on and at barely above a whisper, I told her that I was transgender and so afraid of how the world was going to be that I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t know whether anyone would see me, or love me, and I didn’t think it would ever stop hurting so badly. She thanked me for my honesty, jotted down a few notes, and left.

After about a half an hour, a cool-looking young man stepped into my room. He had a leather jacket, the beginnings of a beard. He pulled back the curtain that made up the fourth wall of where I was sitting and said “hey, I heard what you said, and I just wanted to tell you that as long as you stay true to who you are, everything is going to be alright for you in the end.” Without waiting for a response, he left.

I spent a moment in stunned silence trying to process that, then got up to thank him or ask him how he knew or just see him one more time. By the time I made it into the hallway, he was gone. In that moment, and for years after, I believed in my heart that he was some kind of angel, someone sent from whatever powers that be to tell me that I was getting a second chance that not everyone gets—and I was not to waste that chance being inauthentic or taking life for granted.

Other times in my life I imagined it to be myself from the future, coming back in time to tell me what I needed to hear in order to keep going and not give up. Maybe it was just an older trans teenager, or a supportive adult offering a kind word.

Whoever it may have been, that moment gave me what I needed to keep going. It wasn’t a straight upshot from there, in fact it was still incredibly challenging and isolating and some days were just as difficult, but I was mostly steadfast that I was so glad to be alive, and that I wanted to do it right this time. I got into therapy. I started letting people in. I started finding my way to home in my body.

Whenever my best friend, who I did not in fact excommunicate, came over to my house, we listened to the song Riptide by Vance Joy. We danced and sang and laughed, and even in the moments where I felt so completely invisible to the rest of the world, I knew I could listen to that song and be reminded that at least one person in this earth saw me as I was.

In gratitude for my best friend stepping in and making an impossible decision that ultimately likely saved my life, and for the tiny and uncountable ways that he helped me imagine a future with me in it, I chose my middle name to be “Vance” as an homage to that song, and that friendship, and the things I survived.

November 15th, 2016

One year later, I got into a mid-sized car accident when another driver ran a stop sign. No one was hurt, but it was easy to see just how much worse it could have been had I not swerved onto the side of the road.

I got home that night, still shaking, but felt that I had maxed out my experience of fear like a credit card. There was no fear left over to expend, so I was invincible. What would I do when nothing could scare me? The answer came quickly and easily: Come out. At the time, I didn’t realize it was exactly a year later, but looking back on it from here, it feels right.

Thus, the rest of my life began.

Some Other November 15ths

The actual date of November 15th has taken on varying levels of formality or significance in my life, and most of the anniversaries that I like to have an actual celebration for are memories of gender affirming care. But in my heart, I still notice. Now, I call it my “rebirthday”, it’s a day that I’ve come into new stages of my life a number of different times, and it gives me a moment to look back at where the journey has taken me. At the things November 2015 Ben would never believe.

November 15th, 2017

I didn’t mark the day at all. The only photo in my camera roll is of a math assignment that I was grading for the second grade class I was student teaching in. I had decided that I wanted to grow up and become a teacher. I was glad to be alive to meet these wonderful students.

a student’s homework assignment. She did her best. Math is hard!

November 15th, 2020

I watched the sun set in St. Louis. I had just moved in with my girlfriend, and was at the very beginning of my career as a public speaker. I was slowly starting to understand that I would get to grow up in an actual, tangible way. I was starting to ask questions about hormone therapy and whether it would bring me joy. I was glad to be alive to learn what it means to build a home in my body.

a blurry, beautiful sunset over a St. Louis horizon

November 15th, 2022

I watched an impending snowstorm from my apartment. I was engaged to the love of my life with less than a year to go until our wedding. I had finished writing the proposal for my first book, “My Child is Trans, Now What?” and had a literary agent helping me find a home with a publisher. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but I was starting to realize how much I truly loved to write. I was glad to be alive and learning how to get excited about the future with someone I loved.

A snowstorm seen from Ben’s balcony

November 15th, 2023

I was newly married and excited to build a life together with my best friend. I had just submitted final edits on my book to my publisher. My wife and I cozied up near the TV to watch the episode of the Kelly Clarkson Show that I was featured in! I was glad to be alive and making so many of my young dreams come true.

Ben looking very, very cute in a colorful sweater and holding a microphone.

November 15th, 2024

My book was released this year and I toured around the country talking to people about how to be better allies. I fell completely and irredeemably in love with my future as an author, and was writing often. I had also just started Good Queer News. By the winter, I had truly and fully learned how to slow down and was making that a more conscious, regular choice. In a storm-induced power outage, I lit a few candles and spent hours relaxing into writing the fantasy novel I wished I’d had when I was younger. I was glad to be alive in the soft moments I had always deserved.

a dark room with two candles, an illuminated vase of flowers, and a computer. It’s so dark, but it looks warm.

November 15th, 2025

That brings us to today. I’m spending the weekend with many (but not all, to be sure) of the people I love most in this world, renting a cabin in the woods for us each to spend some dedicated time working on creative projects. I am hoping to write 10,000 words on my new novel today. We’re drying out some kindling to light a small fire, and my wife is making cinnamon rolls in the kitchen. It smells like petrichor and woodsmoke and I’m preparing to become a father. I am so, so glad to be alive.

Thanks for holding my story in your heart for a little while. That’s all that’s fit to print today—I’m going to go back to some writing, creating, and resting, and by the time I finished writing this it smells like the cinnamon rolls are almost done cooking. I hope you can find something this weekend that makes you glad to be alive.

All my love,

Ben