I started 2025 with an expired passport.

I don't travel out of the country often, and I had planned to renew it once I had travel plans that required it. But with this administration I believed the renewal process would only get more restrictive and harmful to trans people like me.

And, I still delayed. I procrastinated because I was scared.

I was frightened my renewal would be denied, that my information would be altered without my consent, that it would not reflect my identity, my presentation or my lived experience.

I was worried that an altered passport would create challenges and increased scrutiny at the border.

I feared that any difficulty would irritate me, send me into a new phase of despair or rage at a government system so bent on erasing me and my community from existence.

The federal government is continuing to fight the courts to deny trans people accurate passports that reflect our gender identities. It was an early morning panic attack about these cases that jolted me out of my freeze response.

I assembled documents, I filed my paperwork, I snapped my pics and I sent it in. I just received it this week, all information correct and valid until 2035. That's one stressor that this trans person can let go of.

I'm posting this here as a reminder of the many ways trans people are struggling, and how these challenges require so much additional emotional, mental and often physical labor. We are so tired from just trying to exist.