Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience service
Saludos! I created this guide to help with your honoring of Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience (TDoR), which is commemorated on November 20. It is a guide and template that can be adapted, adopted, and tweaked in whatever ways are appropriate for you and your community. Throughout the document are notes with suggestions and other helpful tidbits. TDoR is a somber day where we mourn the lives of trans people killed in the US and around the world; TDoR is a day to commit and recommit to taking action to end all forms of violence that targets trans people. As with other identity-specific days and times of the year, TDoR is a day to intentionally focus on the lives and experiences of trans people but by no means the only day of the year to explore and embrace trans experiences. May this guide be helpful in grieving the dead and fighting like hell for the living.
Source: GLAAD
Helpful resources:
Welcome:
Hello and welcome to all! Many thanks for your presence and to all who are with us in the spirit of solidarity.
Our gathering will be a time to mourn, grieve, and be in solidarity with the trans community — our gathering will be somber and may be heavy with emotions at times. Please take care of yourself and take care of each other. I invite you to live through the rawness of tonight and I affirm your rawness. If you need to splash water on your face and/or take a moment away from the group to breathe, please do so.
From GLAAD: “Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester's death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.”
Gwendolyn Ann Smith: "Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice."
In recent years, many have started to add Resilience and/or Resistance to Trans Day of Remembrance as an invitation and challenge to celebrate the lives of trans people while we are living. We must mourn those killed while we also recognize that despite the violence, marginalization, and harassment, trans people are overcoming these challenges by not only surviving but thriving. Today we grieve and we commit ourselves to take action to end the violence.
