 My involvement in the Acquire Youth Program affects my community or my surroundings, my friends, in the sense that there is a lot of lack of knowledge about transgender and gay teens and how they can be helped better. It is a hard thing to educate everybody. I've been out as a transgender woman since 2004 and at first it seems like everybody is accepting and knowledgeable about it, but the more you go into what they know about it, do you find out that it's a hard thing to deal with people because they have questions that are embarrassed to answer and sometimes I tell them, don't be embarrassed, ask me the questions you want, ask me the questions that you feel you shouldn't ask about it because the more you know, the more deep you go into these issues, the better informed you are and the better you get to know the person. I have friends who have an easy time and I have friends who have a hard time dealing with transgender. For example, you have conversations with other people and sometimes you see that they make comments that are, you think, oh my god, that's a horrible comment, but for the person who is not aware of what they're talking about or why would that question be bad. Recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine, she's a female, and she was talking about that trans people shouldn't feel discriminated and they shouldn't make it a big deal because what they should do or what we should do as transgender people is to teach ourselves how to accept harassment, how to accept comments and grow strong and it was tough to have a conversation with that person because it is hard to make somebody understand how much it hurts and how much strong you can be and still have people hurt you by the comments and you can be too strong but still when you hear somebody making a comment it is a horrible thing and I'm afraid for, but I'm nervous about teens because we as, or I as grown up still suffer from that and get cries sometimes when people make comments and I'm thinking when a teen gets a comment like that, especially if they're transgender or they're gay and they have to be in the open and have people, adults make comments to the teen that can be horrible. Horrible, as you say, horrible thing that stays in the heart. You always remember those comments that people make that hurts and I think one of the things that I'm trying to do with my peers is to teach them that they should be more accepting and that we should be more open and when we see somebody that might be different, might look different that we have all the same hearts, the same minds and all of us are the same as before that we choose to express ourselves in a different way. I work for a nonprofit organization and since 2004 the person who is a doctor who works in the same place that I work has been struggling to educate the company how to be gay-friendly, how to be trans-friendly, how to understand that making a call in the person the wrong pronoun can be hurtful and companies, fortunately, are run by people who have prejudices like all of us do. It's just that in a company I believe that people that run the company should be more living their prejudices outside because they can help all kinds of people that come to the organization and I'm so glad that the organization I work for is changing and accepting and even though I see the struggle they have, it is becoming more friendly and now teens do come in and they feel welcome in a way not as I would hope that trans-sorgi teens will come to my clinic and be happy and get what they need and I need to explain over and over and over what they needs are. This is an interesting story because I had an idea that I was different and I would hear people make comments, for example, you're a girl and I'm not meaning or understanding that people would see me as a girl because I believed I was a girl and hearing that comment making me just puzzled what would they say when I am a girl? Even though I had a male body and for me it was now that I look back it's interesting how people perceive you for who you are sometimes more than what your physical appearance is. I was about four when I noticed that I was different even though it took me years to become me I started transitioning at age 30, I'm 43 now and I'm just so sad that it took me that long I wish I could have done it better and I just want to make sure that other people that are coming after me they can have a better chance to be happy at a sooner time and not go through the hurdles of this is medically not indicated for your age and you don't know what you're doing, this can be a psychological issue when I think as a transgender we're not very early age who you are and you just need people to be there for you instead of asking questions and trying to change you for something you're not I don't have a favorite movie even though I think of the movie Innocent Voices Voices Innocentis which is a Spanish film about the war in El Salvador and I see that it kind of relate what happens in the movie to kids to what is happening in the world to trans and gay kids that they get harmed by whatever the adults do and the kids have nothing to do with it in this movie there is the family in the house and a bomb gets dropped near to the house and the kids are so scared of their lives and their parents are not there to protect them for that bomb so in a way it relate that to anybody that's different trans or gay that sometimes we are alone even though we have our parents and our parents get bombarded by religion and all this that this is wrong and it's a psychological issue and it related in that way but I'm not sure if that could be a reason that would be my favorite movie or if that makes any sense My favorite color I would say I don't have a favorite color but if I had to pick one I would pick purple I grew up in a village which is very religious and very Catholic and they have these church where when the day of the Easter, when Jesus passes away they cover his body in purple and then three days after they remove the purple and they change it to white and purple I see it in the sense that it gives you it gives you the protection you need while you're struggling through the process of in my case of being transgender and I'm just waiting for the white to come over and to be walking on the street without any comments without any harassment and just being me no matter how I looked and I would say in that sense purple but I'm waiting for the white in my life