The international letter-writing campaign helping trans people feel love, safety, & belonging

“I see you. You’re valid. You’re enough. I’ve got your back.”

It’s a simple message, but for many trans youth and adults, letters of affirmation, even from total strangers, can be lifesaving.

It’s why messages like the above are the heart of an effort by Point of Pride, a national organization dedicated to helping trans people access gender-affirming care. Oftentimes, they are accompanied by monetary support to help folks access the care they need. Point of Pride offers scholarship-like programs for hormone replacement therapy – 153 recipients were recently awarded over $342,00 through the HRT Access Fund – as well as for electrolysis, gender reassignment surgery, and free chest binders or femme shapewear. The letter-writing campaign is meant to help trans people feel safe, healthy, and loved.

Jeff Main, a trans man and the executive director and co-founder of Point of Pride, oversees up to 60,000 card and care package deliveries monthly across all 50 states and abroad – 129 countries and counting. He told LGBTQ Nation that the idea for the campaign was hatched in 2011, when co-founder Aydian Dowling faced challenges raising money for his gender-affirming care, specifically top surgery.

“After he was able to access his care, he felt the profound difference that it made in his quality of life and wanted to pay it forward for others in the community,” Main said.

Point of Pride letter writing — | Point of Pride

The impact of receiving a personalized card, Main added, can be life-changing for trans recipients and empowering for the writer, too. “There’s something really healing about being able to write the card, the message that you yourself would have wanted to receive when you were going through a difficult time.”

Main, after all, was once a young person searching for answers once he understood his gender identity was different from his sex assigned at birth.

“I have a very vivid memory of standing shirtless in front of a full-length mirror that was on the back of my parents’ bedroom door,” Main said. “I remember this feeling of, probably akin to grief, thinking like my body one day might betray me. I feel like I’m a boy. And yet I knew that I wasn’t seen that way by others.”

It wasn’t until college that he stumbled upon YouTube videos by trans content creators and had a “light bulb moment.”

Point of Pride Letter Writing Campaign — | Point of Pride

“When I heard them talk about their experiences and that feeling of difference and otherness is when things started to really click,” he said. “And reading the book Stone Butch Blues, I remember, was very formative for me as well.”

Main recalls a conversation with a nonbinary Point of Pride board member that also inspired the letter-writing campaign. The member said they received a letter from a close school friend shortly after coming out. “It was a very short letter that just said, ‘Hey, I see you. You’re valid. You’re enough. I’ve got your back,’ and was left in their locker,” Main recalls.

“Now, 20 years later, they still carry it around in their wallet, and [often share how it has had] such a positive impact on all different areas of their life.”

You’re Not Alone In This

The campaign’s mission quickly spread through word of mouth. Hayden Bauer, a nonbinary technical writer for an insurance company, is one of the letter writers who caught wind of the campaign and chose to participate.

“As a technical writer, my job is to write in the most neutral way possible to present information as fact,” Bauer said, before sharing how their letters to trans kids compare to the content created for their day job.

“Hundreds of miles away, there’s a person out there who took the time to write something in their handwriting, however good or bad it is, to say, ‘I see you. You’re not alone in this,” they said. “These are young people who are often in vulnerable situations. Many of them are also dealing with housing insecurity and other huge challenges.”

Bauer recalled being a closeted trans high school student and the euphoria they experienced after receiving their first chest binder – and creating a covert operation to make it happen.

“I gave a friend cash to buy it with their mom’s credit card and have it shipped to their house because I couldn’t possibly have it shipped to mine.” The friend then discreetly passed the chest binder to them in the school cafeteria during lunch.

“It was a long journey to get gender affirming care, and the first person who was like, ‘I can help,’ was really impactful,” they said.

Bauer says that before they had access to their first gender-affirming chest binder, they worried constantly about their future, whether anyone would be in their corner, and the reality of living a life that would be “ten times harder” because of their gender identity.

Main said it’s the small things that can sometimes make a huge difference. “It’s crazy how these tiny things can make a measurable impact in people feeling seen and comfortable.”

With no expiration date, Point of Pride’s letter campaign is ongoing and open to anyone willing to send words of encouragement to trans people, who in the current political climate, can use a reminder that their lives matter.

“Knowing that there’s an option out there where someone will discreetly send you a letter that says, ‘Hey, you’ve got this, I care. Pardon my French, but I give a sh*t about you,” Main said. “That’s huge! I can’t imagine how amazing that would feel to receive.”