The GenderFULL Meditation Project – A Reflection on Community Care
By Kat Dittrich (they/them)
Trans existence shatters patterns, breaks expectations, and disintegrates binaries.
Despite all that transness stands in opposition to, what if we were to define our transness in terms of what we are instead of what we are not?
In this way we collectively and individually take control of the narrative, defining transness for ourselves.
Together we choose to shift the question from “How did you know you were trans?” to “How do you know yourself to be trans?” This subtle distinction shifts us from needing to justify our transness into a space of exploring our current realities and experience as Trans, Two-Spirit, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people (trans*).
In July and August of 2025, I had the pleasure of envisioning and facilitating The GenderFULL Meditation Project. This unique online space was an 8-week meditation and discussion group run through the TransLab and funded through the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University. The group met weekly to ground together in community. Each week, reflection questions and prompts were used to guide the discussion. The reflection questions explored what it means to be trans* in relation to a one-word theme and drew on inspiration from a prominent Trans, Two-Spirit, non-binary or gender non-conforming artist or activist from Alberta. Each session, we practiced a different style of meditation, drawing on the traditions of Ashtanga yoga, Buddhism, and Tantra.
As a student of psychology and women and gender studies at Athabasca University, and in this role as a research assistant for the TransLab, much of my work and education involves considerations of the mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of trans* people. Through my time with the participants of this group, I found that wrestling with the hard questions, witnessing each other, and creating community together was a powerful method of community care. Reflecting on this project, a few major themes emerged.
QUEER AND TRANS* SPACES ARE CO-CREATED
I still think of myself as a baby trans. I haven’t been on HRT long and have been using they/them pronouns and openly identifying as non-binary and genderfluid for about a year. When I signed on to put together this project, I asked myself what authority I have as a “new” trans person to run a group for trans* people. The answer to that is simply that I am trans. I have the time, energy and desire. I put together the prompts, planned the sessions, taught the meditation, but I alone can’t create a trans* space.
The participants who joined every week brought in their experiences, wisdom, and questions, their unique personalities and perspectives on life as trans* and gender nonconforming people were the foundation of this space. What struck me most was the range of people who joined the group: people who had been navigating their gender nonconformity their whole life and are now finding their way, people who transitioned younger, people who are socially transitioned, and people who are medically transitioned. A range and wealth of knowledge was brought together by the different perspectives and life experiences. Coming together week after week, we learned more about each other and formed connections that will last outside of this eight-week container. Queer and trans* people spiritedly recognize the uniqueness in themselves in defiance of societal constraints and expectations, possessing a singular capacity to witness and celebrate the difference in others. As such their spaces are co-created, made unique and non-hierarchical by the people who come together to form them.
COMMUNITY CARE
Each session, we began with a pronoun circle and a one-word check-in and closed with a one-word check-out. This is a tool I have previously used in yoga and meditation spaces to get a feel of the energy and mood of the group, and to check in with each person. Each person said their name, pronouns, and one word to describe how they were feeling right in that moment. We came into the groups with a range of “tired” “scattered” “curious” “distracted” emotions and energy from our respective days. Coming together and taking a moment to ground through different styles of meditation, and debrief and support each other through our conversations, we left the sessions feeling “grateful” “grounded” and “interested”. Even if the one-word remained the same, the energy of the group shifted through taking the time to be together. Community care is so essential in a marginalized community, and it was so powerful to provide a container for us all to care for each other from week to week. With a come-as-you-are approach to each session, we held space for where we were at each week and came away feeling lighter, more grateful, cared for, and more seen, myself included.
ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS TOGETHER
The beauty of being in a community that intentionally rejects the imposed categories and understandings of the world, is that there is no one answer to any question. I am currently transitioning in a way that is non-binary. I am not transitioning from anything to anything, so the definition of what transitioning looks like is blurry and not fixed. In one of our conversations early on in the project, a participant shared their experience of gender in relation to their sexuality and the pressures of the gender binary when transitioning as a non-binary individual*. This person’s perspective brought to the conversation a unique perspective on the relationship between gender and sexuality, what it feels like to transition earlier versus later in life, and what it feels like to transition in a way that is not binary. This person’s story and perspective helped me to have a deeper understanding that transitioning as a non-binary person is not a destination. This person accepted themselves and advocated for their transition needs against a world that desired to impose a binary on them. This story left me with more to think about in regards to what it means to transition, to come out as trans, and to resist pressures to conform to the gender binary. This conversation felt like it came at exactly the right time with a perspective that felt supportive to me and helped me to live more resolutely in the liminal.
There were several times like this when something someone else said sparked a whole watershed of questions and concepts to ponder that I was still thinking about days later. Being in community with other tans* people gave me the space to ask those questions of myself, to work through the unending process of self-discovery. The sessions ended up being less about finding the answers and more about asking the hard questions together.
*some details have been altered to preserve the anonymity and privacy of the individual participant
I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE
In researching, journaling about, and writing out each weekly theme, I called on inspiration from Two-Spirit, trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming people. Drawing on this body of knowledge from these influential trans* people anchored our conversations within the greater context of trans* existence. For the prompt for the theme of Community, I found a Youtube video of a talk by Two-Spirit Winkte activist and artist Kai Potts where he discussed his role in his community, the history of gender non-conforming identities in Lakota and other Indigenous cultures, and the fight for the recognition of Two-Spirit identities that go against the grain of the colonial imposition of the gender binary. This prompt helped me fight against internalizations that transness is abnormal or other, and helped me to understand a richer history of the gender binary as a construct and an imposition.
When reflecting on the impact of having discussions with other Trans* people, many of the group members expressed how healing it was to talk about their gender and experiences without having to give those listening a Trans 101 crash course. To speak about personal experiences and be understood by others who are like you is a powerful tool for community care. As much as there have been and continue to be efforts to erase tans* lives and narratives of trans* experiences, it is important to connect with others in our community to remind ourselves we are not the only ones living this experience of gender diversity.
It felt really good to know that I wasn’t the only person asking these questions and having these thoughts and experiences. I uncovered that I have been queering my gender my whole life, and it is only recently that I have had the vocabulary to assert and express that. Through conversations with the other participants, I was able to track the thread of my transness back through the span of my life. My main takeaway from each week was that I am not the only one. This sentiment was echoed by other participants and is a powerful outcome of witnessing each other in community. Participants expressed that it felt so relieving to come into this space and be understood, to express themselves without having to explain themselves, to hear how they felt articulated by someone else, to feel seen.
Community care, internal resource building, and consciousness raising are so essential in this time were trans identities are under attack. In Alberta specifically, there are threats to trans* existence on many fronts and on many levels of our society. There is power in coming together to witness and care for each other. If you are a trans* person reading this, my message for you is this: you are not the only one.