In Torrey Peter’s debut novel Detransition, Baby, Ames says, transfolk are a “lost generation. We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain.” I was reminded that the queer community and the trans community especially, are communities without many elders. We are a community of people who often have to parent ourselves when we’re most scared, or fragile, or needful. And we also often have to parent ourselves simply to figure out how to be who we really are in a world that wants to deny us our right to live and love freely.