ALLT S03E09: Our Trans Boots On The Ground Capital Hill Report, Threads "Final Boss of Trans People" Contest and Trans Elder Babble

Honey, pull up a chair — this one has got everything: psychiatry, policy and community celebration.

Between them, Mardi and Lenny carry nearly a hundred years of a life lived trans – through the decades when there were no words for it and no roadmaps. Just persistence, instinct and an absolute refusal to disappear.

This episode opens with a listener message from a mother navigating her four-year-old's emerging gender identity. Drawing on decades of personal experience, they offer guidance rooted in one simple principle — when a child expresses who they are consistently, persistently and without wavering, that is not a phase. That is self-knowledge.

Dr. Terra Cody Weston ( @terra_forme on Threads & IG ) child and adolescent psychiatrist, joins from Capitol Hill where she is working on a psychiatric fellowship inside Congress. Quietly and magnificently, she is making noise in all the right places — sharing what remains very much alive in the fight for trans rights, from legal pathways and state-level protections to a psychiatric community finding its courage.

And because joy is its own kind of resistance, she tells us about the Final Boss of Trans People, a bracket-style community contest running on Threads @terra_forme , now in its second year. The contest spotlights activists, pioneers, artists and icons from across trans life — building visibility, community traditions and a sense of collective pride.

Honest, warm and politically engaged. This is A Life Lived Trans.