Trans/nonbinary? Contribute a story of making change in your life!

Illustration of a cyborg with light skin and long red hair looking at their mechanical heart.

The T4T Health Research Team at the Boston University School of Public Health is seeking trans and/or nonbinary people to share stories of how you’ve made a positive change in your life. We are specifically looking for one of the following:

  1. Stories of changing how you use alcohol. This could mean getting sober, cutting back on alcohol, changing when or where you drink, or any other positive, intentional change.
  2. Stories of making changes in romantic relationships. This could mean making different choices about who you date, ending an unhealthy relationship, improving how you and a partner communicate and support one another, or any other positive, intentional change.

These stories do not need to be unique, dramatic, or related to being trans/nonbinary, as long as they are important to you.

To contribute, you need to identify as trans and/or nonbinary, be at least 18 years old, and live in the United States.

What is this for?Illustration of cyborg with short purple hair and dark blue skin examining and pointing at something out of frame.

We are creating resources (a combination of print and online materials) to help trans/nonbinary young adults reflect on their values and priorities in the areas of alcohol use and romantic relationships. These stories will be included in the resources as examples of how other trans/nonbinary people have made positive changes in those areas.

While we are creating the resources as part of a broader research project, we are not analyzing the stories themselves, so you will not be considered a research participant if you contribute a story.

You can learn more about the broader research project on the Whole Selves Project web page.

What is involved in contributing?

If you are interested in contributing, the first step is to fill out a form (linked below) with a brief summary of your story, some information about yourself, and your contact information.

Based on these responses, we will ask roughly six people to contribute their stories. We will select contributors so that the final group of stories represents the diversity of trans/nonbinary people’s experiences.

If we ask you to be a contributor, you will have a chance to ask questions before deciding whether to contribute. If you agree to contribute:

  • We will ask you to sign a media release form.
  • We will work with you to write up a longer, polished version of your story. Depending on what you’re most comfortable with, we could interview you and draft the story for you, or you could write the first draft and we could edit it with you. Either way, we will make sure you feel good about the final product.
  • We will ask for a photo of you that we will use to create an illustration for your story.
  • We can work with you by Zoom or in person on the Boston University campus.
  • We estimate the process would take about three hours of your time. To thank you for your time, we would pay you $180 by check or Visa gift card.

These stories will be published online as part of the resources we’re creating, and they will include an illustration of you and other information that could identify you (although you may choose to use a pseudonym). Thus, you should only contribute if you’re comfortable sharing your story publicly and being publicly identified as a trans/nonbinary person.

Next steps

Interested in contributing? Fill out the interest form!

Questions? Email Gabe at grmurch@bu.edu.

 

Illustrations by Tyler Whitaker