Your blog was well written, touching, hopeful and sad. One of the best I have ever read.

Christine Penner’s suicide is something I would like to talk about. We all know that being TG comes with lots of angst over a tremendous variety of things. At the same time it does not make us immune to any of live’s other challenges: illness, mental illness, need for relationships, work, drug addict, gambling, etc.

As far I know no one has have yet revealed the main cause of her suicide. We can speculate all we want but we may be putting ideas out that not based upon Christine’s reality but rather upon ours. This line of thinking concerns me: Christine was transgendered. She was troubled by that situation. She committed suicide. Her gender issues caused the suicide. Could there be one other possibility in the 1,000,000 other reasons why someone might want to commit suicide that influenced her more?

Not trying to bury the connect between being TG and higher rates of suicide. I get that is real and we need to talk about it and do something about that. Talking about facts has integrity. it works both ways. Let’s not put fact out there that is not unsubstantiated.

Maybe we are more susceptible to suicide for several reasons:

1) For some it might be risker behavior due to economic situations.
2) We isolate ourselves despite the outreach of others.
3) We get so busy working on TG issues that we ignore health issues (including mental health on other issues).
4) Unrealistic thinking: If I just fix TG issues everything will be perfect. Hello…. Once the TG issues are addressed you still have life to deal with…

Thanks again for a great post…

Dana