Fall Constellations

🍂Fall Constellations!🍂

Hello and happy Virgo, Libra, and Sagittarius, seasons, friends and colleagues! (And belated wishes to our Cancer and Leo friends!) We are so grateful you are here and part of our community. 🫂 We hope you will take some comfort from the words, partners, and resources shared here. 💗

🌠 Interstellar Connections 🌠

 Friends, 

When I started brainstorming for this month’s letter, I was ready – so ready – to wax poetic about how it really and truly is okay that you didn’t revolutionize your whole life and self in these three, short sunny months. I still believe this. Whole-heartedly. But, sometimes concrete events in the world require addressing.

For example: one might want to address when one of the biggest medical systems in Illinois (cough cough Advocate Health Care) decides it won’t be providing any gender affirming care (GAC) for folks under the age of 19. 

Advocate isn’t the first medical system to cut GAC for minors. UIHealth, UChicago Medicine, Rush University Medical Center have all made the same choice this year. Even Lurie Children's Hospital –  perhaps the place best known for supporting trans and gender expansive youth in Chicago through medical transition – made the choice to stop providing surgical GAC to minors (but does provide hormone replacement therapy). 

To be truly and bluntly human for a moment, this sucks. As an adult, it feels like a trash fire found an oil spill and somehow, mated with a tsunami. 

It’s worse for young people.  

For many young trans and gender expansive youth, GAC is the way they are able to stay in their bodies. These are medical appointments that they count down the days to. GAC is the type of care that sometimes – thankfully and gloriously – helps put therapists out of a job when it comes to their young clients. 

None of this is to say that medical systems are making these decisions without coercion. Medical systems that rely on Medicaid and Medicare are under incredible systemic pressures. Regulatory agencies are threatening funding even when the relevant executive orders have been put under injunctions.

All of those pressures are real. 

The spin that these decisions have been made as a means to “continue caring for all patients' health needs, “ per Advocate’s press release, is not real. 

It is real that trans, gender expansive, and non-binary young people are a part of “all patients.” 

It is real that GAC is a legal and protected healthcare service in Illinois. 

It is real that some of these demands from the Executive Branch are not currently considered legal, settled law that can threaten funding.*

It is real – observable and testable – that these medical systems have made decisions that trade away access to GAC – which is both affirming and life-saving – as means of keeping funding for other types of care, much of which is also life-saving, before they are legally required to do so.*

We don't get to know how their bet will turn out. We are not future-tellers. We can, however, feel all the feels. We can be mad and sad. We can be disappointed and/or devastated.  We can rage. We can have any feeling on the feeling wheel. 

And while we feel all of the feelings, we can make our own decisions – like supporting the places that have continued to stand with young people.

• Planned Parenthood of Illinois provides hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to minors 16+

• Howard Brown provides HRT to minors 12+ 

• Lurie Children’s Hospital will start care with minors before puberty and provides HRT based on puberty onset as opposed to age

We can use the resources that continue to be created like Trans Up Front’s Gender Affirming Care referral service. 

The biggest thing that we can do to manage the times ahead (and hopefully even shape them) is plug into community. Work with your local mutual aid society. Join a group or club with other queer folks. Host a dinner or a lunch or a crafternoon.

I’m not suggesting any of this because it will make you happier – though it probably will. I say it because these small engagements are the brass-tacks of resistance. 

The knitter in your crafternoon group might be the person who starts calling the phone-tree for you when things go sideways. You might be the one who starts the fund that keeps someone else’s family afloat.

I don’t know exactly how it will play out. All I can say is that, historically, liberation is a team sport, and while the team doesn’t need everyone to win, it might just need you. 

* Let’s be clear: even if the legal requirements changed, we’d still hope hospitals would continue providing life-saving care. But we’re not in that place yet. 

🎉 Constellation Celebrations 🎉

The Constellation team was stoked and 🌈PROUD🌈 to march with our kiddos in the always fun, family-forward Buffalo Grove Pride parade with our dear friends and colleagues, Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook. If you weren’t out there with us this year, we hope we can look forward to seeing you there next year!

We continue to host quarterly BYOB(uddy) events in the Edgewater neighborhood and have truly enjoyed getting to know everyone who has passed through to say “hey,” shared their clinical expertise, and supported one another in troubleshooting hiccups. Follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook to be notified the next time we come together!

🌅 On the Horizon 🌅

We currently have openings for private pay, BCBS IL PPO, Aetna PPO, and UnitedHealthcare PPO clients - as well as a limited number of sliding scale openings. Check out our team and schedule a consult call today!

✨Constellation’s Constellations✨

We are so grateful to have so many inspiring LGBTQ+ leaders throughout Illinois who contributed to the visioning and launch of IL Pride Connect, a statewide resource hub and legal hotline that expands access to legal information and support for LGBTQIA+ individuals across Illinois. Congratulations and deep thanks to the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), Legal Council for Health Justice, and all the other community partners who have come together to meet the urgent needs spurred by our current federal administration.

We want to spotlight our new friends and colleagues at Food 4 Thought Nutrition who provide nutrition counseling “rooted in person-centered nutrition care” and prioritizing respect, empathy, and cultural competence in order to foster a true collaborative partnership with their clients. Check them out and share them as a resource for anyone who could benefit from this kind of support!

If you’re in or around Chicago this October, please join us for PFLAG’s National Convention Learning With Love! Nat will be presenting a workshop titled Grounding Ourselves in Solidarity on Saturday morning and can’t wait to see folks there!

We were recently introduced to a Chicago-based Gender Creative Playgroup for youth and families. Kiddos from 6 months to 10 years are welcome, though the largest group of regular attendees tend to fall in the 2-5 age range. Check out their spaces on Linktree for more details!

Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook’s Pride Youth Program has several exciting opportunities for LGBTQ+ youth to connect with and support one another during this Fall season - all fliers below. PrideSUPPORT groups include Rainbow Connection and Trans Talk for Grades 9-12, Fruit Loops for Grades 6-8, and Primary Colors for youth in Grades K-5 and their caregivers. Pride Hangs is a new drop-in component of prideCONNECT for high school youth featuring art, homework, community service, holiday parties, and field trips! Dungeons & Dragons is also back with another campaign on Tuesday evenings, beginning September 30! For more information or to sign up for Youth Services’ Pride Youth Program newsletter, email [email protected].