My name is Dante René. I picked out the first name myself and my mom picked out the second. I was born in Sinaloa, Mexico in a deeply machista society that ignored the existence of trans and nonbinary people. In 2016, I moved to Guadalajara, and although the way of thinking isn’t that different in the two places, moving had a lot to do with being able to find myself. I’m 22 years old and I study psychology. I’m a nonbinary or genderqueer, trans masculine person. On May 3 of this year, I had my first testosterone injection. It’s been a very long process of feelings, questioning, and self care.

Society presents only us with two ways to be, each with predetermined rules: Man and Woman. But there are a lot more possibilities and ways of being that we almost never get the opportunity to hear or read about. We need more representation and information about trans and nonbinary people, our experiences, and how to live them better. That’s why I’ve created this guide with my own experiences and advice and some that I’ve collected from other nonbinary people.

Remember that every nonbinary person’s lived experience and every transition is different. I hope this little list of general tips helps you.

1. Find your peers.

Maybe you’ve already identified the queer people around you. Be brave an approach them. It’s so common for us to feel alone, like nobody is like us, but the majority of the time, we’re wrong. And if that’s not the case, there are organizations that can help direct you to queer communities in the list of resources below. You can also search for trans and nonbinary hashtags to find trans and nonbinary accounts on social media that you can follow to read about others’ experiences. Reading each other is important.

2. Allies

Who is the person you’re closes to in your family? Who do you feel you can talk to best? You’re probably not going to be able to change the way your whole family thinks, but if you make one person an ally, you might feel more comfortable. You can ask your ally to introduce you in new situations, so there’s less of a load on you. You can ask them to say something like, “Hey, this is Dante, they use neutral and masculine pronouns.” It’s really tiring to have to do it in every new social situation, especially if you live with anxiety. If you’re reading this and you’re a cis person, you can offer to do this for trans and nonbinary people that you know.

3. The Worst-Case Scenario Method

If you’re planning on coming out of the closet about your gender, you can ask yourself and imagine, "what is the worst case scenario possible?" That way you can ask yourself whether or not you can expose yourself to it, and decide whether it’s better to wait or to take the leap. It’s important to know whether or not it’s safe to tell someone because there can be a wide range of possible reactions. For example, you might wait to tell your family until you’re 18 or have a Plan B in case they kick you out of the house. Identify possibilities and have plans ready for them.

If you already made the decision that it’s something you need to do now, but for whatever reason you can't, and you feel forced to pretend to be your assigned gender, it doesn’t mean that you’re denying your identity. The important thing is that above all, we take care of ourselves.

There are other things you can start doing. For my friend Lupe—a 22-year-old genderfluid friend who’s a design student and works in Kiki House of Prisma, a vogue house in Guadalajara—it was earrings:

“Wearing earrings became a banner dude, seriously. Because it was how I could combine both parts. I could be gender fluid all the time, in whatever situation I was in. I felt that using earrings was like my own physical medium to show the duality that I felt inside.”

4. Know how to pick your battles.

There are battles worth fighting and others won by losing. I used to spend a lot of time exhausting myself by correcting people who didn’t use my pronouns right. It caused me a lot of anxiety. I also would read and react to transphobic Twitter threads. For a time I had to put certain words on mute because it was too much for me. My psychologist told me that it’s easier to change the way you react to things than to try to change the way others react.

Picking my battles also implied cutting off certain relationships with people that were important to me but who were invalidating my existence or were otherwise violence to me. This was a way of taking care of my safe spaces.

It is definitely one of the hardest parts of transitioning, especially when for whatever reason it’s not possible to cut off relationships that hurt us. I remember one of the first things I was told about transitioning: “Prepare yourself, you’re going to lose family and maybe friends because of the transition.” This has been the most painful part for me. It’s hard to understand how people so close can be so unable to empathize with my experience that I have to stop talking to them. But also, it made me realize that I’m strong and that I should put my priorities and feelings first.

5. You can’t know what people are really thinking.

We often imagine things that can happen, and even if we’re not sure they’re going to happen, we limit ourselves, we close ourselves, and we do things we don’t like. Lupe told me:

“Breath. Relax. Don’t think too much. It’s like the saying, 'you’re crying and they haven’t hit you yet.' It’s exactly that—you feel attacked by things that aren’t really said or don’t really exist. It’s going to be a long, hard journey. But as long as you can control yourself, the rest is going to come easier. Maybe it’s going to be hard for your family, but it’s going to be harder for you to accept yourself. Other people aren’t going to accept you until you accept yourself. Because are are people going to accept something that you don’t even understand? Personal limits are the trickiest ones. Society is not important to me. The way they see me is not important to me. What’s important to me is to relearn what I learned to think was wrong.”

6. Inform yourself as much as you can.

It’s really hard to build yourself when everything around you is telling you that you don’t exist. But we’re in the age of information at a click’s distance. The majority of information that I found was on Youtube channels. You can find the links to those in the resources below. Some videos are in Spanish but you can turn on the automated subtitle translations.

Constanza—a 33-year-old genderqueer tattoo artist and organizer of Guadalajara Pride—says that as hard as she tried to fit into her assigned gender role, she didn't feel herself and didn’t know why:

“When I finally found information, it was like when you’re walking on hot sand and you finally get to the cool sand and it’s like ‘ahhhh! so good!’ For me it has been so freeing. I’ve allowed myself to do things that I didn’t allow myself before, like dancing. I’ve been able to reconcile with myself, to forgive myself. I’ve allowed myself to look in the mirror and find myself pretty, to find myself handsome. I’m having a lot of fun. I’m letting myself just be without trying to understand myself, just be and flow. And I think that’s something we need—to take off the labels. You don’t have to be anything, it’s enough just to enjoy yourself. I’m living the fucking happiest time of my life now. And that’s all because I finally came to understand that my gender had nothing to do with my genitals and that my expression did not have to satisfy the aesthetic patterns of others.”

7. Listen to yourself.

It’s ok to question yourself, but it’s also ok not to have answers to those questions and just to pause your mind a little bit to take care of yourself. I’m happy to have crossed a lot of lines that have brought me to where I am today and to have not crossed other lines that I knew would put me at risk. If you feel like something is not right, or you don’t like a situation, it is very valid to retreat from those spaces and take a time to heal and then go back or to simply distance yourself. It’s also important to listen to ourselves because that’s the way that we can understand ourselves better. The world constantly bombards us with ideas that make us doubt ourselves, but at the end of the day, you only have yourself. You have to be your priority.

Remember that nonbinary people do not have to be androgynous nor do they have to use neutral pronouns. Take your freedom and discover yourself. Explore what you feel most comfortable with. You do not owe androgyny or femininity or masculinity to anyone. It is your body and it is your experience. Humans are changing beings at all times. Sexuality and gender are liquid. What you want today you don’t have to want tomorrow.

Also remember that if you don’t find a name for what you are that’s also ok. Don’t pressure yourself to classify yourself with a term. Take your time—as much as you need. Don’t try to run.

If you’re thinking about starting hormone replacement therapy, remember that there’s no right time to transition. We can transition at any age—as long as we’re working with a specialist. The transition starts when you realize that you’re trans, not when you get your first hormones. It’s also ok not to want hormones. That does not make you more or less trans. I assure you that it’s going to be a mental and emotional roller coaster but that you’re not for even a minute going to regret having been brave enough to be who you are.

I still don’t know if I’m going to want to take hormones my whole life or if someday I’ll decide to stop. It used to scare me to start treatment without knowing what I would want in the future. But I realized I would have to figure it out by trying it.

Anyway, sending a hug. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to DM me. I’m living my transition publicly on social media to put my little grain of sand toward the lack of information and representation in Spanish. IG: @uretadante.