Graceful Exits: Intersection of Aging, Transgender Identities, and the Family/Community

In a previous series of papers, this author investigated many of the challenges of growing old within the transgender population. Challenges with respect to violence, abuse, and hate crimes were examined as they related to institutional organizations such as the health care system, religious organizations, the military, and the legal system. Medical and general health care needs of transgender-identified elders were also addressed. However, within all of these articles, the central discussion has been around the needs of the transgender-identified elder. In this paper, I revisit the challenges of being an elder trans-person from the perspective of family members and community. I explore how they intersect with constructs of family as well as family relationships. I take on some of the normative aging processes discussed in these earlier papers and examine the overlap of transgender and aging with family/community. Examples are drawn from the author's field studies and surveys.