Trans Peer Support at the QWC: Kit’s Story
Kit (he/him/his) is a short, but sweet name heard through the hallways of Greenville’s Queer Wellness Center, like a beautiful, peaceful echo. Established in 2021, the Queer Wellness Center (QWC) is Greenville’s only gender-affirming mental and medical health center and community gathering space for the LGBTQIA+ community. Boasting a small but impactful staff, the QWC added Kit to its roster as a peer-support specialist in July of 2022.
Kit was born to a conservative, Upstate South Carolina family in 1991, and was assigned the gender of female at birth. Kit now identifies as a trans man, but starting as a young child Kit described himself socially as a “freak”— because he was at a loss for another word that truly described his identity and heart. Kit had felt gender non-conforming from a very young age, and mostly kept his identity and feelings to himself, which led to a painful state of suspended gender dysphoria. He would be in college before he heard the word “transgender” and began to find more articulate and positive terminology to identify with. It was a revelation that there was language to use to describe how he felt about his body that was not derogatory, and there was an added bonus of finding out that there are other people just like him, too.
This is when Kit plugged into the LGBTQIA community in the Upstate and thanks to those early connections, Kit had bilateral mastectomy in 2019 and began his transformation to the male body that his heart and mind longed for. Forced to find his own funding, he took out a personal loan at his bank to pay for the surgery but describes the bodily reclamation that followed as “life-changing”, and worth every penny.
The surgery was not the end for Kit, though. After suffering through intensely intrusive suicidal thoughts, Kit began therapy and under their care, he began hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in also in 2019. He knew that the changes that HRT would bring could scare away his friends and further shrink his family and social circle, but Kit was no longer able to allow others to stand in the way of his true self. Though he was disappointed, greatly, to lose life-long friends and distant family members, Kit has now replaced suicidal thoughts with deep and lasting self-love, and now he guides others through their transitions as a peer support specialist at the QWC, toward that same end. Kit is also now pursuing his master’s degree in Clinical Counseling so that he may continue his passion of helping others in a therapeutic capacity.
As a peer support specialist Kit spends his days connecting trans folks directly to local resources. No, like really, really directly. He makes medical appointments at gender-affirming medical offices for his clients (with their permission, of course, and often at their request). He meets them at their doctor’s office, holds their hand at the appointment, and even prepares his clients for how to face a nongender-affirming medical professional. He makes himself available to Prisma doctors at the weekly LGBT clinic they host on Fridays each week to answer questions and provide direct support to patients, if requested. He walks clients through the legal process of changing their names. He meets his clients at the police station to get the required finger prints for the name change process. He delivers food, toiletries and clothes to new intakes for the housing program.
Kit is personally and professionally invested in every single support service offered by the QWC. What support programs you ask? QWC support programs include:
family and peer support for those in transition,
crisis and transitional housing,
group therapy,
LGBTQIA+ cultural competence training for the community, and
medical scholarships for those who cannot afford life-saving gender-affirming care.
And the QWC is seeing record-making demand for these services. In 2023, QWC facilitated 429 group services, serving 2,455 unique individuals—a near doubling from the previous year. So far in 2024, the QWC is on track to serve over 4,000 individuals, another large increase over the previous year. Kit is busy, but not immune to recent political realities, or the fears experienced in his heart and his community. Kit lovingly reminds us that even though the election might have brought disappointing results, nothing has actually changed since Nov 5. The services at QWC are the same now as they were before the election. “My hope in my work is that I instill hope in others and inspire them to live truly authentic lives.”
ABOUT QWC: The Queer Wellness Center is dedicated to serving the LGBTQIA+ community by operating Greenville’s only gender-affirming medical and mental health clinic. Within QWC there is also Amaryllis Counseling, an affirming trauma-focused therapy practice. We have a resolute focus on transforming the cultural and environmental landscape of the LGBTQIA+ community in Greenville County. The mission is to enhance access and break down barriers to life-saving and identity-affirming services for the LGBTQIA+ community in the Upstate of South Carolina. We envision a supportive and enriched community in the Upstate of South Carolina, where LGBTQIA+ children, couples, and families can feel safe, secure in the knowledge that they will have access to competent and inclusive medical and wellness services.
The QWC offers a wide array of support services including family and peer support for those in transition, crisis and transitional housing, group therapy, LGBTQIA+ cultural competence training for the community, and medical scholarships for those who cannot afford life-saving gender-affirming care. In 2023, we facilitated 429 group services, serving 2,455 unique individuals—a near doubling from the previous year. Thus far in 2024, we are on track to serve over 4,000 individuals.
