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Discovering who you are, thinking about who you want to be and determining how you want others to see you starts to take shape in your adolescent years. And then you search to find a place and a group of people for acceptance, support and encouragement.
For Lilia Morris-Wright and other teens who don't neatly fit into the gender binary or who have sexuality that's difficult to define, the place is Santa Fe Mountain Center.
The 16-year-old doesn't want to be called he or she, but prefers to use the pronoun "they." It's a distinction that requires far less explanation than one may think and is among the reasons why the work of the center's New Mexico Genders and Sexualities Alliance is so critical.
"It gives you a network of people who you know support you in a very specific way," says the soon-to-be-11th grader at New Mexico School for the Arts. "As a young person, you are sort of just coming into the world and facing all of the craziness that comes with it, and when you are a queer or transgender, it can be very overwhelming; the alliance gives you a space where people understand that and have similar experiences to yours."
Morris-Wright was invited to become a member of the youth council at the alliance after attending an overnight camp. Youth support from their peers in the LGBTQ community is the best kind: "You may have counselors or parents or people who are reaching out to support you, but they may not understand what you're going through the way other youth understand," Morris-Wright says.
LuzMarina Serrano, a staff member at the Mountain Center who runs the alliance, says the group is especially important in times of tragedy, like the big blow from the Orlando nightclub shooting, she says. "I can't imagine being 15 years old and seeing something like that and thinking, Wow, that could be me."
Sawyer Sverre-Harrell, 17, says he found the alliance at a time when "I was questioning my gender [and] wasn't sure who to reach out to," he tells SFR. "I found myself very at home," says Sverre-Harrell, a theater program student at NMSA. "It felt right to be there." That was two years ago, and he has been a part of the youth council ever since. "You can really find your true friends and family there, when you are kind of lacking that at home."
"In New Mexico, there aren't a lot of resources for LGBTQ youth," adds Chloe Fox, who begins her junior year at Santa Fe Prep in the fall. "It creates a safe space for people to cultivate and express themselves without worry of being discriminated against."
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Santa Fe Reporter