I’m Experiencing a Second Adolescence & It’s Complicated

A year shy of 30, I’m now trying to give this back to myself. Today, during dinners, park visits, or phone calls with my tight-knit community of Black queer and trans migrants, we share the excitement we have every time someone uses our correct pronouns, the names we have chosen, and when those around us ask if we are comfortable or need anything. I especially notice how lighter we feel when we share moments in which friends, family members, or hookups tell us we are beautiful and comment on parts of our bodies that before we began to transition, we didn’t know how to be kind to. Sometimes, we sit around a coffee table and talk about our first kiss with someone we truly wanted to be with. For many of us, our first kiss happened in our mid-late twenties, thirties, and even forties. In LGTBQ communities, we call these experiences our second adolescence. However, I hadn’t thought about the impact that my migration as an unaccompanied minor had on my actual adolescence until now.