https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9443-096X
Tiffany Sostar is a narrative therapist and community worker living as an uninvited guest on Treaty 7 land (in Calgary, Alberta, Canada). Tiffany is bisexual, nonbinary, nonmonogamous, neurodivergent and disabled. They are particularly interested in “insider” practice and in complicating the binary between insider and outsider, acknowledging and attending to how they can be insider to some parts of community, and outsider to other parts of that same community. They value how there is difference and specificity even in communities of shared identity and experience. Hostility towards trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming communities continues to escalate. For the next long while, Tiffany is undertaking a series of community projects to create a body of narrative responses in support of trans lives. This work includes their current PhD studies at The University of Melbourne. They love collective narrative practice and documentation. Tiffany can be contacted care of Dulwich Centre, where they hold the Fellowship in support of trans lives.
Therapists have a lot of power to help or to harm. In this time of intense escalation of anti-trans discourse, policy and legislation, it matters more than ever to listen to the people who are most directly affected: trans and gender-expansive people. This video and the document it describes set out a wish list for trans-affirming mental health care, as defined by trans and gender-expansive folks. There are examples of helpful and unhelpful experiences with therapists that you can learn from, as well as ideas about what supportive care might look like, what you can do to create a welcoming space, how you can engage with the broader political context so that your therapy can be useful and informed, and how you can respond when you misstep or make a mistake. There isn’t one single way to be trans, and there isn’t one single way of supporting trans and gender-expansive people. This wish list isn’t a checklist of acceptable therapeutic methods or a glossary of acceptable language; it’s an invitation to a range of practices and approaches. This work is part of “narrative projects in support of trans lives”, a collection of work being undertaken by Tiffany Sostar, Elliot Trimble, and Nathan Viktor Fawaz.
Key words: community work, collective document, health care, trans, transgender, gender identity, gender-affirming care, narrative therapy, narrative practice
Sostar, T. (2026). Dreaming trans-affirming mental health care into existence: A wish list from trans folks [Video]. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (2), https://doi.org/10.4320/FZPY3235
Note
The collective document described in the video can be downloaded here.
References
Gill-Peterson, J. (2024). A short history of trans misogyny. Verso.
Reynolds, V. (2011). Supervision of solidarity practices: Solidarity teams and people-ing-the-room. Context, (August), 4–7.
Saddle Lake Cree Nation. (2026, September 9). Saddle Lake Cree Nation asserts Sovereign Treaty Rights to restore access to life-saving healthcare amid provincial restrictions. [Press release].
Sostar, T. (2024). Caring for trans community [Audio]. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (1). https://doi.org/10.4320/VYKP6507
Hewson, D. (2016) A wish list. In C. White (Ed.), A memory book for the field of narrative practice (p. 78). Dulwich Centre Publications. (Original work published 1993)