This summer, mental wellness has finally bubbled up into the mainstream conversation after the very public decisions of two major athletes – Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka – to withdraw from public competitions to address their mental health.
If Biles and Osaka are brave enough to prioritize their mental health over major industry accomplishments in the prime of their careers, every organization should be factoring mental health into the overall wellness of their employees and communities. We are seeing exhaustion and burnout in our LGBTQ+ community as well as the organizations that serve them.
Our friends at Trans Lifeline are taking a break in order to counteract burnout, heal secondary trauma, and rebuild. Their staff will be on break from August 1-22 and their hotline will be operating in a significantly reduced capacity.
We know how critical services like that of Trans Lifeline are to our community and its children, and want to make sure folks are aware of some of the additional resources OFC has to help trangender caregivers at this time.
- Monthly trans and gender nonconforming parent support group
- Trainings for educators around gender and family diversity
- Listing of trans* family affirming resources
We also want to send our love and support to the staff and volunteers at Trans Lifeline for taking this time to address their own mental health. Here at OFC, our staff are also valuable members of our community and we support their whole being, both at work and in the world outside our doors. That is why we have instituted the following ways to support our staff’s wellbeing:
- 25 paid holidays a year in addition to PTO and sick time
- Flexible work from home days
- Shortened Fridays
- Respite childcare for community members and staff
Our Family Coalition is wholeheartedly committed to living our mission of advancing equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ families and children through support and education. And we do this by using our organization’s values as the foundation on which we stand to achieve our mission. We value our employees as people first. We value our community as partners, leaders, and allies. We value the land on which we stand and the fruits of stolen labor that we enjoy. We take all of this into consideration as we continue to ensure that we are held accountable to each other and by the people we serve.
