First steps in trans living 5: Sparkle - finding my tribe

Sparkle is the UK's national transgender celebration, held in Manchester in July. I've been seven times overall and it's always proved the perfect event for meeting and making friends and feeling part of a larger community. The 2020 event, which should have taken place the weekend before last, had to be cancelled, like most other things this year.

In this series of posts I have described how four earlier occasions enabled me to leave home and interact with the real world in the summer of 2010. This last event, Sparkle 2010, was the culmination of an intense month of emerging into the world and made me feel that I was now in a position to live as a woman, not merely by dressing at home or interacting online.

The Sparkle website is here https://www.sparkle.org.uk/

I was too engrossed in the events to remember to take many photos so here are some by another person who was there that year.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_jones/albums/72157624503761614/with/4797366710/

My blog reports on other years' Sparkles give a good idea of the activities to enjoy there but it's a mix of socialising, entertainments, eating out, preening, purchasing, hearing talks, dancing, making friends and catching up with old ones ... a sort of village party weekend.

It was mid-way through the weekend that the thought really struck me as I looked out over the sea of transgender party people and their families crowding Canal Street and Sackville Gardens: this is my tribe. This feels right. I belong with these people.

I know we were having a party at a dedicated event but every person here was, like me, affirming the truth that they were trans, individually and collectively. And for the first time I felt something very special was happening: here was I, being carried along by a flood of others like me and being part of that flood. We trans people are real, we exist, we have a right to be ourselves and be happy.

Sparkle 2010 was very special for me: it clarified that I had arrived where I wanted to be in life and how I wanted to live. The next two years were, without a doubt, the best ever.

Sue x