The Art of
Belonging
Building an Evolving Legacy of Belonging
Sometimes people assume organizations begin with strategy. Like someone sat in a room with a five-year plan and decided to build something. But Alianza Translatinx began with years of carrying questions about safety, belonging, survival, and what it would take for our community to not only make it through, but to truly live.
I came to the United States when I was young, after years of violence and instability in our home in Mexico. My mother left for California because she was trying to protect us and create a different future for our family. Even then, parts of my childhood were still marked by fear, harm, and the ache of not always being protected by the people who were supposed to care for me.
I share that because those experiences shaped how deeply I understand the need for safety, tenderness, protection, and a place where you can finally exhale.
At the same time, I was growing up carrying feelings I did not fully understand yet. I remember feeling uncomfortable in my own body. I felt different all the time. There was a sadness I carried quietly for years because I did not have language for what I was experiencing. I learned how to hide parts of myself very early.
I think that is why the work of Alianza Translatinx has never only been about services to me. It has always been about creating the conditions I did not have: safety, trust, tenderness, and the chance for people to become whole without having to hide.
Then there was the reality of being undocumented.
In high school, I remember realizing that college might not be available to me in the same way it was for others. My immigration status shaped what resources I could access, what opportunities felt possible, and how hard I had to work just to keep moving forward. I did find a way to go to college, but that experience taught me something I still carry into this work: opportunity is not just about motivation. People can have talent, discipline, intelligence, and dreams, and still be blocked by systems that were never built with them in mind.
After college, I remember getting what felt like my first real professional opportunity. I was proud of myself. Then I lost that job because my legal documents did not align with my gender identity. I felt humiliated, angry, and exhausted. It felt like no matter how hard I worked, the world kept reminding me there was supposedly no space for people like me - not in workplaces, not in systems, not in the future I had been trying so hard to build.
That is part of why economic empowerment matters so deeply to Alianza Translatinx. Because dignity is not only emotional. It is also material. It is having housing, income, documents, healthcare, work, education, and choices.
When I was younger, I did not see many spaces for transgender people in Orange County that felt safe, close, or truly ours. Sometimes I traveled to Los Angeles just to feel seen. Just to feel less alone. Over time, I started meeting more transgender people in Orange County and realized how many of us were carrying the same exhaustion. People were struggling with housing, healthcare, employment, immigration issues, rejection, violence, and isolation while still trying to survive with dignity every single day.
But what stayed with me most was not only the struggle. It was the brilliance.
People talk about transgender communities almost entirely through tragedy. But what I saw was resilience, humor, intelligence, creativity, leadership, beauty, and care for one another.
What was missing was not potential.
Our community has always had brilliance. Our community has always had creativity. Our community has always had leadership, humor, care, and the ability to build. What was missing was investment.
Infrastructure. Support. Economic opportunity. A real home for our community.
Alianza Translatinx exists because survival should not be the ceiling for our people. Survival may be where many of us begin, but it should never be the only future available to us.
That is the future I believe Alianza Translatinx is here to help build.
A future where our community has the infrastructure to be held, the investment to lead, and the economic opportunity to move beyond survival.
A future where trans people can access housing, healthcare, education, employment, entrepreneurship, and leadership without having to leave parts of themselves behind.
A future where our people are not only protected in moments of crisis, but supported into lives of stability, dignity, joy, and power.
For a long time, I thought survival was enough. I didn't realize that joy could also be something we deserved.
If someone had told the younger version of me that one day I would compete in international pageants, I probably would have laughed. As a child, I spent years trying not to be noticed. The idea of voluntarily standing under bright lights in front of thousands of people would have felt impossible.
What surprised me was that pageantry was never really about the stage. It became one of the places where I challenged myself to become the fullest version of who I could be. That being seen wasn't something to fear. That celebrating myself wasn't vanity, it was healing.
For transgender people, we're so often taught to focus on surviving that we forget we are also worthy of joy. Worthy of beauty. Worthy of celebration. Worthy of dreaming without apology.
That is what pageantry came to represent for me. Not perfection. Freedom. And every time I step onto a stage, I hope another transgender person sees what I wish I had seen growing up: that our lives are worthy of being celebrated, too. The more I embrace that freedom in my own life, the more I want our community to experience it too.
Survival keeps us alive. Joy reminds us why we're alive.
When the pandemic happened and we started distributing meals, I do not think any of us fully understood what Alianza Translatinx would eventually become. We were simply trying to help people survive one day at a time. But little by little, people kept coming back. Not just because they needed resources, but because they needed human connection. They needed a place where they could arrive exactly as they were and be met with dignity.
When I think about the future now, I still get emotional sometimes. For so long, survival was the only thing I allowed myself to think about. Paying rent. Staying safe. Getting through the next week. The next month.
So being able to dream bigger feels powerful.
I want Alianza Translatinx to become a place that changes what people believe is possible for trans communities. Not just a nonprofit. Not just programs. Not just services. A home. A bridge. A place where our people can move from crisis into stability, from isolation into belonging, and from survival into real power over their lives.
I want someone to walk into our space needing housing support and leave believing their life still has possibility. I want someone looking for work to find not only a referral, but encouragement, training, confidence, and a pathway forward. I want young trans people to grow up seeing leadership that looks like them instead of constantly being told their lives will only be a struggle.
Economic empowerment is central to that vision, not in a cold or transactional way, but in a deeply human one. It means people have access to work, education, entrepreneurship, financial stability, and leadership opportunities. It means they are not forced to choose between being safe and being themselves. It means they can build careers, support their families, create art, start businesses, and imagine futures that are bigger than survival.
I want future generations of trans people to experience more softness.
I want them to know joy earlier in life.
I want them to feel safe taking up space.
I want them to experience love without shame.
I want them to have the support to build careers, homes, families, art, businesses, and lives that feel fully their own.
I want them to dream without immediately thinking about survival first.
Because so many of us grew up believing we had to earn our humanity somehow. I do not want that for the next generation. To me, true belonging means not having to constantly prove you deserve to exist. It means being able to fully breathe. It means having enough safety, support, and resources to make choices from hope instead of fear.
This work is hard. There are days when I carry people's pain home with me. There are moments when the responsibility feels incredibly heavy.
But then something happens that reminds me why this matters. Someone gets housed. Someone starts their hormone replacement therapy for the first time. Someone gets help navigating documents, a job opportunity, a training program, or a moment of stability they did not think was possible. Someone tells us they finally feel seen. Someone walks into our office nervous and leaves laughing.
Those moments remind me that Alianza Translatinx is not only responding to crisis. We are helping people remember that their lives still hold possibility.
And we cannot build this future alone.
One of the most beautiful parts of this work has been seeing people choose to stand with us in real and meaningful ways. Not perfectly. Not always knowing the right words. But with humility, care, and a willingness to help build something our community has needed for a long time.
To me, accompliceship means more than saying you support us. It means opening doors, sharing resources, investing in our leadership, creating opportunities, bringing us into rooms we are not in so we can advocate for ourselves, challenging systems, and standing beside us even when it is uncomfortable.
Our community does not only need sympathy. We need investment. We need opportunity.
We need pathways to housing, healthcare, education, employment, entrepreneurship, and economic power. We need people who believe that trans people deserve not only to be protected in moments of crisis, but to be supported into lives of stability, dignity, joy, and possibility.
This is the next chapter of Alianza Translatinx.
We are not only responding to crisis. We are building toward a future where our community can breathe, lead, work, create, rest, love, and thrive. We are inviting people into this work because this future will take all of us.
What keeps me going is knowing that the younger version of me would have needed a place like this so badly.
A place where she did not have to explain herself.
A place where she did not have to earn her humanity.
A place where she could simply belong.
And maybe in some ways, I am still building the thing I once needed too. But Alianza Translatinx is no longer only about what one younger version of me needed.
It is about what our whole community deserves.
A future.
And the power to thrive on our own terms.