Unpreparedness during Crisis
To whoever that might be reading this, I plead you to have some grace. Since the introduction of the Trans Act 2026 the community fell apart majorly, while the community never had enough protection this new Act rips apart whatever little we had and adds more weapons for the state to use against us. The entire Act, its functioning and purpose is a legalized state mandated erasure of the trans community in India.
Since the day the Act was introduced as Bill 79 of 2026 in parliament, people have been organizing, protesting, lobbying politicians, holding community spaces, holding legal meetings,security meetings, fundraising, care giving, losing jobs, connections, friend, family and being shaken up by the full force of the state erasing you overnight, and all this is happening in midst of people losing their voting rights, a looming war all across the world, oil and gas shortages, the regular job market shrinkage, and the 1000 issues that already plague this country. This is a crisis on multiple fronts and people are falling apart and dying, and I do not mean that as a figure of speech. People are literally dying, we have either been witness to it, or we know someone who has been witness to it, or we have held someone who has lost someone, and while all this is happening I am hearing this very very irritating phrase being used towards the community, "I am not prepared".
I can not tell you how humiliating it is to hear that phrase, "I am not prepared", when will you prepare? when people die? Saying "I am not prepared" is nothing more than a proof of how absolutely out of touch you are with the situation, and as a MHP you being out of touch is catastrophic, I am not an MHP but since the day this whole issue started I have been holding space, one after the other, every day, countless crisis calls, and when I am exhausted and I send these calls to MHPs what I hear from them is "we are not prepared", "oh we are not a crisis space" then what are you? a bougie space for people to cry about made up problems of only a select, class, caste and profile? How are you true to your own profession if the moment that there is a crisis you start saying I have no capacity for it or understanding of it, how are you practicing awareness if you yourself are so blatantly unaware, now I don't expect everyone to know everything but at least if you have clients of a certain demographic read about them please and stop asking them to have grace if they see your incompetence and decide to move on and see someone else temporarily or permanently. Even from a business perspective this is just stupid to not bother to read about what effects your client and prepare for it.
Stop saying "I am not prepared" when people are trying to survive, instead take accountability if your clients says that you do not understand their situation then try to learn instead of saying "I am not prepared". The bare minimum you can do is just sit with them while they fall apart, be witness to it and slowly hold them, have some grace for the breaking that is happening without trying to fix it immediately. Please learn to hold without trying to fix it. People can not be positive, hopeful, optimistic in such situations, they will break, you just need to let them have space to break. Major suggestion, if you feel like you have to say "I am not prepared" to someone, just take a moment to really think what can you do to take accountability instead.