The Montrose Center is proud to commemorate Transgender Awareness Week 2023 with the launch of our new TransWellness program and services.
Dedicated to the unique needs of Houston’s transgender community, the TransWellness program is made possible by a generous $300,000 grant from Episcopal Health Foundation.
To be transgender means to identify with something beyond the gender assigned to you at birth, which includes a beautiful variety of identities: binary and nonbinary, intersex and endosex, expressive and internal.
The primary missions of our program are 1) to assist transgender clients with transition, and 2) to provide education to local institutions and businesses on the treatment of trans individuals. Navigating the labyrinth of legal and medical transition can be overwhelming, so our case managers are here to help. We can walk clients through legal name and gender marker changes, assist in procuring letters of recommendation for gender-affirming care, accompany clients during consultations, connect them with social support, and infinitely more.
We also provide cultural competency trainings for healthcare providers, according to WPATH standards of care, so that trans, nonbinary and intersex patients may feel safe, respected, and heard. We are here to advocate and educate!
Transgender Awareness Week is observed during the 2nd week of November, culminating on the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th.
Introduction from our new TransWellness Program Manager
“My name is Philo Toprac, and before you ask, no I am not named after phyllo dough! The name means love, and any relation to baklava ingredients is incidental. I am a Greek-American trans man from Austin, Texas and I use he/him pronouns. My family descends from Byzantine emperors, which would be a better brag if they had actually been good at that job, and we immigrated from Istanbul to Texas a century ago. I graduated from UT in 2019 with degrees in Neuroscience, Psychology, and Plan II honors, and intentions to pursue a PhD so I could research mental health disorders in the LGBTQIA+ community. Instead, I had a gender crisis and changed my entire life. Funny how that happens! Nowadays, I am passionately committed to psychotherapy, and spend my free time meditating, journaling, practicing my Greek (it’s bad), knitting scarves (even worse), and tending to my houseplants, with whom I am obsessed. I am deeply honored and ridiculously excited to be the new TransWellness Program Manager. Now I get to be professionally transgender instead of doing it for free all the time!”
To learn more about our TransWellness services, contact Philo at transwellness@montrosecenter.org.