‘Birth and Rebirth’

The M Health Fairview Transgender and Non-Binary Community Health Connector Program Raises People From the Ashes

The phoenix flutters, the red and gold of her feathers made dirty by the sun-choking clouds. Her talons touch down within her aromatic nest — it’s made of cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh and nard. She lowers her head and opens her night-hued beak. With a jeweler’s precision, she nudges the final chunk of cassia bark into its proper place. Held in place by the fern-like fingers of a whispery palm tree, her nest, the stage for her rebirth, is set at long last. Even after 499 years, 11 months, 30 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes, she still feels … something, an offness, a dissatisfaction … an incompleteness, perhaps. Whatever the feeling is, she reassures herself giddily, it will pass soon enough…

Although human beings are generally pattern-seeking beasts, sometimes radical, total transformation is necessary for a full and happy life. Or sometimes, entirely subtle transformation is necessary for a full and happy life. And other times, simple affirmation is necessary for a full and happy life. Such might be the case for people who experience gender dysphoria, where their sex — the parts they were born with — don’t align with their gender — what people feel is true about their bodies.

“Transgender” is an umbrella term for anyone whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. “Non-binary identity” refers to a gender that is not strictly male or female. While many non-binary people identify as transgender, not all do; transgender people can be binary — that is, man or woman … or they can be non-binary. Distinguishing between the two is crucial for healthcare, as biological sex affects health outcomes, while gender influences how people are treated and how they express themselves in society.

When such delicate healthcare intervention is needed in the Twin Cities, help is nearby. A partnership between the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Physicians and Fairview Health Services combines “the University’s deep history of clinical innovation and training with Fairview’s extensive roots in community medicine,” according to this collaboration’s website.

This partnership is called M Health Fairview Transgender and Non-Binary Community Health Connector Program … mostly because the name “3M” was already taken. According to M Health Fairview’s website, its mission is “to improve healthcare access and experience for transgender and gender-nonconforming patients by providing tailored navigation, advocacy and a welcoming environment.” That welcoming environment manifests thanks to over 2,000 providers plying 60-plus specialties at dozens of metro locations.

The realization of this mission isn’t just for the good of individual patients. As the website continues, “M Health Fairview is providing breakthrough medicine and transforming the health of our communities for the better.” Such breakthrough medicine takes the form of a personalized, multi-disciplinary approach to health care that aligns a person’s physical, social and emotional life with their gender identity. No two interventions, therefore, are precisely the same.

The “Connector” part of the group’s name isn’t just for show: the M Health institutions connect patients with the best gender affirming care, ranging from non-medical, social transitions, mental health care, medical care (in forms of hormones and blockers) and, if necessary, surgical care.

In these socially overcharged times, it’s worth remembering that, outside the realm of politics, this kind of medicine isn’t controversial: it’s age-appropriate, medically necessary, supported by all major medical agencies, in many cases, as life-saving as an ambulance trip.

For so many gender non-conformers, M Health Fairview provides a place with no judging, no preaching and no heckling. Quite to the contrary, M Health Fairview provides a space for patients to get healthier, as warm and nurturing, in its way, as a bird’s nest.

While it did its work, the fire must have looked like a force for destruction, but it was, in fact, a crackling engine of crackling creation in its purest, most radical, most profound form. The phoenix has been replaced by a bird-sized pile of ash, pale and grey … but now that ash swirls through the nest, which is somehow unburned, somehow pristine. The ashes of the old, dead self come together — skull, beak, ulna, sternum, something below the sternum — to form an altogether new bird.

The phoenix is reborn.

He is a rooster this time around, incomplete no longer. Finally, he is the phoenix he was meant to be. He unfolds his wings, now purple from end to end, now the color of royals. The phoenix uses his talons to spring up, and he notices that the clouds are gone, perhaps burned away as a side effect of the firebird’s own necessary transformation. He falls, he flaps. Beating the bright, blue air with his violet feathers, free of all that is false, the reborn phoenix studies the growing, unmasked sun and, as if for the first time, he flies — he truly flies.

mhealthfairview.org/treatment/Transgender-and-Non-Binary-Community-Health-Connector-Program