Stories
Published: 1 June 2026 by Violet Spillers
I’m Zelah (he/him) – a trans man, personal trainer, LGBTQ+ activist, and content creator – and so much of my life has been shaped by learning to recognise joy in ordinary moments. I’ve shared parts of my transition publicly, from hormones and surgery to the social changes that came with becoming myself. I now support trans and queer people through fitness so they can feel stronger, more confident, and more at home in their bodies. Over time, I’ve realised that hope doesn’t always arrive in grand milestones. More often, it appears in the small, everyday experiences that quietly remind me I’m here, I’m loved, and I’m finally becoming the person I was always meant to be. Looking back, those moments fall into a few threads: finding comfort in my body, being held by the people who love me, and discovering community in unexpected places.
One of the clearest ways that joy shows up for me is through the small rituals of daily life. One of my favourite everyday experiences is something very simple: wrapping a towel around my waist after a shower. Every time, I catch myself glancing in the mirror and smiling. Even two years on from top surgery, I still have moments where I can hardly believe this is my body. That brief second of recognition still fills me with gratitude and joy.
Another small but meaningful first in my transition was shaving for the first time. I lost my dad a few months before I started transitioning, which made that moment feel especially emotional. It was such an ordinary act, but to me it carried enormous weight. I found myself thinking about how many people learn things like that from their dads, and I felt both the ache of his absence and the joy of finally seeing myself in a way that felt right. In that moment, I felt closer to him and closer to the person my younger self had always known I was.
If joy in my body has been one part of my story, being loved through that journey has been another. My partner, Francesca, has been one of the greatest sources of hope in my life. We were originally a lesbian couple, and despite how my transition changed our relationship, she never once made me feel difficult to love or accept. She stood beside me in the big moments – my first dose of testosterone, my top surgery recovery – but she was also there for all the smaller moments of gender euphoria that mattered just as much. Her love gave me the safety and confidence to grow into who I am today.
That same love showed up in other unforgettable ways too. I’d been struggling with my confidence for a while, and one Christmas my girlfriend gave me a professionally printed magazine she had made about my life. She documented my transition with stories and testimonies from the people closest to me, sending out surveys, creating collages, and gathering hundreds of photos to help me see myself more clearly. Sometimes we need our lives laid out in pages, with words from people who love us, to understand just how far we’ve come. I hope every trans person gets to experience that kind of love.
My friends held me in that same spirit of celebration. On the one-year anniversary of my top surgery, they surprised me with dinner at my favourite restaurant. Twelve of the people closest to me came together simply to celebrate my transition, and that act of love reminded me how much hope, support, and joy exists in the world. It was one of those moments that made me feel held by the people around me.
That sense of being supported also made space for moments of ease I had once thought might never come. There was a moment when I played football shirtless with my cis male friends that felt unexpectedly profound. For them, it was probably simple and ordinary, but for me it felt like reclaiming something I’d missed in childhood. Standing there in that ease, I felt a kind of freedom I had longed for over many years.
Beyond my closest relationships, I’ve also found hope in the wider communities that have met me with care. I was once on a reality TV show where I was very publicly outed and misgendered, and it was an incredibly difficult experience. But even in that pain, I found an unexpected source of hope. The people around me, who had only known me for a short time, listened, supported me, and stood beside me. That moment reminded me that community can appear in the most unlikely places, and that even in the hardest situations, solidarity can still shine through.
I’ve felt that same sense of solidarity in explicitly trans-centred spaces, too. I recently went to the Transmission concert in London, a fundraising event for trans-centred organisations, and simply being in a stadium full of people committed to improving trans lives felt inspiring. But the most joyful part of the night came when I met the parents of an eight-year-old trans girl. Hearing about the love they had for their child, and the community they had found with other trans parents, filled me with hope for trans young people – a feeling that can feel all too rare in the current political climate.
When I was six, I used to run around the playground shouting, “I’m a boy!” to anyone who would listen. If you looked at that child and then looked at me now, you might think the journey between the two would have been simple. In a world that truly supports trans children and allows them to explore who they are, maybe it could have been. Instead, my path was long and complicated. I moved through forced femininity, then toxic masculinity, and didn’t really begin finding myself until I was 23. I’m grateful for everything that shaped me, but I also know my life could have been gentler in a more accepting world. That’s why everyday hope matters so much to me now: the small moments of joy, safety, belonging, and love are not insignificant. They are what carried me here, and they are what I hold onto most fiercely.
Ten years ago, I didn’t think I would make it past my GCSEs. Now I have an incredible community, I travel the world, I love my work, and I feel at home in my body. If I could speak to the person I was in 2016, I could spare them so much pain, but I’m also deeply grateful for everything that brought me here. My life has been shaped by learning, change, and survival, and after years of chaos and uncertainty, I can finally say that I feel content. For me, that contentment has been built not only through the big milestones, but through all the small joys that taught me how to recognise hope along the way.
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Want to share your moment of hope and joy? Send a selfie and a short story about what gives you hope and joy to [email protected], or share using #LGBTHopeStartsHere and #hopeandjoy and tag @lgbtfdn.
