CHAPTER 12

There was that word again. “History.”

It’s not often you know that you’re witnessing history when it’s happening, but that realization was unmistakable in 2015 and 2016. Our community’s progress would have seemed unimaginable just a decade before. But because of the tireless work of advocates and activists and the quiet courage of everyday LGBTQ people, “the arc of the moral universe” was bending toward justice. As broken as our politics can seem, our community proved that we can still do big things in this country, that when we advocate from a place of passion and authenticity, change will come.

In the months ahead, the progress continued to roll in: enhanced protections for transgender students, the removal of the ban on transgender service members in our nation’s military, and the release of protections in health care that Andy had fought for throughout our relationship.

In a much-anticipated move, the Obama administration made clear that the Affordable Care Act’s ban on discrimination based on sex included discrimination against transgender people, including for transition-related care. For the first time ever, transgender people would be afforded clear nationwide protections in federally funded health-care programs and institutions. And while that didn’t impact every single health-care provider, it included most insurance plans and hospitals.

Flipping through the pages of the regulation with my colleagues, our hearts filled with pride as we realized that Andy and his work were referenced by name several times throughout the lifesaving document. When I got home, I looked up at the urn of Andy’s ashes and the picture of him that sat right next to it. “I’m so proud of you, Bean,” I said. “You did it.”

As was the case when Andy shepherded through Washington, D.C.’s local health-care nondiscrimination policy, now, even in death, cancer hadn’t taken away his voice. He had passed away, but he was still saving others’ lives.

But despite these historic steps forward, we were still a long way from full nationwide equality. Progress isn’t always linear and can often elicit a dangerous backlash, one that often targets the most marginalized within a community. Violence against LGBTQ people, particularly trans women of color, appeared to be ticking up. In 2016, at least twenty-two trans people were killed in the United States, the most lives lost on record in a single year up until that point.

I routinely met LGBTQ people facing discrimination, couples like Jami and Krista Contreras in Michigan whose six-day-old baby had been denied care by a pediatrician simply because Krista and Jami were a same-sex couple. People like Diane, a transgender factory worker who was forced to place a humiliating sign outside of the women’s restroom if she was using it, as if she was a threat to others.

“People won’t even park their cars next to mine in the parking lot,” she told me. “I’m completely isolated.”

While same-sex couples could now legally marry in all fifty states, D.C., and the U.S. territories, LGBTQ people in a majority of states were still at risk of being discriminated against in the workplace, housing, and public spaces. In a majority of states, gay workers could be legally married but then could potentially be fired for placing a picture of their spouse on their desk. More and more transgender people could gain access to health care to live their authentic lives but could be denied access to even the most basic necessities for doing so. In every case, transgender people, and particularly trans people of color, face the brunt of this discrimination.

Soon enough, Senator Merkley held to the promise he made at CAP to introduce a comprehensive LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill. In an ornate room just off the floor of the U.S. Senate, flanked by the first openly LGBTQ senator, Tammy Baldwin, civil rights leader Representative John Lewis, and other elected officials, Senator Merkley and openly gay Representative David Cicilline introduced the Equality Act.

The room was packed with reporters and activists. Cameras lined the back wall across from a lectern with a sign that read “Equality Forward.” The LBJ Room, named after the former president who had signed the Civil Rights Act into law in the 1960s, was filled with light from three big windows that looked out onto the expansive lawn just in front of the Capitol, and right in the middle of the central window was a view of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Empowered by our historic progress, our movement was now shifting to a bolder strategy, demanding full federal equality. The Equality Act would be one of the most extensive civil rights bills introduced since the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed in 1991, and it was introduced with more congressional cosponsors on day one than any LGBTQ legislation in history, a sign of the rapidly shifting public opinion.

Nowhere was the need for these explicit and irrefutable protections more evident than in North Carolina. As gay people became a less effective boogeyman for anti-equality forces, extreme politicians began to turn their attention to transgender people. In early 2016, the city council in North Carolina’s largest city, Charlotte, adopted an LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance much like the laws passed in Delaware, several other states, and more than one hundred cities.

An important but by no means extraordinary step by the city council was quickly and disingenuously used by anti-LGBTQ politicians in the North Carolina state legislature and by the state’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, as an excuse to push for a so-called “bathroom bill,” legislation that would restrict access to restrooms in public buildings, such as schools, airports, and government offices, to the gender marker on a person’s birth certificate.

The practical impact of the bill would be similar to the almost-added amendment we thankfully avoided in Delaware during the fight for our positive nondiscrimination bill. By limiting restroom access in public buildings based on a person’s birth certificate, the bill would ban the vast majority of the trans community—most of whom have not been able to update the gender marker on their birth certificate—from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity in many core areas of life.

In an almost laughably extreme move, the governor called the state’s legislature in for a special session specifically to regulate where trans people could pee. Calling a special session is required when a legislature has adjourned for an extended period of time and is usually utilized for emergency situations such as a natural disaster. But these legislators could see that the clock was ticking on their political ability to legislate discrimination against trans people. Soon, public opinion would change so much that it would become politically impossible.

It’s no surprise that antitrans extremists have targeted bathrooms. Every fight for civil and human rights over the last several decades has included controversies about restrooms. It’s partly because we all feel vulnerable in those spaces, so it is easy to instill fear in people.

But it’s also more calculated and sinister than that. Access to a restroom is necessary everywhere: in schools, in workplaces, and in public venues. These so-called bathroom bills are nothing more than an attempt to legislate transgender people out of public life.

In March 2016, the North Carolina legislature met in their special session and, in a matter of hours, passed the antitransgender bill, which Governor McCrory signed into law that night. The law, infamously known as House Bill 2, or HB2, wasn’t just a bathroom bill; it also included a laundry list of harmful policies. Cities could no longer pass any LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections. Civil rights protections for other identities were undermined. And localities were forbidden from setting their own minimum wages.

The reaction from around the nation was swift and furious, particularly in regard to the section of the law that required state facilities to discriminate against transgender people. Businesses began to boycott. Conventions and concerts started to pull out. Athletic associations made clear they wouldn’t locate events in the state. And within weeks, North Carolina was hemorrhaging jobs and economic activity.

But more than anything else, the bill hurt real people. Transgender public school students, many of whom were already using restrooms consistent with their gender identity in school, were now faced with being in violation of state law if they continued to do so.

Just a month after passage of the law, I flew down to North Carolina with a film crew from CAP to interview an eighteen-year-old transgender boy about HB2. Finn Williams lived just outside Durham, North Carolina, and had come out to a supportive family a few years before. After coming out, Finn had gone to four different schools trying to find one that would both allow him to use the boys’ restroom and combat the bullying he experienced. In denying Finn access to the boys’ restroom, he was told that he would make the other students uncomfortable.

“Just being me shouldn’t make other people uncomfortable,” Finn told us.

He eventually dropped out of high school entirely instead of facing the constant bullying from peers and humiliation by his school. And now the North Carolina legislature had mandated effectively the same treatment Finn had experienced for the thousands of transgender students statewide.

After finishing up with Finn, we traveled to Charlotte and met with a member of the city council, a trailblazing out lesbian woman named LaWana Mayfield who had helped lead the charge for the city’s now-banned LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinance. After wrapping up our discussion, and just before we left for the airport, I popped into the women’s restroom at the Charlotte government center, where we’d interviewed Councilwoman Mayfield.

I had avoided public restrooms while in the state, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I went in and, just like everyone else, peed. After washing my hands, as I stood alone in the bathroom, I took out my phone and snapped a selfie.

I posted the photo on Instagram and Facebook with the caption:

Here I am using a women’s restroom in North Carolina that I’m technically barred from being in.

They say I’m a pervert.

They say I’m a man dressed as a woman.

They say I’m a threat to their children.

They say I’m confused.

They say I’m dangerous.

And they say accepting me as the person I have fought my life to be seen as reflects the downfall of a once great nation.

I’m just a person. We are all just people. Trying to pee in peace. Trying to live our lives as fully and authentically as possible. Barring me from this restroom doesn’t help anyone. And allowing me to continue to use this bathroom—just without fear of discrimination and harassment—doesn’t hurt anyone.

Stop this. We are good people. #repealhb2

I posted the picture and caption to underscore for my own friends the simple fact that this wasn’t an abstract issue. This was a law banning real people like me from public restrooms. I didn’t think much of it as I set my phone to airplane mode and took off for Colorado, where I would be speaking at an HRC event in Denver.

As we took off, I looked back at North Carolina knowing I could return to my supportive bubbles, but for so many transgender North Carolinians like Finn, HB2 was an everyday reality. They couldn’t escape it.

By the time we landed and I turned on my phone, my Facebook notifications had exploded. At first hundreds of people had shared my photo. Then, a few hours later, thousands. Then ten thousand. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Then fifty thousand shares.

Soon the media started calling. BuzzFeed posted a viral piece: THIS TRANS WOMAN POSTED A SELFIE TO CHALLENGE NORTH CAROLINA’S BATHROOM LAW. Mic.com called it the “Best Selfie Ever,” a story Yahoo News reposted. Another article called it an “illegal” selfie. Teen Vogue described it as a “powerful political move.” MSNBC featured the picture and read the caption on Chris Hayes’s primetime television show.

The post filled with comments. Some were great, with the initial wave reinforcing the harm of HB2 and the points I made in the text of the post. Other supportive comments, though, missed the point and began to focus on my appearance as, at least in the picture, a “passable” trans woman.

When I first posted the selfie, thinking that it was going to be limited to my friend network, I posted the picture along with the text to reinforce the realness of the law. But as it spread, the post soon became less about the text and more about the picture itself. Several comments read variations of the same thought: “Of course you belong in the women’s restroom, look at you.”

I had seen this and tried to push back on that same narrative in Delaware.

And now I tried to use the platform I was given to stress that this wasn’t about how I, or any trans person, looked. It was about who we are. Civil rights shouldn’t depend on appearance. And the fact of the matter is that those most impacted by laws such as HB2 are the trans people who aren’t like me, particularly gender-nonconforming trans people and trans people of color.

Part of me considered stepping back from the stories, but I worried that my message was being lost. I feared that my words were being drowned out by the “vulnerable cuteness of [my] doe-eyes accented with white eyeliner,” as one writer put it. I certainly wouldn’t be the first woman to have her thoughts overshadowed by her appearance and femininity. So I decided to try to counter that takeaway, to utilize the opportunities for interviews to provide nuance to the reactions. But of course, participating in the stories only perpetuated the attention.

Each story pointed people back to my personal social media accounts. The positive comments were quickly overwhelmed with a flood of hate.

I had witnessed firsthand in Delaware the emotions that the bathroom conversation stirred up in people, but nothing I had experienced quite prepared me for this. The topic of trans bathroom access was contentious, but the actual sight of a trans woman in a women’s bathroom was explosive. For many who viewed my picture, it was the first time they had ever knowingly seen any kind of image of a trans woman in a women’s bathroom. The political climate and increased violent rhetoric had only ratcheted up the passions.

My social media accounts were filled with threats. The dark web, the underground websites that have become home to “alt-right” trolls, filled with conversations about gang-raping me or murdering me. In the days after the post, my workplace was forced to heighten their security protocol because of the threats that were coming my way.

The most common message wasn’t a threat so much as a violent request, frequently appearing as three letters: “kys.”

Kill yourself.

Message after message told me to take my own life. My phone would illuminate every three seconds with the same message. Again and again.

“kys.”

“kill yourself.”

“fucking die u ugly monster.”

“kill yourself.”

“kys.”

“kill yourself you look like a man.”

“it.”

“kys.”

“it.”

“you are disgusting and worthless.”

Eventually, I turned off the notifications, but every so often I would log on to report and delete some of the most violent and hateful comments. I didn’t want young trans kids who followed my social media accounts to see them. I even thought about taking down the picture or setting my accounts to private, but then the haters would have won. I resolved to keep it all up, even if I was miserable.

My parents were instinctually nervous about all the attention, but given their limited use of social media, they had no idea of the hate that was coming my way. I couldn’t bear to tell them. I felt completely alone, and honestly, I just wanted Andy. I just wanted him to say “I love you.” I just wanted him to hold me, to reassure me. I wanted him to tell me that I was beautiful and that he was proud of me.

The thought of suicide had never crossed my mind. Even in my harshest or hardest moments, I always felt lucky to be alive. Watching Andy fight to live only reinforced how lucky I felt to be alive and to be continuing to fight. But as the messages continued flooding in, I just wanted to escape it all. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Standing in my hotel bathroom in downtown Denver, just an hour before I was set to speak before five hundred people at the HRC Mile High Dinner, my heart began racing and I started to hyperventilate. I knew the stories would diminish in a matter of days and the negativity would cease, but after being told to kill myself thousands of times for days, the thought of suicide somehow became a rational thought in my mind for the first time ever. It was a way to end it right now, to escape the deluge of hate. Wrapped in my bath towel, I sat on the edge of the bathtub and began to cry.

Get it together. Get it together. Get it together.

I never in a million years would have thought strangers telling me to kill myself would have had such a significant impact on my own psyche. I thought I was too old. Too jaded. With so many privileges and such amazing support structures, how could these words on a screen even begin to shake me to my core?

But they did. And they do for so many. Thinking about the constant bombardment of bullying in schools, I wondered, How on earth does anyone survive this?

Across the country, there are young people for whom the glimpse into harassment that I experienced was an everyday reality, both online and in person. And for them it won’t go away in two or three days. They won’t be able to walk out on a stage in a room full of affirming, loving people like I was set to do that night. Hell, they may not even be able to go home to a family who accepts them. Change cannot come fast enough for the students who must build up so much strength and perseverance to merely make it through the school day.

In the days and weeks after the harassment, I worried about my reaction and what it meant for my future in this work and movement. If I couldn’t handle a damn selfie, how could I do more?

The thought plagued my thinking for several weeks. As passionate as I was about the work that I was doing, I wondered whether I was strong enough for it. I worried that I didn’t have the confidence for it. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and give up what little platform I had developed.

The kind of hate I experienced was an occupational hazard. At least for the time being, it was a reality of the world we live in. If I were to continue, I’d have to figure out a way to get past it or be miserable. And then one day, after listening to a story about a reporter who had embraced her weight publicly and faced a serious online backlash because of it, something clicked.

It’s trite to say that many of the biggest bullies are often LGBTQ themselves and in the closet. It may be true in some cases, but it glosses over a more universal truth that underlies the pervasiveness of anti-LGBTQ hate.

Surely, not everyone who bullies is in the closet. But everyone does hold some kind of insecurity. Whether it’s your sexual orientation, your gender identity, how you look, what you sound like, what you do for a living, or any multitude of characteristics, everyone struggles with something that society has told them is wrong. But as LGBTQ people, we have had the courage to embrace something that many think we should be ashamed of; we have stood up and decided to live our truth, not just from a place of authenticity, but so often from a place of pride. We have exercised our own individual agency and power to overcome what was once an insecurity to hold our heads high and proclaim: “This is who I am and there is nothing wrong with me.”

And the bullies see that. They see our power and they are jealous of it. They envy the agency we have been able to exercise and the clear power we hold. So often that is where their hate and vitriol come from.

We are powerful. In Delaware, I had to learn the power of my own voice. Now I needed to understand the power of my own identity—of LGBTQ lives—to move forward. Society can’t make me feel voiceless when I know the power of my own voice. And society can’t make me feel weak when I know that I am powerful just for being.

Suddenly, the comments started to hurt less. I was still cognizant of my safety, but I was no longer bogged down by the insults. I was ready to be at the center of the fight.

After three educational, empowering, and emotional years at CAP, I accepted a job at the Human Rights Campaign as their national press secretary. I had been traveling to and speaking at their events, so it seemed like a natural fit to join the organization in a spokesperson role.

It was hard to leave my job at CAP, since it carried with it so many memories of Andy, but I knew that the day would come sooner or later. And as the nation’s largest LGBTQ equality organization, HRC was at the forefront of the movement that was already transforming America for the better.

So much of the LGBTQ community’s progress was made possible because we had a steadfast defender and supporter in the White House. Barack Obama had done more for LGBTQ rights than all of his predecessors combined. But all of that progress—and the potential for more—was on the line in the 2016 election.

When it came to LGBTQ equality, our country would choose between Hillary Clinton, who, like President Obama, supported and embraced equality, and Donald Trump, who, despite empty claims of being a “friend to the LGBTQ community,” had endorsed nearly every single anti-equality position possible. Throughout the election, Hillary Clinton had run the most trans-inclusive campaign in history. She had endorsed all of the major policy goals of the trans community, lifted up trans people and voices, and consistently included trans people, explicitly, in her vision for a kinder, more welcoming country.

I was passionate about continuing the White House’s support for trans equality and I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. Too much was at stake. Together with two other trans activists, Mara Keisling and Babs Siperstein, as well as an unrivaled ally, Lisa Mottet, we cofounded Trans United for Hillary, a national volunteer effort to mobilize transgender people in support of Hillary Clinton.

In the spring of 2016, Hillary clinched the Democratic nomination and the party began preparing for her formal nomination in Philadelphia that July, a convention that promised to be historic. Trans United for Hillary and the Clinton campaign were intent on making the DNC the most inclusive major party convention ever. We wanted to set a record for the number of openly transgender delegates and even toyed with the idea of a transgender speaker.

Then, just after July 4, I got a call from Roddy Flynn, the executive director of the LGBT Equality Caucus in Congress, a collection of members of the House of Representatives committed to LGBTQ equality and cochaired by the openly LGBTQ representatives. Roddy, an openly gay man, had joined the staff about a year before and had worked tirelessly to expand the caucus’s work on trans issues.

“The caucus cochairs have committed to dedicating half of our six minutes onstage at the Democratic National Convention to having a trans person speak, and they have decided that the caucus will be submitting your name as our speaker.”

Roddy continued: “I wanted to let you know, but I also want to make clear that this is just a request. And it’s still subject to approval from the Clinton campaign and the DNC, so it’s not definite yet.”

My head was spinning just at the possibility. On the one hand, I was scared of the hate that would inevitably come my way on such a major stage. On the other hand, speaking at the Democratic National Convention would be a dream come true.

At thirteen, the same age that I began to get involved in Delaware politics, I was glued to the 2004 Democratic National Convention on C-SPAN. Sitting on the floor of my bedroom, I had been introduced to a little-known Illinois state senator who delivered a barn burner of a keynote address. Barack Obama, I thought then. I hope I can vote for him for president someday.

I was so excited and inspired by the convention proceedings that I built a replica of the convention stage—replete with the Democratic Party donkey flag—in my bedroom, constructed however poorly from plywood and boxes I found in our basement. There I’d deliver my favorite speeches from the week’s proceedings. Throughout that summer, my parents must have heard me recite then–state senator Barack Obama’s keynote ten or twelve times.

In 2012, I was working at my tiny desk in the White House when President Obama accepted renomination for president of the United States. I could never have imagined that just four years later, in 2016, I would stand on that very same stage and address the Democratic convention and the millions of viewers at home.

A few weeks after the initial call with Roddy, on a Sunday afternoon in late July—a week and a day before the convention was scheduled to begin—I finally got the definitive word.

“Give me a call,” Roddy texted me coyly.

I had been on the edge of my seat for the last three weeks, waiting for any kind of news. My gut is usually right, and I just couldn’t imagine that I would really speak at the convention. Something would get in the way.

“Roddy! What’s up?” I anxiously asked after he picked up the phone.

“I just got word from the campaign. You’ve passed vetting and are confirmed.”

“OH MY GOD! This doesn’t feel real. Are you sure?!”

Almost in disbelief, I called the LGBTQ liaison on the Clinton campaign, who confirmed the news. As the call ended, he closed with a question: “Are you ready to make history?”

“History”? That’s a big word. I knew it would be a “first,” but history didn’t seem to fit. I’m twenty-five, I thought dismissively. I don’t “make history.”

Over the next week, I worked with friends and colleagues to draft my remarks. I had only three minutes, and there was so much to talk about. How would I narrow down everything to 180 seconds?

I knew I wanted to stress two points. The first was that, despite our progress, a lot of work remains in the fight for LGBTQ, and specifically trans, equality. The second point, and, frankly, the main one, was to remind people that behind this national debate on trans rights are real people who love, fear, laugh, cry, hope, and dream just like everyone else. So often we lose sight of the humanity behind these issues. If I was going to be the first, I wanted to use this opportunity to reinforce the almost absurdly simple point that transgender people are, first and foremost, human.

The Democratic National Convention assigned me a volunteer speechwriter. Veteran communications staffers from offices on the Hill typically volunteer their services for the convention. It’s an all-hands-on-deck operation for politicos. I had the option of writing my first draft or talking with the speechwriter on the phone for a bit and allowing her to put something together. Protective of my story and cognizant of the nuances of discussing trans identities, I chose the former.

“Three hundred sixty words, though,” I was instructed. “That’s your limit, and they are strict.”

I wrote out a first draft, utilizing material I had used in the past, and looked at the word count. Six hundred words. Cutting a few words here and there was easy. Trimming more than a third of an already brisk speech was nearly impossible. Sitting at my computer at my desk in the Human Rights Campaign’s Washington headquarters, I thought back to the night in May of 2012, sitting in the AU student newspaper’s office, trying to cut down my coming-out note by more than half.

Given the urgent and numerous challenges facing the community, my 360 words could have easily been filled with a litany of important and necessary policy goals. But as I reworked my speech, a friend reminded me of the Maya Angelou quote that had guided much of my advocacy: “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”

There were certainly policy goals that I felt a responsibility to include, such as passage of the Equality Act and combating violence against transgender women of color, but I also knew that I needed to be vulnerable and to invite the audience into my own journey, my hopes and my fears, my love and my loss. I needed to heed the lessons I had learned three years earlier while fighting for the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act in Delaware: Vulnerability is often the first step on the path toward justice. Vulnerability breeds empathy; empathy fosters support; support leads to action.

I decided that I’d talk about my fear of coming out, my relationship with Andy, and some of the important reforms so needed by the community. And I’d end on an optimistic note: that since coming out as trans, the experiences in my life have demonstrated to me that change is possible.

I submitted my draft to the speechwriter, who made only minor changes before sending it off to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. A quick approval returned from the decision-makers…along with the news that I would be speaking on Thursday night, the final night of the convention, and just a few hours before Hillary Clinton would take the same stage to become the first woman to officially accept the Democratic nomination for president.

When we found out I was on Thursday’s program, my colleague nonchalantly commented, “How amazing. Hillary Clinton won’t be the only woman making history Thursday night. Sarah will be, too!”

There was that word again. “History.”

On the day before the convention, as I was preparing to head up to Philadelphia with my boss, Jay Brown, my participation in the DNC was announced publicly. As the news broke, driving up with Jay, a transgender man and father of two, we braced for the backlash.

Am I ready for this? Surely this would be the same as the hate from that damn selfie. Only multiplied by ten.

But the negativity was far less than I’d feared. Instead of death threats, my social media filled with messages of support, inspiration, and excitement. I had thought people would be excited for me and for the momentous occasion, but it became obvious quickly that people were also excited for themselves, for the message it sent to trans people across the country.

The next four days were a whirlwind of little sleep, less food, and lots and lots of interviews. ABC News, PBS, Time magazine, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, MTV. In total, I did about forty interviews during the course of the convention.

Really big interviews were done on the private skybox level of the arena. Walking between interviews in different skyboxes, you’d run into senators and governors, celebrities and other speakers clearly as dazed and exhausted as I was. Each skybox was transformed into a small studio, the sound so overwhelming within the arena that the journalists and interviewees were forced to wear massive headsets to hear each other just a foot away.

While I was a little nervous during my first few interviews, the repetition of the same questions and answers soon alleviated my butterflies. Still, each interview was exciting, particularly when I got to sit down with reporters I watched every day.

Growing up, I had watched Katie Couric on Today every morning, but now I was sitting across from her in the Yahoo skybox as she announced in her familiar voice, “On Thursday they’ll be making history again when Sarah McBride speaks.”

It was a lot to take in, but that was probably a good thing. The constant stream of back-to-back interviews kept me distracted and consumed, unable to think about my big, short speech.

Each morning I’d wake up thinking that it had all been a dream, a good dream this time. But then, as I’d look around my hotel room, I’d realize, No, wait, that was all real. I’m speaking at the Democratic National Convention.

Thursday came in a flash, and before I knew it, I was in the car on the way to the Wells Fargo Arena. I rode with Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, a handsome, openly gay second-term congressman from New York who looks like he came right out of central casting, along with his two beautiful kids and an equally handsome husband. Maloney would be speaking first and then introducing me. As our black SUV weaved through security checkpoint after security checkpoint, Maloney sensed my nervousness and spent the car ride trying to distract me with small talk.

When we arrived, we made our way through a maze of hallways beneath the hustle of the delegates, media, and attendees now arriving for the final and premier night of the convention. For a few hours, we waited in a freezing locker room that had been converted into a waiting room for speakers. The walls were draped with dark blue curtains and the room was filled with IKEA-brand white couches. The only sign that it was a locker room was the big blue carpet with a massive 76ers logo stitched into the middle of it. I anxiously waited, hanging out with the other speakers, including my friend and boss, HRC president Chad Griffin. I reviewed my speech a few times and waited for them to call my name to get ready. I could hear the roar of the arena from backstage, but it still seemed so unreal, as though it were just a TV on full-blast in the room next door.

As I waited backstage, my parents arrived, along with Sean and Blake. I had managed, in a surprisingly complicated arrangement, to get my parents passes to the final night of the convention. Unfortunately, even for guests of speakers, the tickets weren’t great. My parents found themselves sitting way up in the nosebleed section, just a few rows below the ceiling of the arena.

In a twist of fate, they happened to sit just a few seats behind my old boss at the White House, Gautam Raghavan. “You shouldn’t be up here when Sarah speaks! You should be down on the floor,” he said, referring to the space reserved for delegates. Working his magic, he managed to secure them two passes, and as the convention gaveled in for the final evening, my parents walked out onto the floor of the cavernous arena.

About an hour into the proceedings, a young staffer with a clipboard walked into the green room backstage and called my name. “Sarah McBride, it’s time for you to get ready to go onstage.” And just like that, my nerves shot through the roof. I put on my heels, stopped by for a few touch-ups in the hair-and-makeup room, and then walked down a sterile corridor toward the darkened, cramped area just off the stage.

During the weeks prior to the convention, workers had assembled an impressive stage and display with massive screens. To those in the audience, and to anyone watching on TV, it looked like a permanent feature of the arena. Backstage it looked like a hodgepodge of walls, beams, cords, and screws that I legitimately worried would buckle at any moment. The vibrations from the occasional roar of the crowd and the speakers only enhanced that sensation. My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest as we waited.

In the days leading up to this moment, several people had given me important advice. “You are not speaking to the people in the arena, you are speaking to the camera, the people watching at home, and those who watch a video in the days or years to come,” they told me. “While you speak, particularly since it’s in the first half of the program, people will be milling around and talking. It’s going to feel loud in the arena, and some speakers try to win the crowd over with their charisma and by shouting their speech. Don’t fall into that trip. It will appear terrible to anyone watching on television.”

Sage advice, no doubt, but as I stood backstage I worried I wouldn’t be able to strike the balance. And then it was time. The announcer’s voice boomed, “Please welcome Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney […] and Sarah McBride.”

“Go, go, go,” the handler backstage whispered to us.

CNN and MSNBC, which hadn’t been covering speeches except for each night’s headliners, interrupted their panels to carry the speeches live on national television.

BREAKING NEWS read CNN’s banner. SARAH MCBRIDE IS THE FIRST OPENLY TRANSGENDER PERSON TO SPEAK AT A MAJOR PARTY CONVENTION.

Chuck Todd interrupted an interview on MSNBC: “I want to go to this. I want to go to this. Let’s take a look here, the first transgender person to ever address a national convention. Her name is Sarah McBride.”

As we stepped onto the stage, the crowd erupted in applause. Oh my God, they care, I thought as I walked out. And making my way across the stage to stand behind Congressman Maloney, I began to hear chanting.

“Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!”

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried waving a few times but felt a little foolish. Finally, Congressman Maloney started speaking and the audience was, for the first time that night, quiet. They realized this was a special moment, that they were witnessing a first.

As he spoke, I tried to keep my eyes on him but couldn’t help looking around. And because the arena was so well lit, while standing onstage I could see every single person in the crowd, all the way up to the rafters. It was a sea of tens of thousands of faces staring at me.

Eventually, my eyes caught my parents. The Delaware delegation was seated just to the right of the stage and I could see my mom and dad standing, smiling, next to our state’s junior senator, Chris Coons, and just under the tall, vertical sign—one of many that filled the arena—that read our state’s name.

And then I imagined Andy standing right next to them, watching me and looking as smooth and dapper as he was on our very first date. My mind returned to a conversation that was seared into my memory from the final month of his life.

We were sitting on our big brown couch, Andy scrunched into a ball, crying his eyes out. I remember being taken aback by just how visible the fear was in his eyes and, also, just how blue they appeared through the tears.

“I’m so scared,” he cried. “I’m so sad that I won’t be around to tell you that I love you, to tell you how beautiful you are, and to tell you how proud of you I am.”

It was one of the most emotional conversations I had with him. But because of that, it was also the most vivid—a conversation that had stuck with me as though it had occurred yesterday. And standing on that stage, almost perfectly, I could hear Andy saying those words like he was next to me.

“I love you and I’m so proud of you.”

I was no longer nervous. Finally, my train of thought was interrupted when I heard my name.

“I want to introduce Sarah McBride. Sarah McBride is a courageous young leader, and she is right now the first trans person ever to address a national convention. Sarah…” The audience began screaming, applauding, and chanting. Maloney paused, not wanting to speak over the cheers. Joining in the audience’s excitement, he went off script. “It’s about time,” he said.

Ten seconds later, he continued: “Sarah, it is an honor to make history with you, because we are stronger together.”

Speaking at the convention was a huge honor and a massive responsibility, but it wasn’t about me. It was about all the transgender people seeing our identities affirmed and celebrated on such a large platform.

I walked up to the lectern and got ready to begin. I didn’t want to yell over the cheering crowd, so I paused. I knew time was short, and while they wouldn’t throw me offstage Oscars-style, I didn’t want to go over my time. I improvised a short thank-you line to Congressman Maloney to signal that it was time to start.

I paused for a few more moments to let the cheers die down and then I started my speech: “My name is Sarah McBride and I am a proud transgender American.”

The convention erupted. The screams and chants returned. Delegates and attendees started standing up, cheering.

As I struggled with my gender identity throughout college, I had tried to say the words “I’m transgender” to my mirror. The shame would engulf me and I’d shake my head. “No, I’m not. No, I’m not.”

Now I was standing onstage at the Democratic National Convention as my authentic self, having just declared before the nation that I am a proud transgender American. But as much as that single sentence represented my own transformation, it was really a celebration of the moment. Everyone in that arena knew that with that sentence, a small but important barrier had just been broken.

Little did I know while standing on that stage that online communities of parents of transgender children were posting pictures and videos of their kids watching the speech. As a community, trans people have witnessed a slow but steady embrace of us by Hollywood and the entertainment world. It’s an important milestone, but it also comes with the understanding that it is an industry known for being on the cutting edge of social change.

Politics, on the other hand, almost by definition, is a cautious field. Now, though, watching on television, these young kids were witnessing an arena full of people standing up and enthusiastically applauding the dignity and equality of transgender people. These parents were watching a mainstream political party acknowledge their families in the most explicit way yet. The convention wasn’t applauding me, they were applauding all of us.

As the crowd quieted back down, I continued. “Four years ago, I came out as transgender while serving as student body president in college. At the time, I was scared. I worried that my dreams and my identity were mutually exclusive.

“Since then, though, I’ve seen that change is possible. I witnessed history interning at the White House and helping my home state of Delaware pass protections for transgender people.”

Summing up both the question in the election and our fight for equality, I asked, “Will we be a nation where there’s only one way to love, only one way to look, and only one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally? A nation that’s stronger together?”

And then I got very personal. Speaking about Andy, his work, and our relationship always feels like a powerful and comforting way to keep him with me and to keep his legacy alive. I wanted the world to know about my Andy.

“For me, this struggle for equality became all the more urgent when I learned that my future husband, Andrew, was battling cancer. I met Andy, who was a transgender man, fighting for equality and we fell in love. And yet even in the face of his terminal illness, this twenty-eight-year-old, he never wavered in his commitment to our cause and his belief that this country can change. Andy and I married in 2014 and just four days after our wedding, he passed away.

“Knowing Andy left me profoundly changed. But more than anything else, his passing taught me that every day matters when it comes to building a world where every person can live their life to the fullest.”

I spoke about the unfinished work of the movement, the need to pass nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, violence against transgender women of color, and the continuing HIV and AIDS epidemic.

As I finished my speech, I could still see my parents smiling. Beaming, really. The reception at the end was as warm as at the start, and I walked offstage emotionally and physically exhausted. I had been going nonstop for the previous week and nearly collapsed into the arms of the mayor of Los Angeles, who greeted me backstage as he waited for his turn to speak.

“You were amazing!” he exclaimed as he hugged me.

I walked back into the maze of hallways and stopped. People were swirling around me. A seamstress working the convention approached with tears in her eyes. She put her arms around me, said how proud of me she was, and enveloped me in a hug.

As she walked away, I continued standing motionless in the hall and I began to cry, partly out of relief, partly out of exhaustion, but also because of the love that had just filled the hall. It was overwhelming.

I made my way out onto the convention floor where all the delegates were seated. As I passed the Pennsylvania delegation, an older transgender woman, Joanne, whom I had met earlier in the year, stood up and walked toward me. Joanne looks like your quintessential grandmother, and exudes the warmth of one.

We were both smiling as she pulled me into a hug. We held on to each other for a couple seconds, and when we pulled away, both of us were crying. She kept her arms at my sides and held me about a foot from her face and said, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this in my lifetime.”

Standing there, I couldn’t help but think of all Joanne had seen. The years of invisibility followed by the years of feeling like a liability. Now she was attending a major party convention with a record number of openly transgender delegates—twenty-eight in total—and she had just witnessed an arena full of people affirming our dignity and celebrating our lives.

For Joanna, it took decades for it to happen, but change came. She saw it in her lifetime.

It’s impossible to describe how powerful that can feel after years, or even decades, of feeling unseen at best and hated at worst. Those of us in the D.C. advocacy world had witnessed over the previous two years the appetite and desire by many elected officials to work on and fight for trans equality. But the rest of the transgender community, let alone the rest of the country, hadn’t.

After wading through the crowd, I finally reached my parents. As I approached, I could see them crying, too. It takes a lot for my dad to cry, so seeing the tears in his eyes really hit me in the gut.

They were so scared when I came out. They were so worried that I’d be rejected by friends and denied opportunities. I hope they know that they don’t have to worry anymore. I hope they know that, at least for me, everything is going to be okay, I wished. With cameras trained on us, I fell into my parents’ arms and broke down. I could barely get the words out without sobbing.

“Did you see that?” I asked them, referring to the reception. “Did you see that?”

At that very same moment, in suburban Maryland, a mom was sitting with her ten-year-old child, watching the convention on television in their family room. Her child had been miserable for years. As she grappled with answers, she kept coming back to one gut feeling, My child is transgender.

Holding on to the child she had assumed was a girl at birth, the mom asked the same question I had just asked my parents. “Did you see that?

“A transgender person just spoke in front of the nation,” she continued. “You can be transgender and be anything you want to be. Transgender people can reach their dreams, too.” She looked down at her child and asked, “Is there anything you might want to tell me?”

The child exhaled, burying their face into the mom’s shoulder.

“I’m a boy, Mom.”

Back in the convention center, I sat down to watch the main event of the evening, the undeniably historic moment when Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

In her speech, she acknowledged the history of the moment, “Tonight, we’ve reached a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president. Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come. Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between.”

The next day, with Hillary Clinton’s words about her historic and empowering accomplishment still reverberating in my mind, I opened a forwarded email from a woman named Ramsey.

I want to personally thank Sarah McBride for her wonderful speech. Below I have included a picture of my seven-year-old transgender daughter watching in awe. She was very inspired and exclaimed “she’s beautiful” when she saw Sarah on TV. It was life-changing for her to see a beautiful, accomplished, intelligent role-model with whom she can identify. I am so grateful that she was given such an important moment at such a young age. I am hoping this email can be forwarded to Sarah so she can see the personal impact she had on one young trans girl.

Attached to the email was a picture of her seven-year-old transgender daughter with long, red wavy hair watching CNN on the family’s TV. And there I was on the screen.

Maybe I had made a little history, too.