Alicia Sainz Arballo is a woman shaped by time, patience, and a deep willingness to look inward. A lifelong educator, counselor, and advocate, she spent 36 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District supporting students, mentoring teachers, and quietly building safer spaces through her school’s GSA and LGBTQIA+ professional development work. Long before she had the language or freedom to live openly, Alicia was already listening, observing, and caring, skills that would later become central to both her poetry and her transition. A musician since the age of six, with a formal background in music and counseling, Alicia has always understood emotion as something felt in the body before it ever becomes words. Poetry became her way of holding what could not yet be spoken, grief, longing, confusion, accountability, and eventually joy.
Her poem Grief weaves together the experiences of aging veterans and trans lives, offering a powerful meditation on loss, listening, and the difficult work of letting go of systems that once felt unquestionable. Alicia medically transitioned at 62, decades after first coming out and after a long period of detours, pauses, and self-protection. Her book Transition is not a story of sudden revelation, but of endurance, honesty, and the courage to begin again later in life. Writing with vulnerability about family, love, separation, and self-awareness, Alicia speaks to a generation of trans people whose stories are often overlooked. She continues to advocate for trans-affirming healthcare for all ages, reminding us that becoming yourself is not bound by youth, but by readiness, compassion, and truth.
Monika: If you had to describe your life in three chapters, what would their titles be?
Alicia: The first chapter would be called “Secrets and Shame.” When you are prancing around your parents’ bedroom as a child, wearing stockings and heels, feeling pleasure and happiness you cannot explain, and dreaming of being a girl most nights, that sense of self has nowhere safe to land. As the oldest child in a conservative Catholic Latino family, where machismo defined the culture, the only place for those feelings was underground. Growing up in the 1960s, I did not think there was anyone else like me, so the world I built was one of secrecy and shame.
I did not understand then that those feelings do not disappear. There is a need within us to express who we are. Instead, as I grew older, I acted them out in self-destructive ways. I isolated myself from the people closest to me and binged, creating brief windows where I could live freely as a woman. The cost was a painful dichotomy. Being a woman felt loaded with shame, not a healthy kind, but something that felt pathological. I was constantly trying to rid myself of a wholeness I did not yet know existed.
Monika: That sounds like such a heavy way to move through the world. What shifted for you when relationships and family entered the picture?
Alicia: The second chapter is “Family and Self-Awareness.” Relationships have always been the foundation of my emotional growth. I did not fully understand how broken I was until I got married and began raising a family. Carrying those secrets became unbearable, and I could see how deeply unsettled I felt, so I entered therapy.
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| "There is a need within us to express who we are." |
What therapy did begin to do was dismantle shame and secrecy, slowly and painfully. I had to accept accountability, that living a double life was hurting the people I loved most. Over time, I learned to develop a positive sense of self-regard, to see that the parts of me I wanted to erase were not defects, they were essential. Those childhood moments in my mother’s stockings and heels could be reinterpreted. What I once labeled as pathology became self-awareness, and with that came the first real breath of relief. I was no longer hiding, and that, I believe, was the true beginning of my transition.
Monika: And where does that journey leave you now? What does the final chapter feel like from the inside?
Alicia: The third chapter is “Wholeness and Serenity.” There is something almost magical about breath and authenticity. For me, it was not that I could not endure another day in my body. It was that I could not wait any longer to be fully alive. I had done the work necessary to inhabit that moment.
I remember the first night I wore my estrogen patch. Even if the physical changes were not yet real, I could feel something shift in my mind and body. For the first time in my life, I felt aligned. That alignment brought a joy that was profound and life-altering.
That joy propelled me into activism and advocacy, and into becoming a better steward of my gifts, whether singing, playing guitar, or writing. I was moving forward without the weight of shame and secrecy, and that lightness still carries me. It creates a kind of euphoria that helps me transcend much of the negativity that surrounds our community today.
Monika: You knew something was different at 11, watching that Christine Jorgensen movie moment. Did that memory ever leave you, or did it just wait patiently?
Alicia: Someone recently said to me that as we age, the key to being fully alive is to always remain curious. I think that is what the Christine Jorgensen movie trailer uprooted in me, curiosity. For the first time, I realized I was not alone or unique. There was someone who, through her own volition, made her dreams a reality. I wanted to know everything about this woman. I watched and read interviews with her, and she and her story became my north star.
I was hampered by fear, though. I was too young to fully conceptualize what it all meant for me, and so life went on. I lived as I thought I was supposed to, have a good job, raise a family, own a house. I believed those things were the keys to happiness. But my curiosity never left, and she was always at its very root.
Monika: You worked with veterans for years. When did you first notice how much grief connects their stories to ours as trans people?
Alicia: Just to clarify, my work with veterans has been sporadic and incidental. I worked as a writer on my brother’s Vietnam War documentary, Scramble the Seawolves, but it was actually through my participation in men’s groups, while trying to quiet my own struggle with masculinity, that I began to understand veterans’ inner worlds more deeply.
Monika: So it wasn’t the battlefield stories themselves at first, but the emotional silence around them?
Alicia: Exactly. Many years ago, I attended a three-day retreat with the poets Robert Bly and Michael Meade. Bly spoke at length about men’s difficulty in examining grief, especially veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He talked about how violence, death, and loss were rarely spoken of, and how that unexpressed grief seeped into their psyches.
These were men who carried PTSD and physical infirmities from war, but what struck me most was how much their suffering was compounded by the inability to name what they had lived through. Silence became another wound layered on top of the first.
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| "As we age, the key to being fully alive is to always remain curious." |
Alicia: There was. One night we hiked up a hill with the veterans. They lay down and were invited to name the friends or battalion mates who had died, often right beside them. What followed was overwhelming. Men sobbing, bodies shaking, grief pouring out in waves.
The younger men were asked to reach out and touch them, not to fix anything, but simply to witness and help carry that grief. It was an act of connection and containment. That moment has stayed with me all these years.
Monika: Years later, how did that experience resurface for you once you were deep into your own transition?
Alicia: During my medical transition, the Transempowerment Project reached out to me just before Memorial Day and asked if I would write something to honor veterans while also speaking to our trans community. It immediately brought me back to that hill.
I believe much of what is happening to our trans community, including the hostility and misinformation aimed at us, is rooted in a broader, unacknowledged grief. Parents often carry a script for their children’s lives, education, marriage, family. When a child says, “I’m trans” or “I’m non-binary,” that imagined future collapses.
Like the veterans on that hill, families need space to grieve what they thought would be. To cry, to rage, to feel confused and heartbroken. Without that space, grief calcifies into resentment or rejection. With it, there is at least the possibility of moving toward acceptance, as family systems reshape themselves into something new.
Monika: Your poem Grief feels quiet but powerful. Where were you emotionally when you wrote it?
Alicia: Looking back, I think I was in a place of grief myself. I had recently broken up with a boyfriend I had lived with for a couple of years and was moving out on my own. At the same time, I was struggling to maintain connections with my wife and children. To this day, my wife does not want to see me, preferring to remember me as I was.
That is difficult for me to understand, especially because there was so much pain in our marriage, which she acknowledges, and yet old patterns die hard. I think that emotional space made its way into a few lines of the poem, “A man says to his wife of 30 years, I’m a woman.” Let go.
Monika: That hill in the poem, yelling at the stars, do you feel like you climbed it yourself during transition?
Alicia: I am always amazed when I listen to stories within the trans community at just how resilient we are. Every time. For me, yes, I think everyone who transitions has their own climbing-the-hill, yelling-at-the-stars moment, especially if they are older. There is something universal about reaching that place where silence is no longer survivable.
Monika: What did that first climb look like for you, back then, before you had the language or support you needed?
Alicia: I actually transitioned about 21 years before my 62nd birthday. I had three young children, my wife was devastated, my family of origin would not speak to me, there was little access to affirming healthcare, and almost no visibility of trans people who seemed strong or joyful. I was overwhelmed, and I detransitioned.
Looking back, I’m grateful for that chapter. I was able to help raise my children and gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics in my relationship with my wife. At that time, I simply was not strong enough to withstand the pain that can come with having a self, especially when the people you love want to see you only through their own lens.
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| "To this day, my wife does not want to see me, preferring to remember me as I was." |
Monika: So when did the climb become different, not about survival, but about choosing yourself?
Alicia: About ten years ago, my wife and I separated and I moved out. A few years later, I returned to live at home with my wife and children, and a difficult conversation followed. If family and my wife were what I wanted, I would have to give up any notions of another sexual orientation and any conflict with my gender identity.
By then, I understood exactly what that choice would cost me. I also knew it didn’t have to be one or the other. Having a self did not mean I didn’t love my family, it meant I loved myself enough to live authentically. That was my true shouting-at-the-stars moment, digging deep enough to silence the voice that told me I had to disappear in order to belong.
Monika: Transitioning at 62, what surprised you the most about your own strength?
Alicia: Anyone who has gone through the gender-affirming care that many transgender women experience has to draw strength from a depth most people never have to access. I have been undergoing electrolysis for facial hair removal for nearly four years now, as well as work on my chest area and preparation for my SRS, which includes clearing the genital area. I have shed many tears from the magnitude of the pain, but there is a silver lining in knowing there is an end goal.
Monika: Beyond enduring pain, how did you find the courage to take additional steps for your body and your life?
Alicia: I have also supported friends through their surgeries, from FFS and SRS to breast augmentation. After my initial transition 25 years ago, I had significant breast growth. I felt uncomfortable always having to wear a binder, so after a conversation with my wife, I chose to have a mastectomy. Just recently, I underwent breast reconstruction and augmentation to correct that. My surgeon and I also discussed lipo 360 and some fat grafting, which I decided to do as well.
The first few weeks after that surgery were some of the most physically challenging experiences I have ever been through. At 66, I am no spring chicken, but I am amazed by my strength every single day.
Monika: And what surprised you the most about your vulnerability?
Alicia: There is a fear for many of us who transition later in life that we will never look like who we know ourselves to be. I used to hate going to certain grocery stores because I knew that no matter how much effort I made, I would still be called “sir.” Those first few years of my transition, and even occasionally now, walking out my front door and standing firmly in my womanhood requires deep vulnerability.
I have no control over what the world sees. While I hope for validation from the people I encounter each day, I also have to be willing to endure those who do not see me as I see myself, and to be strong enough either to correct them or to let it be.
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| "I have no control over what the world sees." |
Alicia: Euphoria is not a strong enough word. Maybe it is the hormones (LOL), but there is a depth of happiness and joy I cannot begin to explain. Whatever I am doing or wherever I am, nothing compares to those small acknowledgements, “Yes, ma’am,” or “What can I get for you, ladies?” I have a very close friend who is also trans, and we often say to each other that recognition never gets old.
Monika: How did being seen differently affect the way you interact with women’s spaces and circles?
Alicia: I love, love, love being part of women’s circles, whether with close friends, acquaintances, or gatherings of any kind. Women say things to one another that men often do not. “I love that dress,” or “That color looks so good on you,” or “Show me your nails!” I love having doors opened for me, or a man who gestures for me to walk through first.
Monika: And yet, not every interaction is seamless, right? Tell me about those moments that reveal the unexpected biases you still encounter.
Alicia: There is also the occasional “because she is a woman” mindset I have experienced. For example, I love fishing, and one of my favorite places in the world is June Lake in the Sierras. I used to rent a small boat, go out alone on the lake, and fish for hours without ever being questioned about my capabilities. When I went out alone as Alicia, the first thing I was asked was, “Are you sure you want to rent the boat for that long?” and “Do you know how to operate a motorized boat?” When I shared this with my girlfriends afterward, their response was, “Welcome to our world!”
Monika: Passing, or not passing, how did you make peace with that question after so many decades?
Alicia: That is such a loaded question, and for me there is a lot to unpack as an older trans woman. When I first medically transitioned 25 years ago, you were either stealth, or other trans women would warn you that you were a danger to the community if you did not work on passing. Today, I think most would agree that this view has softened considerably.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Alicia Sainz Arballo.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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