Dear Sandy #8

"how do I find the will to live again?"

Sandy Allen
November 30, 2025

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth — written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen. The following is an installment of my occasional advice column Dear Sandy. To write me with a question for consideration for a future advice column, email whatshelpingtoday at gmail dot com.

Dear Sandy,

I recently discovered you and have found some solace in your work. You frequently give me either something to think about or something that makes me feel less alone. This last year has been unrelenting in its overbearing punishment. My family and I (my wife and our 4 year old child) recently moved over 2000 miles away to a place where we know few people. I'd talked about possibly needing to move in the event of the 2024 election going the wrong way, given that I am trans and was living in a deeply red state. That said when the moment got closer and closer the less I wanted to move. However, many people I trusted thought leaving was a prudent choice which did not make me feel any better. Ultimately it was my wife who convinced me that moving would be best. I can scarcely convey how surreal it was to have other people convincing me to do something I'd already said might be necessary long before anyone else even took what I was saying seriously.

Fast forward and we've been in our new location for almost 9 months now. Getting ourselves established again has been an uphill battle. During that time I have been in a darker place mentally than I have ever been in my life, which is saying something. I have said a few times this year that something has died inside of me and I am skeptical that it will ever be resurrected again. That something is my optimism. I have never been too naive, I have always understood to some degree the propensity humans have for malevolence and idiocy, but this last year has changed my perception substantially, both on a personal and macro level. Knowing things and seeing them are different.

On the personal level moving has shaken me more than I could have imagined. I was not happy before transition, but for a few brief years between late 2022 to 2024 I was happier and more fulfilled than I ever thought was possible. In that context the contrast between feeling so alive to existing in this wraith-like state I live in now is worse in many ways than before transition. Seeing how good life can be and having it snatched away is… I dont even know how to convey it.

I am not sure what to do with what has happened to me. The anguish I am in internally is immense, I feel broken at the level of my spirit. Were it not for the obligations I had to my family I suspect I would see myself out of this life, but as I do have obligations to my wife and child that is not an option. I guess my question is how do I find the will to live again?

Much love,

[Name redacted]

Dear letter writer,

When I received your question some weeks ago, so much of what you’d written resonated with me (especially the line about your year having been “unrelenting in its overbearing punishment”). While our stories and situations are different, in other ways I feel similarly to you. First of all, thank you for writing me and asking this question — which is mega big and mega hard.

Second: I’m sorry it’s been so challenging for you, this year. I sense it’s been versions of that for many of us. Speaking for myself: I’ve called this “the worst year of my adult life.” Without going into details, there’s been great disappointment in my professional sphere, and in my personal one. And of course there’s been an unfathomably horrendous reality to worry about and contend with, as trans people, in this country … All told: This may leave one feeling out of sync with or alienated from our loved ones and others we know. How alienated and angry or terrified or heartbroken I can feel these days, given everything.

Since the election, I’ve felt some dark tendencies within me resurrect — my childhood insomnia in particular. As a kid, I’d often be awake at night, listening to the fight and/or contemplating my own escape or even death. My own sometime tendency towards “suicidal ideation” — as the shrinks would term this habit of my mind — has come back this year, as has my depression in a big way (old unwelcome visitors).

And: As you allude is true for you too, I feel suicide is not an option for me. I will explain all my reasons in my next book I’ve long been working on. I have people and things to live for is one BIG reason, as it sounds like you do, too. For me, the upshot is: I feel stuck figuring it out here on earth … which can feel so tiresome and unpleasant at times, for sure …

Given I was the kind of child who used to be awake at night wondering how to somehow escape the pain of life … this near-impossible and yet all important question of ‘how do I figure out the will to live again’ is definitely one I’ve spent forever contemplating — however alone, however imperfectly.

For me, as this newsletter’s tagline goes, staying alive here on earth is an everyday sort of work. As I’ve described, each morning I open my eyes and inside I’m guided by a mental checklist of my self-care type activities … including ‘practicing patience and kindness for myself’.

Each day, I try to get to what I can, from this proverbial list. If nothing else, I aim to get to my daily meditation in, that drumbeat … And I personally keep other commitments daily — like my not drinking alcohol (even though believe me, my head sometimes pitches me just buy go buy some wine or whatever other suggestions I don’t actually take).

Every day: I stick around. Sincerely: I hope you do, too.

Sometimes on a given day this means just surviving my own storm — however unbearable it might feel. I might remind myself all my reasons why I remain — like those people I love, my pets, my home, my garden, my devotion to my work, so forth.

The therapist Nicole Sachs often says: Life is a choice between what hurts and what hurts worse. This is a paraphrase of a basic Buddhist principle in my view. The idea is, we have to work to accept the truth of life — given it can come with near-nonstop bad news and pain, given how much about life is fundamentally unfair, and given how little we can control. Meditation is a tool, one that can help us cultivate a tiny bit more control — perhaps.

Lately I approach 1500 days of consecutive meditation, according to the app I use. I haven’t enjoyed this per se, achieving this meditation streak. Most days it feels like a total chore to force myself to meditate. Most days I do not want to meditate.

Sure, some days, especially lately, meditation feels like a break, even nice. But most days figure I’d much rather do anything else than meditate and/or my other healing practices I’m devoted to and I force myself to anyway.

I’m committed to meditation especially because I know that cumulatively, it just helps me navigate existence itself — which is near-guaranteed to be tough — especially given my various realities and challenges.

My point in mentioning my meditation habit isn’t to be prescriptive. With all this self-care stuff, my refrain is: You do you. If you loathe meditation, don’t do it. But my point is: Find those routines and habits that are most helpful to you and lean on them, as hard as you can, especially during the hardest times.

To the ‘what hurts versus what hurts worse’ of it all: I know for myself, to not meditate every day, that way of life was worse. For me drinking was worse than not-drinking is — hence I don’t, every day.

The other main thought I had as I read your email regards one bit of my own best advice I’ve really tried to apply, myself, this year: Community and connection have to be created, very actively, and perpetually.

My main mental health-type practitioner nowadays has often said to me versions of: If you have one friend in this life, that’s enough, any more is bonus. It’s never something I like him repeating at me, especially when I’m grieving whichever ghosts, if I’m steeped in self-pity regarding my feeling isolated (however rightfully).

Nowadays I try to think of community and friendship, less as nouns and more as verbs. I think of myself as being like a weaver of nets, perhaps, a fisherman. (I admit I know very little about fishing, let alone about fishing with nets. All I know about such comes from having watched too many seasons of Alone mostly.) In this metaphor, connection with others is a life-saving necessity. So as a sustenance, survival-type scenario fisherman, say, I constantly weave or repair my nets.

This year has also been rough for me, like I alluded. But one upside has been the trans and queer community I’ve had around me, especially locally — a lot of which has come from my actively weaving such. This has resulted from me sending out invites, from having folks over, from being friendly and/or open, from being brave in the social sense, often braver than I’ve wanted to be. Yes, it can feel scary to extend myself in whichever ways I try to, to send that email or that text. At times I’ve feared seeming silly or being rejected. I’ve for sure gotten discouraged or self-conscious.

My own attitude matters, as I pursue all this (as watching too-much Alone has also reenforced to me, beyond all I know as a psychiatric-focused journalist). How often on that show is demonstrated the importance of not just skills and preparedness but mindset. How often it’s those individuals whose negative-swirling-type heads overwhelm them in various ways and wind up having to give up. And conversely: How often it’s those who treat their own selves (inside and out) and the environment around them with care and thought and patience, who focus on what’s present and what’s positive, who do (against all odds) endure …

I imagine you’ve had to do a lot of work this last year so I’m not meaning to imply you haven’t done enough. Nine months no doubt feels like a long time to live in a new place — but in another sense, it’s not long at all. From my own experience, it can take a frustrating long amount of time, after one has moved, to establish new roots somewhere. Bottom line: I do hope you’ll afford yourself tons of patience and kindness for yourself as you continue to acclimate to this tremendous change.

Dear letter writer, the truth is: I don’t always feel like I have “the will to live”, not moment to moment, anyway, not even day to day. Sometimes inside my thoughts can get exceptionally dark. I can feel such melancholy; I can feel such fear, such depletion — however much I might desire to not think such thoughts, however much these sentiments might not belong to my present moment (entirely) and/or however much I have ‘worked on myself,’ variously and imperfectly. All this work is endless, as I’ve come to embrace. (That’s the good news, and the bad …)

While you weather these tough times, I hope you will take as good of care of yourself as you can — that is my main advice, however boring or obvious. Take it day by day. Treat yourself with maximum compassion if you can — whatever that looks like for you.

Nowadays, if my thoughts are very overwhelmingly bad for example, I try to trust they will eventually pass, like some powerful storm … and meanwhile I try to lean into my best built self-care type practices and supports — for me that’s the daily meditation and such. Also exercise. Also: Connecting with my trusted friends and/or mental health type professionals, ones I know are safe to confide in about whatever and everything. I am very lucky, as I’ve written about before, to work with excellent mental health-type professionals. I’m lucky to have friends, ones I can talk to for real, even on my shittiest days. (I try to take neither of these for granted.)

Us trans folks, we are being faced with such a cruel campaign against our lives and futures. Our collective despair is understandably high, all individual circumstances notwithstanding. You (and your wife and child) have already had to move and no doubt lost much while so doing, amongst the other painful particulars you described. I hear you are a caregiver (amongst other pressures I’d assume). Reading your message, I did wonder if you have connections with fellow trans people especially — and/or if you can work on building even more of those. I did also wonder if you have a competent, talented therapist-type professional in your corner, just for that added support.

Every day my eyes and mind are soaked in more bad news — as no doubt many of us experience. Every day, more strangers and friends solicit my help as a journalist — almost always help I cannot give them, often sharing with me stories so sad it breaks my heart anew. Every day I have so much to grieve.

I think about that Andrea Gibson line, about their heart having lots of scar tissue. I think about Gibson loving their own life with such ferocity, especially in the wake of their eventually terminal cancer diagnosis (given they were someone who’d previously struggled with wanting to die — as many of us do).

Nicole Sachs often uses the expression ‘the next right considered action.’ In terms of, again, that little bit we might control, if we remain present, if we’re slowing down, if we’re embodied. As in, nowadays, if I’m being swallowed by some horrible negative spiral, I try to see if I can regain momentary control enough to wonder, for example: Do I want a glass of water? Do I want to take a few deep breaths? Do I want to look at the mountain a moment, admire the view? Do I want to pet my dogs? Do I want to meditate today if I’ve not yet gotten to that?

I’m a pessimistic guy by default. Given my background and present contexts, l can feel quite lonely. I often feel the temptation towards self-pity and towards sorrow amongst other familiar-to-me downer hits I tend to replay inside.

So if I can, I remember to lean into gratitude instead. I try to be grateful for what I do have. I try to express gratitude for those people who are in my life, however near or far, who do make their love known, in whichever ways.

In general, to anyone reading this who’s struggling: I encourage you to take care of yourself as best you can. Maybe that just means: Getting through today. Especially on the worst days, as Nicole Sachs often says, I’m just thinking: Right foot, left foot, breathe … Maybe if on a given day my pain or despair is especially high, I just focus on self-soothing. I take a bath. I watch some comforting content (some favs).

When it comes to cultivating the ‘will to live’ or making new connections with others or anything else challenging: Sometimes the name of the game is faking it until we make it, I really do believe.

Dear letter writer: Thank you for writing me and for asking your near-impossible, all-important question. I have tried my best … Good luck, with all of it, especially as you continue to grow roots in this new place.

I’m grateful to you for writing and sharing all you did. You saying you found some solace in my work, this meant so much to me. It always helps me, to imagine my words might positively impact anyone.

Please: Feel free to write back and let me know how you’re doing.

Just in case, for anyone reading, here are some links …

I encourage you to read this essay of mine, if you’ve not already:

Mourning the Trans Boyhood I Never Got

I won't ever be nine or fourteen or twenty-one again.

www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a44360000/mourning-trans-boyhood

Here is an older post with my thoughts on finding mental health-type supports that best suit one (which in this country for example at present is no easy task). Repeating myself but I have attended free groups like those offered by the Hearing Voices Network and online peer-support offerings from the Wildflower Alliance during some of my own worst days over recent years.