Gloria, 70, Chicago, IL

Jess Dugan and her partner, Vanessa Fabbre, travelled the United States for five years, interviewing and photographing transgender and gender nonconforming older adults for their project, To Survive this Shore. Gloria, pictured here, shares her lived experience:

I identify as female. I’ve always identified as a female… My mother would tell [the men in my family], “This is your child, this is our baby, and you’re going to love my baby because you love me.” And that’s the way it was.

I’m a senior citizen, I made it to seventy and a lot of [trans people] won’t make it…They ask me questions like, “Well, Momma Gloria, how did you get through?” I say, “You have to have some stability and you have to have some kind of class, some charm about yourself. The only time I was in the closet was to go in there and pick out a dress and come out of the closet and put it on.”