For the three weeks leading up to TDOR, we have three roving art exhibits that folks can participate in.  The exhibits are themed around giving folks their flowers while they are alive, and feature portraits of three living trans folks.  Their faces have been painted, and we are inviting participants to pin flowers onto their bodies to turn them into a living bouquet bursting with color.  Each portrait will be moving across campus on a weekly basis, so keep an eye out!

Lining the walls outside of The Women’s Center and Pride Center will be twenty rich biographies of trans lives from 2022 and earlier.  These memorial walls are installations that invite participants to see beyond a name or a label and look at the life that was lived.  These folks on those walls are poets, activists, store clerks, instagram models, drag performers, siblings, parents, roller-skaters, reality TV watchers, bookworms, and so much more.

Then, the week leading up to TDOR, sometimes called Trans Awareness Week or the Week of Action, there will be trans pride flags lining Stafford Commons outside Talley Student Union, one flag for each life lost to violence in 2022. Next to the flags is a lawn sign with a QR code where folks can learn more about TDOR and the upcoming Panel & Vigil.

Join the LGBTQ Pride and Women’s Centers for a panel discussion with of and gender expansive folks local to the greater Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area.  This panel will focus on what trans life looks like right here at home.  By taking this national day of mourning and scaling it down to the local level, audience members will be able to visualize what life looks like for trans folks.  Following this celebration of life, participants will all circle up and hold hands for a reading of the names, a ceremony where we take care to honor and mourn each individual life taken from us in 2022.  Counseling Center Staff will be present at the event, as will several healing practices and self-care techniques folks can engage in as fortification throughout the evening.