In June 1982, my oldest sibling boarded a bus from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to San Francisco. We never heard from her again. She was 28.

April 1983, I was in my dorm room at Princeton Theological Seminary when the hall phone rang. “It’s for you, Brenda.” I stepped out in socked feet and picked up the receiver. I heard my father’s voice: “Brenda, Martin is dead.” Mom was sobbing in the background.

My sibling’s disappearance and mysterious death haunted me for decades. In 2018, after my parents’ deaths, I recommitted to finding answers. I received seven boxes, heavy with papers, pictures and letters that had belonged to my parents and grandparents. I discovered a letter, typed in 1983, disclosing that my grandmother had hired a private detective. I found an envelope containing the autopsy, a police report that she had been found wearing a dress, and a life insurance document confirming the name change “Martine.” I deciphered my coded teen diaries, delved into family documents, interviewed people who knew Martine and traveled to San Francisco to piece together her final months. I set out to “solve” an unsolved mystery; instead, I learned my sister was transgender.

As I uncovered details about her life, confronted my own denial, and came to terms with the past, I found a new mission: helping faith communities become informed advocates and safe spaces for transgender people and their loved ones.

Compassion is a matter of life and death