Drawing on our lived experiences as public health doctoral scholars who grew up in rural communities in the United States of America-and as queer people, one Two-Spirit and one transgender-we used collaborative autoethnography to analyze our participation in an intergenerational 2S/LGBTQ+ storytelling event. Our analysis offered insight into how our intersecting identities shaped the quilt-square narratives we produced and deepened understanding of the cultural and structural forces shaping 2S/LGBTQ+ aging, intergenerational relationships, and the possibilities and constraints of queer solidarity amid an uncertain political climate. We generated four themes from our narrative quilts: (1) performing identity on someone else's stage to meet dominant expectations rather than personal truth; (2) masking, or how LGBTQ+ people across generations conceal aspects of themselves to navigate safety, belonging, and survival; (3) feeling like a fish out of water, capturing marginalization experienced by trans and Two-Spirit people even within 2S/LGBTQ+ spaces; and (4) questioning whose stories shape our futures, highlighting how racial and cultural erasure in queer aging spaces obscures BIPOC queer histories. Our findings illuminate the need for culturally inclusive 2S/LGBTQ+ spaces that promote solidarity, reduce social isolation, and advance affirming care across nursing, social work, and public health.
Bryer et al. (2026) studied this question.