Bright Lights: Catzian Maris Shares Their Journey

Catzian Maris spent their early years struggling with self-esteem and gender identity. As a teenager, they say writing helped make their thoughts and feelings “more tangible and understandable.”

At 26, Maris—who is transgender and nonbinary (not identifying as male or female), and who prefers the pronouns they and their—hopes their writing can help others.

“I felt isolated a lot. I felt misunderstood,” says Maris, who lives near East Lansing, Michigan. “When I feel heard and see myself in what I’m reading, it makes me feel less alone. I want to be able to get work in the world that people really connect to.”

Self-Discovery in Writing

They’re on their way. Since 2015, Maris has been writing stories and poems and sharing them on Twitter. In 2020, they wrote about their journey of self-discovery as a transgender person and how it intertwined with their spiritual journey for the Unity booklet Worthy: LGBTQ Stories of Overcoming Rejection and Religion to Find Truth. And in March 2022, Maris self-published a poetry book.

While they mainly write poetry and fiction, Maris enjoyed writing the first-person piece for Worthy. They were introduced to Unity by their mother, who grew up in Unity.

“When my parents were together, we went to the Catholic church,” Maris says. “They divorced when I was 5, and we moved from Pennsylvania, where I was born, to Michigan, where my mom is from. My mom started going to Unity again and really liked the openness of it.”

Maris began attending Unity Spiritual Center of Lansing with their mother and enjoyed it too. “It’s very open to all different kinds of religions and practices. Everyone seems happy to be there. It’s a very welcoming place,” they say. In fact, the center’s senior minister, Rev. Sharon Ketchum, suggested Maris write the article for Worthy.

“I wasn’t one of those people who always knew who I was,” Maris says. “I’ve always struggled to maintain a sense of self-esteem and identity. Especially being in a Catholic setting, I was uncomfortable and couldn’t understand myself and the world. I became more and more disillusioned.”

At age 7, Maris recalls praying for God to take away their chronic nightmares. When the nightmares persisted, Maris lost their faith. Unable to get answers from the outside world, Maris says, “it was up to me from that point to discover myself and my faith.”

Embracing God and Self

Attending Unity in Lansing helped Maris find their faith again. “I had several experiences where I thought, Okay, I definitely believe there’s something there,” they say.

Rejecting what wasn’t right for them spiritually led them back to their faith. Rejecting the gender assigned to them at birth and embracing being transgender and nonbinary led them back to themselves.

“I have been so happy transitioning and living the way that I want to live,” Maris says. “All of the negative feelings that I had when I was younger, I don’t struggle with anymore. It’s amazing.”

In 2016, as part of their transition, they changed their name. For their first name, they took syllables they liked and “mashed them together.” Having several people named Mary on both sides of their family gave them the idea for the last name Maris.

“My parents will still sometimes call me by my deadname [their birth name], but they’re both open people and have come a long way,” they say. “We’ve all put in a lot of work to get to where we are today. I’m really proud of us. It was a struggle, and there was a lot of confusion and not knowing what I was doing. Changing my name, I think, helped them and others to better understand and take me seriously.”

Providing a Safe Space

Maris and a friend colead a biweekly writing group at Affirmations, an LGBTQIA+ community center in Ferndale, Michigan. They took it over in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, and moved the group online. They continue to meet virtually.

“We do a very good job together to create a space that we’re proud of and where people can come and feel safe and talk and enjoy the writing atmosphere,” they say. The leaders and group members don’t critique each other’s writing, Maris explains. “It’s not a writing workshop. If people want that kind of feedback, we’ll provide it, but it’s a very positive and affirming place. We follow Affirmations’ mission statement of supporting and affirming people. We care about people and want them to have a good time.”

The group meets on the first and third Thursdays of every month and occasionally hosts a special event. People of all ages and identities participate. They talk for a few minutes, write for about 45 minutes, and then share their work.

Maris smiles as they talk about the group.

“It makes me feel useful,” they say. “It makes me feel like I have something to contribute and that I can do it in a way that is unique to me and that’s special. It feels very good to me.”

Hope for the Future

They also feel good about their work as a sign language interpreter. Maris earned a bachelor’s degree in sign language interpreting in 2018 from Siena Heights University in Michigan. They recently started a new job as an interpreter with a video relay service provider. They facilitate video calls between those who use American Sign Language to communicate and those who can hear.

Their goal is to make a living as both an interpreter and a writer. They also want to be a parent. While they’re not opposed to adoption, their first choice is to give birth. When they were transitioning, Maris had surgery to remove their breasts and breast tissue and also underwent testosterone therapy. Now that they’re trying to conceive, they have stopped taking testosterone.

Parenting, they say, is “the most important thing that anyone could do.”

“As a child, I felt so misunderstood,” Maris remembers. “Even though my parents loved me, I didn’t feel right in the world, and I should have felt right in the world because I was good. It was okay for me to exist.

“I used to think I didn’t want a child because I didn’t want them to go through what I’ve gone through. Now I feel like if they have to go through that, then I know how to be there for them. It’s important that they exist. I have a lot of compassion for my younger self and a lot of hope for the future—that things can be good.”

They hold that hopeful outlook despite anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation on the rise. Keeping their thoughts positive is one key takeaway from Unity—and also a necessity for their mental health, they add.

“The consequences of me not believing in the world or having hope is that it snowballs very quickly,” they say. “The way my brain works is that life exists, and therefore it has to be good, because if being alive is not good, if life isn’t good, if people being here is not good, then what’s the point?

“It’s good to be alive. And I do think people are good, on the whole.”

Follow Catzian Maris on Twitter (@catzian), where they post their writing and poetry.

This article appeared in Unity Magazine.