‘Resilience Retreat’ Supports Transgender Youth

For the fourth summer in a row, Chrissy Guiriba soon will be flying transgender children from across the United States—but especially from the Deep South—to a safe haven in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a week-long summer camp experience unlike any other.

Sure, there’s archery, swimming, field games, rock-climbing, zip-lining, gaga, kayaking, music, drama and creative writing experiences. But unlike at most summer camps, everyone attending her Transcending Adolescence Resilience Retreat for Trans Youth, even the counselors, are transgender or gender diverse.

Guiriba and her fiancé, Jacob Hofheimer, run the camp together. He’s a trans man and registered nurse at Yale New Haven Health; Guiriba is an out trans woman pursuing a degree in organizational leadership in Connecticut after two decades of activism in the Deep South. They now live in Greater New Haven.

“He and I met as volunteers at another camp for trans kids,” Guiriba told CT Voice. “We were lifeguards there, and that’s where I first got the idea to start a camp down South.”

Guiriba is a native of Jacksonville, FL, now in her late 30s, who started her transition through drag performance at age 18. “Faith Taylor” was her drag persona.

“I think that that was a huge catalyst for me to be able to find myself after spending 18 years forced to be something that I wasn’t,” she said. “I was finally given not just an opportunity, but a platform to showcase my femininity.”

Together, Guiriba and Hofheimer have created a place providing what her flyers call “intentional outdoor spaces” where trans youth between the ages of 10 and 17 can “develop the habits, skills and support structures” that she said are proven to increase resilience, based on feedback from 2024’s campers. “Our program evaluation showed a 50 percent decrease in suicidal ideation among our participants,” Guiriba said.

That’s especially important these days. A study from 2024 by The Trevor Project that found suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth—ages 13 through 17—had increased 72 percent in the aftermath of Republican-led states enacting anti-transgender laws. One such state is Florida, which is where Guiriba started organizing summer retreats for this vulnerable population of tweens and teens.

“For me, as a founder, and as a trans woman of color from the South, it is important for me to keep this program as accessible as possible to people in the South,” she said. “I stand by that firmly. You know, my goal has always been to empower trans young people from the South, especially. But we accept kids from all over the U.S., and we welcome everybody.”

Last year, Guiriba launched a junior counselor program for children who age out. “When they become 18 and they can no longer be a camper, many of them are still in need of the community and the support that we provide. And so, we want to keep them with us. It’s been beautiful to see it come full-circle,” she said. “We have now our second year JCs that have been with us since year one. Now, they’re teaching the very same workshops that helped bring them out of their shells.”

The cost for the week is $1,480,” said Guiriba. That includes room and board, as well as free round-trip transportation by air. Every child flies to and from the camp for free, and the timing is intentionally set during Pride Month.

“It is scheduled to be June 24th through the 29th,” Guiriba told CT Voice back in January, when registration opened for this year’s session. “We have the capacity for 62 kids.”

To supervise the more than five dozen youngsters, the couple is looking to hire more counselors. But cisgender people need not apply.

“As counselors? No,” she said, “because of the intentional staffing model that we have. It is so important, because our counselors are face to face with the campers 24/7. Those are the ones that they need to identify with. Representation matters.”

Guiriba developed her camp curriculum around the acronym, S.P.E.A.R. with five pillars: Support. Physical Recreation. Empowerment. Advocacy. Reflection.

The first two years, the camp operated in Florida, and last year moved to just outside Atlanta, an arrangement which Guiriba said ended abruptly: “We were kicked out a day early,” she said.  Most of the children were forced to leave their cabins for what she called a “slumber party” in the only building left to them. “And then all of our other kids slept outside in tents,” said Guiriba. “That was the moment for me when I realized I got to get out of the South. I can’t take this anymore. I could never let them know that we were kicked out of yet another space.”

She feels confident the new location in the Blue Ridge Mountains will be the best yet, and this year’s session will follow two personal milestones for Guiriba and Hofheimer: His graduation from the Yale School of Nursing, and their wedding on May 26.

“Jacob proposed over a long weekend in the Catskills just before camp this past year,” said Guiriba. “Beautiful story, right?”

Find out more and apply at www.transcendingadolescence.org.

By Dawn Ennis