Loved by God in a world that rejects me. The story of Bruna, a transgender woman

Testimony* by Bruna

I am Bruna, I am a Brazilian transgender woman and I willingly agreed to share my testimony of life and faith, because I think that listening to my story can help others to overcome fear and prejudice towards transgender people.

In fact, there are still many people who have difficulty considering me simply a person, worthy - even for this reason alone - of respect like everyone else. Respect: that's what I would like. There are still those who have preconceptions towards LGBTQ+ people: many continue to consider us strange, sick people and this is not good. We simply want to live and be happy in the dignity and freedom of being who we are.

I was born like this. Since childhood I have had difficulty being accepted by my own family, who attended the Evangelical Pentecostal Christian Church (Brazilian): for this church we transgender people are the devil and are destined for hell. But this is not true, because I know well that God loves everyone.

As a young man I participated for many years in the life of this religious community, driven by the insistence of my mother and my grandmother.

But I didn't like going there, I didn't feel comfortable in that environment. In fact, I had already noticed that I felt attracted to people of the same sex and the pastors spoke of this as a sin.

At twelve my parents discovered my diversity. My uncle, who was a pastor, told me I didn't deserve to go home to my family. My mother wanted me to undergo exorcisms and purification rites because she considered me mentally ill. My two sisters turned their backs on me. It was terrible.

At seventeen I left home and never saw them again. None of them ever came to my house to visit me. I haven't celebrated Christmas with my family since then. And this time of Advent always makes me feel very sad and melancholy, because like everyone else I cannot enjoy a bit of affection and family warmth.

Despite suffering this marginalization from my religious community and my own family, my faith in God has never wavered.

I have always felt the need for a religious community to be part of and to pray with. In that period of solitude I approached religion Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion still practiced predominantly in Brazil and throughout Latin America). There too I found preconceptions not only towards those who are different, but also towards those who are poor.

However, God and my relationship with him Has always remained the absolute priority for me: i still do my daily prayer accompanied by brazilian music that i listen to on Youtube.

Since 2018 i have left prostitution and for the last four years i have been involved in health care for transgender people working on the streets, in particular hIV prevention and treatment.

I decided to do it because in 2012 I discovered that I had contracted HIV myself and thus had the opportunity to understand that, with the right medical care, today we no longer die from this disease.

Unfortunately, however, this information often does not circulate among people who work on the streets and I realized that I am the most suitable person to spread it among them: they feel, in fact, that I am one of them who has already experienced and fought with this illness.

Furthermore, in the last three years, I have also been a volunteer activist in an association committed to combating transphobic violence and denouncing exploiters of prostitution linked to the UN, an office called UN-Mulheres-Brasil.

In Brazil, if one of us is killed on the street, the police do not intervene and are not interested. I myself reported my exploiters and received death threats for this. This life-threatening situation pushed me to leave Brazil.

In February 2024 I arrived in Italy. Here I found the friendship and support of Maddalena and Ruth of the Waldensian Deaconry, but I have not yet found a community of faith. I haven't even tried to appear in a Christian community, because I don't know how people like me are considered in Italy, and I'm a little afraid of suffering humiliation and mistreatment.

It would be nice for me to enter and stop in the house of God to enjoy a bit of peace and comfort too, to talk to God in peace and ask him for protection, but the fear of finding everyone's eyes on me stops me.

Contemptuous and judging looks always hurt a lot: to avoid all this, i give up going.

With the help of Maddalena del Community Center of the Waldensian Diaconia of Naples I am completing the procedures to obtain the residence permit and I am a guest in a friend's house.

I am actively involved in looking for a job, perhaps as a social worker, an activity that I feel is similar to me: if I could, I would have attended study courses to become one. I recently managed to open a shop and this gives me a lot of satisfaction.

I would like to finally find some serenity: now that I have a job, I hope to soon have a home of my own where I can finally spend my life and be happy, just as I am.

* Testimonianza raccolta, con la collaborazione della pastora Letizia Tomassone, nell’ambito del progetto “Nati due volte”, con cui i volontari del Jonathan Project vogliono raccontare i cammini di fede delle persone transgender e dei loro familiari. A maggio 2025, in occasione delle Veglie di preghiera per il superamento dell’omotransbifobia, some of these stories will be published byJonathan's tent in un libretto a stampa gratuito che racconterà i percorsi di fede delle persone transgender, cattoliche e evangeliche, e dei loro familiari nelle diverse chiese. Una raccolta di testimonianze con cui vogliamo tessere un ponte di conoscenza tra questi due mondi spesso lontani, per contribuire a buttare giù muri e pregiudizi. Per leggere le testimonianze che abbiamo già raccolto clicca su gionata.org/tag/nati-due-volte/ . Se vuoi aggiungere la tua scrivi a tendadigionata@gmail.com Word of mouth