THE DAY AFTER I told my mother I was transitioning, I sat across from a childhood friend, who I’ll call Sarah, in Los Reyes, my favorite Mexican restaurant in my hometown. It was 2009, and I had come home from college specifically to give my mom the news. I hadn’t seen Sarah in six years but I remembered she had a strong faith that she shared openly and invitationally. As soon as I sat down, she asked how I was doing. Something in me broke open, yearning to be seen. I was a mess — sadness and anger dipping in and out of despair. I said something like, “My mom’s just never understood me, and now she’s not going to try to understand.” Sarah got quiet and nodded before replying, “So? I don’t understand either, but I’m here because I love you.”
Whatever I said in response doesn’t matter as much as the truth I learned: Friends and family can love and support one another without understanding them.
In last year’s documentary Will & Harper, Harper Steele, a trans comedy writer living in New York, has one such friend in the comedian Will Ferrell. At the beginning of the documentary, we learn that Steele announced the news of her transition via an email to her loved ones, Ferrell included. Upon hearing the news, Ferrell, who’s been friends with Steele since the two met on Saturday Night Live 30 years ago, is shocked but wants to be supportive — he’s just not sure how.
“So many of us don’t know what the rules of engagement are,” Ferrell says. “And in terms of our friendship and our relationship, it’s uncharted waters.” So he invites Steele to go on a road trip with him.
Ferrell describes Steele as a rough-and-tough, beer-drinking Midwesterner who loves finding seedy roadside bars and truck stops on cross-country drives. But both he and Steele are worried those dive bars will not be safe now that Steele is living as a woman. So the motivation for the trip is twofold: They can learn how to navigate the new circumstances of their friendship, and Steele can learn to navigate the places she’s always loved — this time as the person she’s always known herself to be.
On its surface, this film tells the story of a trans woman finding herself in a country she loves — a country she’s not sure “loves her back.” At its core, Will & Harper is about friendship, belonging, self-acceptance, and learning to love people you don’t understand.
The film focuses on Ferrell and Steele’s relationship without delving too deeply into the political aspects of transness in the U.S. today. That’s part of the documentary’s beauty: It reminds viewers that trans rights are not simply a divisive political “issue.” Rather, trans people are real people with real relationships. At the end of the day, Ferrell and Steele are just two friends figuring out what love looks like through colossal change.
Loving without understanding is a spiritual experience at the heart of Christianity. We accept God as being three distinct beings at once: parent, child, and spirit. God is a divine shapeshifter — everything and nothing, all-encompassing yet not immediately visible. When I reflect on the nature of divinity, God’s vastness and depth are things my understanding can barely touch, let alone comprehend. But just because I can’t fully understand God doesn’t mean I can’t fully love God. Through that love, I am open to receiving whatever God wants to share.
Human-to-human relationships are not so different. Throughout Will & Harper, Steele repeatedly wonders whether her friends see her as a woman or as just another guy in a dress. “The biggest question when people come out of the closet is, ‘Will I still be loved?’” Steele says at the beginning of the film. She wonders if her friends and family truly accept her for who she is or if they are just placating her. But then Ferrell shares something that helps Steele feel seen: “Having been on the road with you for two weeks, I’m just with Harper,” says Ferrell. “I’m forgetting the dead name. It’s just getting fully replaced.”
Throughout my own transition, several of my oldest friends shared that, at times, it was hard to remember who I was before, which I appreciated. My dead name, the name assigned to me at birth, escaped them and he/him pronouns rolled off their tongues. Some friends said they couldn’t remember what I looked like before I transitioned. They saw me for who I am instead of who I was pretending to be. In some ways, it was like they were seeing me for the first time. Unfortunately, countless trans people will never have the chance to be seen in this way.
When Ferrell and Steele stop on the side of the road somewhere outside of Texas to read some bigoted tweets targeted at them, a conversation about self-hatred and suicidality emerges. When Ferrell asks whether she had “dark thoughts,” Steele says yes without hesitating. “There were moments where I thought, ‘I wish I had that gun,’” she says to Ferrell. “But the moment I transitioned, all I wanted to do was live.”
Transitioning saves lives. My transition made me feel alive for the first time. Seeing my newfound vitality only made my friends more interested in my life. They welcomed my vulnerability, and together we began to explore what it means to live.
Will & Harper is a gentle invitation into Steele’s world. We see how hard it can be to accept yourself, especially when who you are goes against what so many people believe to be true about the world.
After Steele experiences unexpected acceptance at both a bar and a racetrack in Oklahoma, she reflects to Ferrell: “I’m not really afraid of these people; I’m afraid of hating myself.” When she breaks down crying, Ferrell sheds some of his own tears, and we witness the vulnerability and sympathy made possible by love.
When love is present, difference can be bridged through honest and compassionate conversation. From an early age, I also knew I was different, so I did what I could to squash that difference — until it nearly killed me. My friends are what saved me, particularly the friends who didn’t understand me but loved me anyway — the friends who supported me even while having questions of their own about what my transition would mean for our relationship.
A few days after I told a pastor at my church that I had changed my name and pronouns, she invited me to lunch. I remember her first question clearly: “So what does this mean to you?” she asked.
Today, I would say that being trans means not having to hide who I am. It means being able to show up fully as myself. It means being honest with my loved ones and myself about who I am, what I’m capable of, and what I want from life. It means having a definition of “integrity” underlying every action I take. To me, transness means freedom — like an open road.
Taj M. Smith is a writer, speaker, and spiritual leadership coach based in Massachusetts. You’re most likely to catch him at a coffee shop or in a park with a sci-fi or fantasy novel when he’s not in front of his computer.
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