You don’t choose to be transgender, but you do choose to do something about it.

As someone who has gone through a pubic transition, I say this a lot.

The decision to transition at work isn’t an easy one.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 90% of transgender and gender non-conforming people reported harassment or discrimination on the job. A quarter report losing a job due to bias. A transgender person is nearly four times as likely than the general population to have an income of less than $10,000, four times as likely to be unemployed, and twice as likely to be homeless.

I was certainly aware of the risks when I came out to my new bosses at POSSIBLE in Cincinnati, Ohio. Though the company holds inclusive policies toward LGBT people and other minorities, Ohio is an “at-will” employment state, which means that you can be fired for almost any reason. Ohio has no statewide employment protections for sexual orientation or gender identity outside of state employment. I’m a person whose job requires that I not only interact with our clients, but be seen as a representative of the business. Thankfully, they gave me their full support.

At the time, I was presenting as Jen–my female self–only outside the workplace. But with a medically supervised transition underway, my appearance was becoming more feminine and I would soon need to reveal myself at the office. We didn’t have a policy to guide us through the human resource issues we might face. So my next step became clear: we need to write one, and in doing so it meant I could do more than transition without fear, I could help people who came after me. With support from HR, I literally wrote the book on transitioning in the workplace.

Firstly, the document clarifies rights: as a transitioning individual at POSSIBLE, you have the right to openly be who you are. While maintaining professional expectations, you may express your gender identity, characteristics, or expression without fear of consequences.

I came out to staff during an office-wide presentation, making myself available to answer questions. I’m someone who often presents, so this felt natural. But every transition is different. Some people may want to tell colleagues with an email, others with a celebration. We rely on the transitioning employee to guide us and we back it up with explicit communications of support from leadership.

Transition is a process that not only affects the individual but all those around them. Most estimates put the transgender population at around 0.3%. Few people, in relative terms, are close to a person in transition, let alone a person in transition at work. This means that even the broadest education does much to dissolve fears. In addition to introducing many trans-related terms like “cisgender” in a glossary format in the policy, we asked a local LGBT awareness group to lead a Q&A session. I excused myself from that session so that the staff would feel comfortable raising concerns or asking what may be considered sensitive questions without fear.

I knew the policy fulfilled its role when we didn’t need it anymore, at least not for myself. After the initial adjustment period, the unknowns became part of the everyday. Today, my gender is not an issue. The bathroom is not an issue. Pronouns are not an issue.

People tell me that, irrespective of the transition, the office atmosphere feels more open. When a rare event like transition happens in an office with a climate of mutual respect, it has a ripple effect through an organization.

But the world at large? That’s another story. The world is a giant issue factory.

In the study cited above, 78% of people who transitioned from one gender to another reported that they felt more comfortable on the job. Moreover, their job performance improved. This is in spite of high levels of mistreatment they experienced.

Imagine the heights people will reach when discrimination is also, so to speak, not an issue. When it is not the expectation. Recent vocal support from U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and corporations, like Target, give me hope.

Until that time, we will need more policies.

And employers will need to be reminded, at every turn: when people can bring their whole selves to work, everyone thrives.

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“We hope to show people there’s another way to deal with the transgender community besides hate and bigotry.”

This is Zoe and Amanda Jette Knox, married mothers of three from Ottawa, Canada.

The couple has been together for 22 years, Amanda told BuzzFeed News, and are parents to Aerik, 19, Alexis, 13, and Jackson, 9.

Amanda writes about their family life on her blog, The Maven of Mayhem.

Two years ago, their daughter Alexis came out to them as transgender. The then-11-year-old told her parents in an email that “she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body,” Amanda said.

“She had always been anxious, depressed, and withdrawn,” Amanda said of her daughter. “We had done everything we could think of to help her and figure out what was going on with her, to no avail.”

When Alexis came out, her mothers immediately stood by her.

“[It] was the call for help we needed to finally be able to support her in the way she needed us to,” Amanda said.

But Amanda said she didn’t realize at the time that her wife knew what their daughter was going through. Zoe Knox was also transgender, but couldn’t vocalize it.

“Watching Alexis blossom into the girl she was always meant to be made it impossible to keep living the way I had been living,” Zoe Knox told BuzzFeed News.

Zoe Knox came out to her wife in July 2015. She has since been slowly coming out to their friends and family, but hadn’t yet come out at work.

“Once she had taken some of the steps she felt she needed to take — including living as her true self while at home and in the community for a while, as well as getting her name and gender marker changed on all her ID — she was ready to come out at work,” Amanda said.

Zoe said she was very nervous to come out to her co-workers, as she works in a predominately male environment. But, at the end of March she emailed everyone, told them what was happening, and said she would be taking a week off to work from home.

“Writing that email was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “After a clicked send, I thought, That’s it. There’s no going back, and I had no idea what the response would be.”

The response was immediately positive, she said, and she got more than 70 emails of support from her co-workers.

“That was the start of something incredible,” she said.

But the real surprise was yet to come. When Zoe Knox returned to work the Monday after Easter, she found her co-workers had decorated her cubicle.

They left her inspirational notes…

Made her a brand-new name plate…

And framed a beautiful inspirational quote.

After she got her surprises, the co-workers revealed that a meeting that had been put on her calendar was actually a party for her, with cupcakes and coffee.

Amanda shared the story on her blog, writing she had been prepared to step in if her wife had gotten a negative reaction to her news.

“I did go into my wife’s office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone,” she said.

Since sharing the story, the family have gotten many comments and heard from many people that the story had inspired them.

Zoe said she tends to be a private person, but she is happy that sharing her experience is helping so many other people.

“I’m just really happy to see that it seems to be inspiring a lot of people,” she said.

Amanda said that the family hopes that by sharing their story, they can provide a positive example of what it is like to be transgender.

“There are many people in the world who support and celebrate those who are brave enough to live authentically,” she said. “We hope to show people there’s another way to deal with the transgender community besides hate and bigotry.”