ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several trays from Rikki's Sandplay work, which led him through a process of profound personal awareness. Living as a transgender youth is frequently a lonely and frightening experience, resulting in bullying, social isolation, familial rejection, depression, and anxiety. Those children, who are recognized, accepted, and supported in their transgender identities live much healthier lives than transgender youth who continue to live as their natal gender. Like so many transgender children, Rikki was bullied and shunned at school. Given his use of Native American figures, there was something essentially human and organic about the pursuit ahead of him in his sandplay work, although it carried oppositional, conflicting aspects of the psyche that he would need to resolve. While accepted and loved by his family and supported by his school staff, the acceptance of the transgender individual by the broader society will bring many difficult challenges for Rikki.
