Marissa Miller, a trailblazing transgender advocate and HIV prevention leader from the Chicago area, is releasing a documentary about her personal journey that raises awareness for housing, health care and other social justice issues.
All the Broken Pieces: The Marissa Miller Documentary premieres in Chicago Feb. 7 during a National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Celebration at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St.
The film’s red carpet and screening takes place from 5:45-7 p.m., followed by a panel discussion and networking social until 10 p.m. Tickets are free and available here.
All the Broken Pieces follows Miller while she was ending two pivotal chapters in her career. Miller at the time was passing the reins both as leader of the annual National Trans Visibility March she founded in 2019 and as executive director of Trans Solutions, an Indianapolis-based organization she founded to empower transgender people with comprehensive health resources and other social services.
“I was in this transitional moment, and I really wanted to tell my story,” Miller told Windy City Times. “We were also filming in the full swing of [the 2020] election, so I wanted to share this journey of resilience and offer some hope.”
Miller grew up in East Chicago, Indiana, with a religious family, she said. Her father was a police officer, and her mother worked for a judge. “I was a queer kid in the ‘70s with no language to really express myself,” she said. “With that came some challenges.”
Throughout All the Broken Pieces, Miller offers glimpses into her upbringing, life before transitioning and the services she received while coming out as transgender. The film also details how she keeps her identity as a transgender person separate from her family life, presenting as her sex assigned at birth whenever she visits her family.
“I didn’t give up my family for my transition, so I go home as my mother’s son,” Miller said. “I want people to see that, so they know they don’t have to follow everybody’s journey. Everyone navigates their transition differently, and that’s okay.”
In the film, Miller also reflects on her journey living with HIV and overcoming chronic homelessness, drug use and incarceration, eventually finding her way as a fierce advocate for marginalized people.
Miller started working as an advocate in Indiana but moved to Chicago around 2015. That year she began working at Howard Brown Health directing the organization’s V.O.I.C.E.S. Project for trans and gender nonconforming people from 12-29 years old. During that time, she took part in a national cohort training for rising leaders who are people of color. In 2017, she became coordinator of that program in Washington, D.C.
Miller then got the idea for the National Trans Visibility March after the murder of a transgender woman in Chicago left her feeling “devastated,” she said.
Miller took to Facebook to express her emotions and eventually suggested a march for transgender people. The idea “spread like wildfire,” Miller recalled, and culminated in 2019 with thousands of people marching on the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness for the transgender community.
The timing of the march was important given the ongoing presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Miller said. “It was a huge success, but here we are in our eighth year, and it’s another pivotal moment for our community,” Miller said.
The 2025 National Trans Visibility March is set for June 4-5 in Washington, D.C.
“It’s important this year with all the executive orders coming after trans people, and their attacks on what they call ‘gender ideology,’” Miller said, adding that those attacks are “frightening, especially for the transgender youth.”
But Miller is telling her story to offer those young people hope and inspire the next generation of Black, queer leaders.
“I know a lot of young leaders who think this work is not for them, and I want them to see this is possible,” Miller said. “And a lot of people think this work is glamorous, so I wanted them to see that there’s a journey to every piece of life.”