Often I find myself pushing so hard against the image of trans loneliness that I don’t allow myself to acknowledge the truths that lie within. This book acknowledged them for me. It hurt. I’m grateful.
Waking up early and standing out in the cold may not seem like self-care, but to me, it is.
Tasting notes: This one is real, like a hallucination. You can feel it, see it, and it leaves very little evidence of its passing through your body. Lingers barely on the tip of the tongue, with high notes of bright genders named like quarks.
I’m letting the dust of others’ expectations begin to settle, leaving room to see that I am not to blame for the hurt and harm I’ve dealt with. This year, I’m not making a list. Instead, I’m focusing on forgiving myself for ever thinking anything different.
I put a lot of pressure on myself to learn and revel in the customs of “our people,” which meant that I always included a small scoop of the fish salad on mine and then tried to avoid it the rest of the night.
That Christmas with queer family reminded me that multiple possibilities exist even in the darkest of places.
I mourn the losses. I celebrate the wins. I offer the future a chance, even if I don’t entirely believe in it.
One of my earliest memories, perhaps my earliest one, is watching the snow fall from the sliding glass doors to the balcony of the small apartment my family rented in a Boston suburb.
On New Year’s Eve when the clock strikes midnight, the glimmering thoughts that slip across my mind are usually all variations on the same question: who have you been loved by this year?
The unthinkable can and will happen, but sorrow and loss are only splinters of what we can handle. The ritual is in the remembering.
Spending time in the kitchen and learning how to cook the comfort food of my childhood has helped me connect to my mother in ways I never expected.
Yearning is the thread that runs through everything Stephen Sondheim wrote: for love, for happiness, for recognition, for meaning. The fear of naming that desire. The fear of admitting it yourself, of letting yourself hope, of letting yourself want.
Without confronting the cycle of oppression, we reproduce trauma, even in spaces that try to focus on consent.
The eight writers who contributed to this miniseries will share all sorts of rituals: rituals for love, rituals for grief, rituals for forgiveness, rituals for inner peace. My wish is that it will help us all feel somewhat less alone this December, more connected to our community, and more ready for whatever January 2022 delivers.
Within a binary understanding of sex, a binary understanding of gender, or a binary separation between sex and gender, I am impossible.
For my final (for now) installment of Wild Cravings, I leave you with three food memories set in Virginia, Norway, and New York.
Everyone keeps telling me the correct way to outrun an alligator, but I keep forgetting. Also, everything about Disney World sounds made up.
A fat Black femme explores the relationship with her body and shares how strapping became part of her sexual liberation.
Are you gonna let them watch you strap up or are you a “BRB” kinda babe?
Should you play suck and blow or what’s the point?