We started celebrating early by visiting Chani, moving in together, and voting in Zohran Mamdani for the primary! Those are all unrelated, but awesome. Happy June to US! I love you Sarah Jill!! If you don’t know Chani’s work, what are you waiting for? She’s the real dealio…astrologer extraordinaire or, as she puts it, your astro bestie. And good fucking job NYC!! Way to fucking GO!!!

I grew up reading all the books I could get my hands on, which were exclusively written by cisgender heterosexuals, mostly men, but occasionally women, as in the case of my favorite author when I was a teenager— Madeleine L’Engle. When I went to college in the mid 90’s, my Womyn Studies professor, Stephanie, blew the doors of my mind off their hinges, providing me with a diverse and comprehensive compendium of narratives that enriched my life and started showing me that there were others out there. Like me. Since then, I have read non-fiction/fiction/and avant guard books by all kinds of writers coming from a wide array of cultures and lived experiences. I have had other people’s thoughts and struggles mulling around in my head and heart, expanding them. But because voices like mine were not accessible to me back then, if they even existed at all, I never had the expectation that every story would have something in it for me or would be relatable. I read them anyway. And through reading, learned that there was always something in the story to grow my understanding of being human. Because in everything from Marquez, to Kaveh Akbar, to Bell Hooks and Ocean Vuong, I found a thread that connects us all, our humanity, inextricably. In that regard, I guess, reading is extremely dangerous.

When my book dropped in October 2023, the comment I heard most from people went something like the beginning of this goodreads review:

”I wasn't exactly sure what to expect as far as relating with, Beautiful Monster, as a straight, cis female…”

A thought trajectory that surprised me then and still, every single time I’ve heard it. It also makes me incredibly sad because, I came to reading from the opposite place. I never saw myself in what I read for a long time, but I guess that was a gift of sorts because I didn’t expect it. But it never meant there wasn’t a real kind of magic in it. Even though people weren’t experiencing the exact same things I was, there were still parts I recognized of them within myself and vice versa. It makes me sad that even in the solace, comfort and safety of our own homes, we would feel reticent to open the door to our imagination and other ways of being for fear of what we might find there. There is a vulnerability required in walking into an unknown wilderness, someone else’s wilderness. But the rewards are great. But I guess when the world has only shown you to yourself, it is a little harder to bridge that gap.

The funny thing about it is that even though I wrote the book as a love letter to the trans community, to let them know that there is a way to survive it all and even thrive, it is a three part love letter to my family and also to you, to people who are not like me. So that you could experience some of it and start to see differently. But for that, we need you to be willing to join the fray.

This past week was devastating. A high court of exclusively cisgender people (mostly men), after sitting around pondering whether or not trans people have faced historical discrimination, decided not only that we hadn’t, but proceeded to take away our healthcare. Which feels like the last nail in the coffin of a loosing battle to retain our dignity and any potential rights we may have ever had, setting the stage for it to get very ugly for us here.

In times such as these, out of utter despair and hopelessness, I turn toward luminaries, visionaries and outside the box thinkers for inspiration. People who shine so bright that it feels undeniable. I seek innovators so wholehearted and brave they test and nudge the limits of my own understanding of the world and my own willingness to re-imagine it and be brave. In these times, I am also so grateful for books. That I can let people’s thoughts co-mingle with mine at my own pace and that I can contemplate possibilities that have never occurred to me.

Brené Brown in her tenacious book Braving the Wilderness, which I am just now re-reading, and feeling greatly inspired by, talks about true belonging. “True Belonging”, she says, “is a spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” She goes on to say that we cannot know true belonging without knowing what it is to stand alone. I think this is the mark of true belonging because once we really, truly stand on our own two feet and have felt the searing heat of having to take a stand when everything is on the line, not only do we know what it means to stand plainly and truly inside ourselves, but we can then recognize those moments when they happen for someone else.

Her book is a nudge, a provocation for me to both stay open to you and others and stay the course. To lean in and continue to listen and connect. To continue to do what I do and offer what I offer. I wish that for all of us.

I’ll be at 12th street between 4th and Broadway for Pride with my book this Sunday. If you’re around, come visit. I will be there 11-4 and hugs and hangs are free. And if you haven’t yet read it, this is your formal invitation to get over your beautiful self and come get your copy of Beautiful Monster: A Becoming. Who knows, it might expand your wonder around all the other beautiful creatures that live on this planet with you.