…As a trans, torture and intimate partner violence surivor, I’ve experienced repeated loss of close kin. Both family built of blood and family queer promise-born. It’s true that those who believe in you when you’ve been harmed, who will commit to love in accountability over love made in the oppression’s image, are rare. Certainly not guaranteed by birth. That truth can kill anyone, especially if you’re trans. It almost did me. I just got secure housing and every day, I look out from my apartment, I see the bridge I almost hit unsubscribe from life on. I’m still here because at some point I accepted a difficult truth. That while it may be incredibly painful and unfair, families when left in their queer and natural state, are iterative by nature. Everything is.

“You’re still hiding” said my Gram, 17 years to the day after she’d died. The last words she’d said to me were, Hide your pain from people who love you, or they’ll resent you. She passed from cancer and complications due to fibromyalgia not long after that. All of which she’d hidden from everyone. But she was wrong. I’d found family and started a company, both based intentionally in not hiding your pain and more embracing healing. I was excited to light her yahrzeit candle and tell her. I’d never lit a remembrance candle for her before. I’d never been ready before. So I was shocked to hear her respond ahead of me. I had to turn all the way into myself to look…