Starting to Heal

Tenderness is a radical act in a world that idolizes aggression. It takes more courage to love than to hate. Forgiveness is the ultimate act of bravery, and self-forgiveness often its most difficult manifestation.

Lately I've been starting to remember my own worth, and it hasn't been easy. Processing grief and loss and coming to peace with the way my identities and needs don't always fit the mainstream has been a journey. More difficult still has been coming to terms with the fact trauma has had permanent impacts on me without judging those impacts or resisting them because of their origins.

Healing can be a painfully slow process at times, and it's never linear. Humans are messy creatures, and never more so than when processing trauma. I'm learning to take my time.

So here's to the journey, and to growth. Here's to relearning how to be alive, to be human, to be the imperfect, messy, worthy people we are. Here's to love, and joy, and tenderness. Here's to honoring softness, and separating masculinity from aggression and ego.

I've wanted to be a quiet force of nature. I too often forget I already am.

Queer, Tender, Messy, Human, and Alive

Quarterly Holidays

March 15 was one of my quarterly holidays, Day of Blooms. There are three parts to the Day of Blooms:

1. Serving Nature: Doing something to serve the world around us, whether it's planting a tree or picking up trash.

2. Recording Joys and Successes: Writing down all the little (and big) happy or rewarding moments from the last three months.

3. Setting Goals: Setting your goals for the next three months with your themes from the joys and successes in mind.

The next quarterly holiday is Ray Day on June 15. It is celebrated by:

1. Doing Something Kind: Spread kindness in the world, whether through donating to people or a cause you believe in, or volunteering your time, or some other means entirely.

2. Recording Joys and Successes: Writing down all the little (and big) happy or rewarding moments from the last three months.

3. Setting Goals: Setting your goals for the next three months with your themes from the joys and successes in mind.

After that comes my favorite, the Day of Leafs, on September 15. It is celebrated through:

1. Leaving What No Longer Serves You: Whether through a chant, burning a letter, or some other means, ritualistically saying goodbye to an item, person, or belief that no longer serves you.

2. Recording Joys and Successes: Writing down all the little (and big) happy or rewarding moments from the last three months.

3. Setting Goals: Setting your goals for the next three months with your themes from the joys and successes in mind.

The final quarterly holiday is Evergreen Day on December 15. Celebrating it involves:

1. Giving with intention: Giving a gift, whether an item, time, or experience, to someone you care about that will bring them joy.

2. Recording Joys and Successes: Writing down all the little (and big) happy or rewarding moments you can remember from the last three months.

3. Setting Goals: Setting your goals for the next three months with your themes from the joys and successes in mind.

Do you have any holidays you've created?

The Weight of a Phone

My phone weighs 143 grams. I keep it in my pocket when I'm not using it, which means it's almost never in my pocket. When I click it on, sometimes I wait to unlock it just so I can gaze into my fiancé's eyes on the screen. They're blue, highlighted by his glasses, which darken when the sun shines against them. In the photo on the lock screen, his face holds a soft smile. As I type in my passcode, I can see that smile widening in my mind's eye.

On the home screen, our cats are curled up on my old heated blanket, the warmth of my phone mimicking the warmth of the throw. I imagine Casper purring me to sleep, his soft belly under my ear, and blink my eyes clear from a tired blur.

Under the images of cats sit five folders, each with a variety of applications. In one, there are 11 chat programs, each holding words from friends and family and people who fall somewhere in between. The messages come in from around the world. On one chat program, I talk mainly to a cousin in Dubai. In another, I reach out each day to a few people to tell them I love them, and a few reasons why. I don't want anyone I love to feel alone.

I know what it's like to feel alone. It spills out in text apps, in journal entries and memoirs and odes to the healing journey. Last year, I submitted one of them to a contest. A story of trauma, survival, and how my mind stitched itself back together from the bleakest of nightmares, "My Brain: A Love Story" won first place.

My phone's case weighs 20 grams. In the past, my phones have ended their lives battered; screens cracked, stories faded. Over time, I learned from those dents and fissures. More than bruises that phone and body grew all too familiar with in younger years, though, I've learned from the books my phone holds. When I was a child, paper and ink pulled me to safety. Now that I'm grown, the LEDs behind my screen spell out words and worlds of healing.

I open the camera app. I may be tired, but I am alive, and glad to be. I snap a photo, looking up at the lens with eyes that have seen both joy and pain in equal measure. As a smile crooks one corner of my mouth, I'm proud of the smile lines faint around my eyes. I had so many reasons to lack them. But there they shine, just like the light from my phone. Just like the light in my grin. I am alive, and I feel alive.

Love, Grief, and Healing

Recently, a couple friendships that had played a central role in my life for many years reached their ending, and sometimes it really aches. I wanted so badly for the friendships to be healthy, but they just weren't, and I had to walk away. I learned a difficult lesson as I said goodbye: Someone can be important and matter without it being healthy and growing.

I remember one day, about a week later, sitting in front of my computer trying not to cry. I decided to write myself a letter in that moment. It would have been so easy to mirror the toxic inner dialogue, the one that was saying, "You shouldn't hurt. You know it was the right decision."

Instead, though, I chose compassion. I wrote myself a love letter. I told myself the things I most needed to hear. True things, but compassionate things. And in doing so, I began to heal.

The letter began, "Hey you. It's okay to be hurt. It's okay to grieve the fact that people you love didn't love you enough to prioritize your safety."

I realized, as I typed those words, how much I needed to hear them. I thought if I was kind enough, tried hard enough, gave enough of myself, was genuine enough, that people would be the same in return. Sometimes, though, people just aren't. Maybe their needs are incompatible with your own. Maybe you're both just at different places in your journeys. But you can be kind to yourself.

Today, I want you to write yourself a love letter. Think about a place inside that is aching, and approach it with curiosity. Listen to your inner dialogue, then change it to a written narrative of love.

It is okay to feel. It is okay to grieve. It is okay to hurt. And it's also okay to begin to heal.

A Poem of Hope and Connection in the Midst of Chaos

I put out a new poem on Bandcamp today called Diagnosis: Pandemic. It's a bit of hope for a time of chaos, and it's pay what you will. I hope you enjoy.

Joy and Loneliness

I've forgotten much of my childhood, but I remember lunches in eighth grade clearly. A pack of us ate together, sprawling across sidewalks and tables, discussing manga and classes and life. We were the misfits, the kids with hard home lives that pooled together in that concrete wasteland to form our own community. I remember laughing a lot, but also the deep loneliness that gripped so many of us. Jokes mixed with self-deprecation, blurred into talk of suicide, and then something made us laugh again.

For so many years, I wondered how even amidst the laughter, we all felt lonely. We were a community. We were friends. But we still felt deeply, achingly alone. Then, while listening to Unlocking Us with Brené Brown recently, I finally found an answer.

As Brené talked to Dr. Vivek Murthy, he mentioned three types of loneliness:

1. Lack of intimate, close connections, like best friends or partners or family you can be yourself fully with.

2. Lack of friendships, the people you spend your time with and feel connected to.

3. Lack of community, a bigger group and purpose you feel a part of.

Crucially, he pointed out that it's still possible to feel lonely, even if you only have one of those types of loneliness, and even in moments that are also ones of great joy.

I thought back on those lunchtime sprawls. We were a community, we were friends, but most of us were too afraid to trust each other, or lacked models of healthy vulnerability, and couldn't become truly close. I remember reaching out again and again to lackluster or lacking reciprocity outside of the space of lunch hours. I had friends. I had community. But my life lacked closeness, as so many of ours did.

Still, looking back, those lunch gatherings hold a sacred space in my heart despite it all. We built our own joy amidst loneliness and pain, and even if things still hurt while we laughed, we laughed amidst tragedy. And we laughed together.

Joy Amidst Pandemic

This month has been a jarring study in contrasts. It feels like the world outside my living room is descending into chaos while my own life transforms in unexpectedly wholesome ways. Watching the world be wracked by pandemic reminded me that no tomorrow is ever guaranteed, and that's led to me pursuing goals I might have delayed in the past. Whatever happens, I want to know I stepped into my present with all of myself.

In doing so, I've opened the door to so many magical moments. I got engaged to a man I love deeply and who loves me with the same love and intensity. I've had the thrilling whirlwind of applying for a promotion at my workplace, and watching my career goals grow and progress, along with my confidence in myself and my own capabilities. I've kept a steady 4.0 at my college, and I won the first writing competition I've had the courage to enter since I was a child. Life is growing in magical, wonderful ways, and I can't help but wonder if I would have found this much joy if I hadn't looked mortality in the face through pandemic. In the darkest of times, I sought hope and joy and a future. And, more than anything, I sought to live true to myself and my goals.

How will you step into the present with your whole self today?

Engaged

This past week has been a whirlwind. On April 11, I proposed to my partner. He said yes. Every ounce of my being has been radiating joy since that moment.

I feel so incredibly lucky to have him in my life. I didn't know it was possible to feel joy like this, or safety, or to have someone reciprocate all the sweet gestures that I make as a matter of course without treating it as a burden. I hadn't grown along with someone like I have with him before, in ways that made us both stronger and better and more confident people. We trust each other. We love each other. And we communicate.

I wrote all my feelings for him in a poem, and titled it Symbiosis. On Saturday, I shared it with him.

"I didn't understand symbiosis until I met you.
I had forgotten what a scale looked like when it was balanced,
how kindness returned can almost feel like floating.
I had never tasted safety until I kissed your lips,
never grew better for the growth I granted others.

Then there was you, and the way you looked at me.
The feel of your hand in mine, the thoughtful gifts:
Art for art, love for love. I grew stronger every smile,
started dreaming of your touch, started dreaming
of forever. I didn't know that I could love like that.

Love like a steady rock in a storm, like roots
growing intertwined, like fairy tales, only better,
because we talk through our fights and grow closer.
Love like holding each other up in rough seas of life,
because the world is sometimes stormy,

but our love is all sunlight. Love like vitality,
like a wash of warmth revitalizing my life,
like "I can do anything with you by my side."
Love like a ring glimpsed in a dream
of a future I am grabbing with all of my heart.

I didn't understand symbiosis until I met you.
Now I can't imagine life without you by my side.
All this a metaphor-heavy way to tell the story of
the four words pounding in my every heartbeat.
'Will you marry me?'"

As I read the last line, I dropped to one knee and pulled out a ring.

The moment he said yes ranks as one of the best moments of my life, but it wouldn't have been possible without the time and trust and love we'd built. I've been thinking a lot today about all the little moments we were there for each other, and how it feels to be confident in love. To be better for knowing and loving someone, just as they are for knowing and loving you. I've been thinking about how we could be confident in each other because we had the hard conversations, and we did our best to always do so in a way that made both of us feel safe while still being honest with each other.

I've been thinking about how love alone isn't enough, but love and effort and reciprocity, communication and trust and compatibility... all those things can build a home in someone else's heart. I'm glad I didn't settle for less than that joy.

Self Love as Practice

I've noticed in the last few months, even as I've undergone some very real trauma at times, that my confidence in my own self-worth has not wavered. For me, this was a revelation. I spent much of my life struggling with severe flashbacks, anxiety, and depression, and I couldn't summon a clear sense of who I was, let alone love that person. To be at a place where not only could I have a strong personal identity but also a powerful love for myself is something that I could barely imagine in the past.

I've spent a lot of time pondering how I went from there to here, and one thing in particular stood out to me: self love as practice.

Self love is a skill. Like any skill, though, it requires practice to master and practice to retain. That is good news, though, because even if it's hard to get there, it can be learned. It is not beyond your reach.

When I was a child, I made sacred a belief that every day was a fresh start. I believe that any moment can be a fresh start now, but sunrises will always have a special significance to me.

On the darkest days, my brain heard all kindness as mockery, even from myself. Those were the days I would go to bed early, seeking the next sunrise. Clinging to that bit of light kept me alive.

I still kept trying. It was slow going at first. I overanalyzed every kind thought and kind word. I could leech all the joy from it within a matter of minutes. But I felt that joy for a few minutes.

Wake up, try again. Another kind word, or even just a neutral one. The joy lasted a little longer. Sleep, wake. A new day.

There were set-backs, of course. There were the bleak days, and the days the loathing returned. I'd spent so long being treated as less than human. It's hard for that not to take root, and even flourish. It definitely doesn't go away overnight. But gradually, sunrise by sunrise, they happened less often.

Gradually, sunrise by sunrise, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, confidence became a more frequent companion. Eventually the days where I loved myself even began to outnumber the days where I didn't. Then they became the norm.

If you remember only one thing from this, remember this: Every second of that struggle was worth it.

I shouldn't have had to face that struggle. No one should. But every second I fought for myself, every second I fought for self-worth, self-love, and self-acceptance was worth it. Every fall and setback, to sit here, knowing I do deserve to exist and find joy... That was worth the pain. I can't imagine what life would have been like if I hadn't faced decades of trauma, but the past is the past. I am not there any more. I am safe. And I know my own worth.

And you can learn yours.