You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
John Maxwell
We have become the tool of our tools. (Henry David Thoreau)
Call me out, Hank, why dontcha
2026-04-22-Poem
Thinking about passing today. Came up in the discord server, and I was thinking about what I wrote. “I’ve been out since 2016. I realized recently that to some people, in some contexts, I pass. That was NEVER a goal, and I sometimes wish I wasn’t invisible to some younger trans people who only see a fat old lady. Passing, for me, is a nice treat. But because I went so long being gate kept from surgeries and stuff because of my size and weight, I think I did a lot of work to give up on passing as a goal, of surgeries as a goal, and had to learn to love myself in my configuration. All of the things that have happened since I have come out have felt like such a treasure. I just want people to be generous to me regardless of if I pass or not. I want a world where visibly queer ass people are just, I don’t know, other people. Anyway, I’m just glad to be here 10 years into this, surrounded by awesome people, moving through a world that is scary and delightful, a horror show and a treasure.”
I think the gatekeeping that happened around starting hormones late, and being told I couldn’t have surgeries because of my weight, really made me do a lot of work that I wouldn’t have done. That some girls now don’t have to do because they get on waiting lists and in line for surgeries so early. That’s not a bad thing…I’m glad the waiting isn’t necessary anymore. But it does mean I’m a little more gristly than some of them. And that’s ok.
We have comparison and we have compassion. We have delirium and we have delight. We have delusion and we have art, where we live as trans women.
Surgeries won’t fix you. They may make things easier, but they won’t fix you. There is no fixing you. There is accepting you, and finding you. There is bravery, and there is drudgery, and there is acceptance, and there is movement. In the end, you find yourself by being yourself.
All these girls compare themselves to the richest and brightest, the ones that want to move forward into new bodies without learning to love their bodies. What is womanly about your now.
What is womanly about your now. What is womanly about your now? The question is the answer. Start there.
I’m a writer in residence for the Sterling Writer’s Room at the Multnomah County Library. I love working here.
Silly things I’m doing to my phone right now:
- set to grayscale mode
- turn off face recognition for opening the phone. It’s too easy to access, and it’s better Infosec right now. facial recognition for paying for things, and other utilities is completely appropriate.
- removed all social media apps, and blocked them on the browser.
- changed the launcher to a minimal text based one.
- when I am out of the house, it stays in the fanny pack when I am with other people.
- no streaming video on the phone.
- iPad is my consumption device. Phone is my communicator, maps, and music device.  you can tell I’m not working because I’m spending so much time on this bullshit. Lol.