Big Phoenix energy over here

I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hatehate hate hate hate hate hate hatehate hate hate hate hate hate hatehate hate hate hate hate hate hatehate hate hate hate hate hate hatehate hate hate hate hate hate hate

that it’s true

(but i believe that it is)

that sickness is a doorway into my truest humanity—and ergo my truest self.

I suffered for like 10 years with debilitating chronic pain, and it was really scary while it was happening, and it was really scary to call myself disabled, which I was. You know, if you tell someone on a dating app that you’re disabled, they tend to freak out. To be young and sick is like the worst faux pas you could make. It doesn’t matter how resilient you are; the way you hold down a job despite it all; the relationships and friendships you’ve created through it; the beauty of your life. You’re sick, and that is incorrect.

Still though, if I could go back and re-plot my twenties, I would never erase that part of me. I understand something now about how to be human that I could not have understood without it. I understand something about my fellow humans, especially the disabled ones. Illness is shitty, and also by its very shitty nature, it’s a doorway: to patience, tenderness, empathy, common cause, slowness, tenacity, vulnerability, exposure, sorrow. The full deal.

My colleague Rae Barker wrote today that her experience of first-time parenting was “shattering.” Something about that word, it was just like, oh my god.

That.

I’m not even all the way to the threshold yet, not even all the way burned down to the ground, and already the way the flames are licking at my feet is shattering.

What I’m counting on, like really doubling down on, is what happens after the shattering. When the phoenix comes up from the ashes. It doesn’t look the way it did before, but by god, that phoenix better rise. I will be so mad if it doesn’t.

Somehow, what I forgot though, is that you don’t get to, like, pick out the colors and traits of your new bird. This is not a designer experience. You just collapse. You collapse with dignity, with grace, with every alchemical skill you can possibly throw into the mix with the hopes that the outcome is kinda pretty, but still. The other side is gonna be what it’s gonna be.

Big phoenix energy over here tonight. I’ve burned down before. I can do it again. Let’s fuckin go.

Welcome to my pseudo-journal about the experience of trying to have a baby as a single person. Now that I’ve published my memoir about God and sex, maybe eventually, these notes and jots will become a second book.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing so far, and you enjoyed this piece, it would mean the world if you forwarded this email or shared the link with a loved one.