Celebrate the big and little things.

Today is my ten year anniversary of being out as a trans person. I came out as nonbinary first to my dad, and asked him to teach me how to tie a tie. He gifted me a bunch of cool Jerry Garcia ties.

I also decided over the weekend (with encouragement from some of you in response to a comment here) that I am picking up my petition to run for local office today. Totally forgetting there’s something big to celebrate for myself, and now I can celebrate it with my community.

I woke up to see that there is a protest in my area - a protest of mourning the passage of a DEI ban in higher education. This includes my degree and research. I conveniently won a Morticia Addams costume in an auction last month, and it feels like fate to combine all three with picking up my petition today.

Afterwards, there is a big gay dance party for trans day of visibility.

You can mourn and celebrate at the same time- that’s what life is, that’s what I believe funerals are too.

In 2020, I lost my partner to suicide. His family did not invite me to his funeral. We had a joke about the song Dig by Mudvayne- he used to interrupt my tv shows and playlists on the chromecast by playing Dig, like his own weird Rick Roll. So, I asked friends to play Dig on the day of his funeral and found my own way of grieving as the Digs came through my inbox.

A funeral is a moment, and I found a place to mourn and celebrate that was just ours- a place that lasted beyond just that moment, a place I visited often before I moved away from that area.

Humanity is complex. Emotions are complex. Your grief stays the same and you grow around it. That’s why there is room for joy there too.

I have grown so much in a decade, even more in the last five years than I ever thought possible.

When I was 18, just a year and a half after leaving the troubled teen industry, a therapist told my abusive mother that the best future she could hope for me is to be in a group home for the mentally ill chain smoking cigarettes on the front lawn.

I’m 34 now and I quit smoking at 25 (briefly picked back up when my partner died though). I have graduated college, published research, gone on podcasts talking about my life, become an advocate against the troubled teen industry, been selected for a job providing peer support to other survivors, found who I truly am, loved and lost and survived so much more than I ever thought possible. And I will keep surviving. Eat my shorts, Shelley the therapist!!

What are you celebrating today? What are you mourning? What are you Both-ing?