According to the AARP and the National Caregiving Alliance roughly 63 million American adults serve as family caregivers. These demands primarily impact women. Roughly 60% of unpaid caregivers and over 80% of paid caregivers are women. On average, caregivers are spending 27 hours per week on care work. 24% of caregivers spend more than 40 hours a week caring for their loved one. And a similar portion of the caregiving population cares for more than one person.

Most of you know that I have been one of these 63 million Americans since my spouse, Graham, was diagnosed with ALS in 2020. In every dimension you can imagine ALS is a motherfucker, primarily in the many losses Graham has sustained (walking, eating, talking and breathing on his own, for example). And also, in the level of caregiving the disease requires.

Managing ALS has brought me to my knees more times than I can count. And I want to tell you about the kinds of things friends have done for me. I hope these short vignettes will inspire you to either ask for help or offer help in actually useful ways.

Scroll down for an update on my “school year,” and a few things that have caught my eye this week. For Bay Area friends who were watching the WNBA finals, GO VALKS!

1. All hail the pragmatic, level headed, touch-base-every-day friend. Soon after Graham’s diagnosis, during the pandemic, I remember standing at my kitchen sink and panicking. My mind was hijacked by catastrophic thinking about how long the disease would last, how I would survive without Graham, and maybe even how we were going to tell the kids. My heart was in my throat and I felt like I was going to pass out. So I called my friend Laurel. Here is what Laurel said to me. First she said, “Ok take a couple deep breaths. We are going to get through this.” She used the pronoun “we”. She has used it since the first time I told her about Graham’s diagnosis. I can’t tell you how powerful it is to have someone wrap me up in the pronoun “we” when it comes to this fucking disease. Then she said, “Get yourself a glass of water. Then go to the freezer and get three ice cubes. Then take ten sips of water.” The concrete steps and the counting really, really helped me in that moment. By the time I took ten sips I felt calmer. In my mind’s eye I can still see the yellow travel cup I filled with ice water.

   

2. God love the funny, call me anytime day or night friend. By the time my eldest started college in 2022, Graham was completely paralyzed. Our family is lucky that our daughter was able to go to a local college—so we did not have far to travel. On the first day she and I were acutely aware that we were doing college drop off without Dad. We got through it though, sweaty and proud. But as soon as I dropped her off I completely lost it. My stomach was an empty black pit and I was sobbing the ugly snotty drool cry. It was bad. I have a very close friend who lives down the street from the university and I drove to her house. I called her from her driveway and asked if I could come over. When she said, “Sure,” I replied “I’m glad that worked out because I’m standing at your door.” She let me in, took in the state of me, and walked me to her couch. Still sobbing I collapsed and laid my head in her lap. She combed her fingers through my hair and joked, “Don’t kid yourself, the dads suck on move-in days. He only would have driven you nuts.” I laughed a little through all that crying.

1. Kudos to the badass I’ve-been-through-shit older friend. One of the biggest challenges for our family, has been finding caregivers to help with Graham. Graham has health insurance that covers private nursing (almost unheard of, we are beyond fortunate on this front) so we can afford help, but still, finding help that can handle his level of impairment is a lot more challenging than it should be. He needed help eating, walking, going to the bathroom, getting dressed and undressed, etc. etc.—plus we had the three kids—and the little bit of help I did have was unreliable. It was like swimming in a churning ocean and not being able to catch my breath between the waves. During this time a friend took over interviewing potential caregivers for Graham. She made a spreadsheet. She spoke to people over the phone. She met them in person. She built a network of nearly a hundred people who had cared for or knew something about caring for someone with ALS. She still talks to these folks sometimes! Having her just take over and do a first pass of interviewing so that I only met with people who seemed like they actually might work, this was a godsend.

1. Count yourself lucky if you have the unicorn-female-engineer friend. As Graham got sicker it was harder and harder for him to breathe. We knew at some point he was going to need to start using a non-invasive bipap machine. Mentally, that machine represented everything I feared. The thought of the machine made me feel like I would be sick. And still, we knew we would need it and so getting oriented to how it worked before we needed it was important. I coordinated with my engineer friend to make sure she could be there with Graham and me for the appointment. She watched along and made a video for me to refer back to when Graham actually needed the device. This was critical for me.

In each case, I felt safe to tell these friends how I really was. This is critical. I cannot underscore this enough. If you find yourself not quite being true and honest with at least one or two people, you need to take a risk and identify your people. Helping each other is pretty much what we are here for and if you pick the right person they will want to help. If you pick the wrong person, try again until you find a right person. This is not easy, but it is worth it.

I had an idea of what my friends were good at and I asked for specific help that drew on their strengths. What kind of friend are you? And what kinds of friends are in your life? Knowing the answer to both of these questions may just be the difference between sailing and sinking when life throws you some new, shitty, character building challenge. I know it was for me.

*********

My school year so far:

Writing: It’s going great. I’m on draft 4 of an essay I hope to submit to journals before the end of the year. Our class has started workshopping and these folks in my class are so in tune and so generous. Working through my piece made me excited to get onto the next draft. Writing the Real Memoir Class with Faith Adiele

Reading: Graham and I continue to plod along with our “James Jams” as we call them. This week I’m starting the reading for Class #2 that I’m going to do independently. Today was the first day that I had scheduled a reading block, and I missed it. So jury is still out on whether I will ever actually catch up. Why We Love Henry James with Garth Greenwell

PE: I’m LOVING my strength training at Axis, especially doing sauna after. But I’m noticing some aches and pains starting to creep up. I may need to include more rest in my routine.

Collage: I’m on collage 70/100 with just under sixty days of the year left. That is some pretty easy math. I think I can make it but it will take focus.

A few things that have caught my attention this week:

Movie: You Can See Everything. OMG the hype is real. This is the most psychologically taut, engaging thing I have seen in quite some time. Be sure to watch one or two episodes of Nathan for You, before watching the movie. It’s good to know Nathan’s schtick before seeing this.

Local walk: Bay Area Ridge Trail San Francisco Presidio to The Golden Gate Bridge. I walked this with a friend and loved it! Shade, views, freshly constructed and landscaped—and not too challenging, only 2.6 miles and not as hilly as it can get in SF

Essay: 5 minute read The Next Wave, by Julie Jeanell Leung a lot of heat in this one!

Hi Friends,

Someone I love recently asked for an unfiltered update, and it seemed noteworthy that my unfiltered truth was not terrible. I am exhaling for the first time in years. The children are well, Graham is stable, our care team is professional and consistent, and insurance is in place. Since Graham’s diagnosis in 2020 I don’t think all these things have ever been true at the same time until now.

Amy Poehler recently interviewed Sandra Bullock on her podcast, and early in the interview Bullock, whose cared for her husband while he had ALS, mentioned that for the first time in a long time she was feeling creative again. Poehler offhandedly said, “yes that makes sense, creativity is a form of play, and play is the first thing to go in a crisis.”

Amen, Amy, Ah-freaking-men.

I noticed this change in myself as October was approaching. A few good friends have Birthdays in October and for the first time in a long time I felt really excited for plans. Also, my high school roommate was coming to town, and I felt a lot of joy putting together a little itinerary for us. For me—celebrating and making plans count as play—they are my love language.

To celebrate and savor, this post is primarily a list of the kinds of fun that I planned and experienced in October. If you want an update on my “school year” scroll down. And then after that there are links to a couple of things that caught my attention recently.

The October “playlist”

1. I organized a few friends to attend sing along night at a dueling piano bar. My eldest daughter turned me on to this local bar that hosts two piano players on Friday nights who take turns taking song requests. Hits in our group included Brown Eyed Girl, Tiny Dancer, and Jack n Diane. I wore my glitter pants which I originally bought for the Eras tour.

2. A dinner out with long-time friends and an outside autumn walk at Filoli. The Nightfall event is so fall-ish, and in December Filoli will switch gears to Holiday Lights, which is also fantastic.

3. Sleeping over in San Francisco with my forever roomie. Jen and I were high school roommates. Then we lived across town from each other in New York City. Then she moved to San Francisco and I followed her and slept on the pullout couch in her apartment for a month. She recruited me to work at Excite, where I met Graham. We lived in the Bay Area together for years. In addition to all that, Jen’s mom died of ALS. So she was the first friend I called when Graham was diagnosed. We stayed in a hotel just a few blocks from her first apartment in San Francisco. We ate in dinner in an old neighborhood standby that still exists. We took our favorite walks. Boy, it feels good to revisit old happy places with the same person I discovered them with.

4. After Jen flew back east I stayed in SF a little longer. The first game of the Valkyries WNBA finals series was happening midday—so I walked over to the Chase Center to get the vibes. Even without a ticket, the fandom was ebullient. I was an instant convert.

5. I watched the second game in my family room. Possibly the first time in my life that I’ve put a game on TV.

6. The daughter of a good friend of mine received good news. I ran over to the bakery and picked up a cake. But the cake decorator had left for the day. So I decorated it myself. As I walked up to the front door of their house, I had the distinct sense of doing something that I used to do, something I hadn’t done in a long time.

Inside myself I celebrated that I had room for spontaneous celebration.

When I notice and name all these happy things I also feel a wave of foreboding. This is a bit dispiriting. I don’t think of myself as a pessimistic person but I mention it because so many of us have faced hard times lately and will face hard times in the future.

A few searches on the internet spoke to the fact that this is a pretty normal response to sustained trauma, which can cause difficulty imagining a positive future, interfere with our experience of time so that now feels like forever and the future feels unrealistic or out of reach, reduce a person’s ability and desire to socialize, or make it hard to shake a pessimistic attitude. If you are feeling any of these things. You are not alone. And according to this cursory research, typically these sensations subside over time and with appropriate support.

Needless to say, it feels almost miraculous to be feeling a sense of play again. And I’m grateful.

*****

A quick update on my “school year”

Memoir: Tonight I will have a piece “workshopped” in my memoir class. I’ve run a few different experiments in the piece and I’m curious how my class will respond. Two other pieces will be discussed also. Prepping for that discussion has reminded me how much I enjoy participating in a community of writers. Getting to know people through their writing builds a kind of artistic friendship that really fills my heart.

Henry James: Graham and I are getting through Portrait of a Lady, slowly but surely. I believe we will finish it in time for me to be on track for class number two.

Collage: I ran out of typewriter ribbon last week! The new package just arrived. I’m at collage 69/100. I can still finish this calendar year!

PE: My workouts are really energizing me. I’ve been able to be consistent, even during the past week when an old friend was in from out of town. She and I went to two Bar Method Classes together (which was super fun….boy, can she do a push up! I’m still on my knees, but she was banging them out like the athlete she has always been).

*******

A few things that caught my attention recently:

Essay: this one is longish, but the closest thing I have come to talking to Graham about the meaning moment we are currently experiencing regarding AI. Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei the founder of Anthropic.

Album: Good Grief by Sara Bareilles This is one of my favorite albums that has come out in awhile. Capsize is my favorite song.

Book: Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston. This is one of my favorite books of the whole year. I read it in two sittings (in paperback…I’m going to read it again electronically so I can log my favorite passages so that they are searchable).

First of all, Happy Decorative Gourd Season…

*****

A quick update on my school schedule if you’re interested (skip ahead if you need to get to the good news STAT) Here’s what I’m noticing:

I meet with my memoir class every Tuesday from 6-8pm. This level of accountability—ie interacting with real people is helping me produce new work at a good clip.

Henry James on audio with Graham is enjoyable but slow. Graham’s schedule and my schedule are out of synch so we revised our plan. We’ll do the Portrait of a Lady class together. I will do the rest of Garth’s classes at my own pace, AND instead of doing a whole year of Henry James together we are going to listen to Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer next, which is one of Graham’s favorites.

Collage is moving along, more sporadic than I’d like. I’m considering not touching my phone in the morning until I’ve finished a collage. I’ve made “don’t touch the phone” commitments in the past and they are very powerful, but hard to execute. But I always feel better when I reserve my attention for my own work before giving any of it away, especially to the internet.

I Would love to hear if any of you out there have phone habits that are helping you protect your attention from the algo.

I’d say PE is going better than expected. I’ve added another weight training session into my week and my body seems to be holding up under the rigor. I just signed up to do a 5K in December with an educator at my kids’ school who challenged me to do a race. LFG!

*****

GOOD NEWS #1

In a week when the news has been disheartening (week starting Sept 30, but who am I kidding this is almost every week) here are two extraordinary wins, one at the federal level and another at the state level. To me these aren’t blue or red wins (though, to be sure, these new laws lean blue) but signals that our government can still sometimes function, which feels important while we weather the current institutional shitstorm.

ACT for ALS was passed by the Senate (making it the law of the land) on September 28th. ALS is the WORST, but bipartisan collaboration freaking warms my heart. Passing this law secures an additional $500 million for research on neurodegenerative diseases at a time when federal funding for science has decreased abysmally.

GOOD NEWS #2

Second piece of good news is that Washington State passed the Washington Cares Fund and has started distributing benefits. This is a social benefit, funded by a $.58/$100.00 payroll tax in Washington State, that guarantees long-term care, caregiver support, for citizens of Washington state. Anyone who has been a caregiver knows that most insurance does not cover ADLs—activities of daily living—which is what families hire caregivers to help with). This is the first fund of its kind in the US.

As you can imagine, I am very interested in the politics of caregiving and I am closely tracking the work of a woman named Aijen Poo (a high school classmate and MacArthur Genius award winner) who believes that the US government should approach the policy infrastructure for caregiving the same way we approach other critical infrastructure (like bridges and roads). Watch the video below to learn more about this idea

*****

I’m going to spare you of another hot take on what happened at Cornell.

Instead here’s a general rule of thumb on consent (which I think is a better way of thinking about it than “does she want the tea?”). Consent is not possible inside the context of a massive power imbalance.

Children do not have the power to consent to their parents, an employee cannot truly consent to actions required of a powerful boss, a student cannot consent to a teacher. A younger person cannot consent to a much older person in a position of power. One drunk woman cannot consent to a group of three or four or five or six or fifty-seven men, because she is overpowered.

The power-context matters a lot when we are thinking about whether individuals have agency.

*****

A quick story that has stuck with me:

One of my friends works in the kind of job where she gets to participate in professional development. She is a rockstar so the bosses send her to leadership classes. A couple of weeks ago, she was in a workshop that was tasked with making a go or no-go decision in a fictional scenario about whether or not to put an F-1 race car into an important race. Throughout the course of the day the workshop group received new data about the risk profile for the race.

Somewhere in the middle of the day, my friend and one other person in the workshop felt they had seen enough data that they felt 1) the driver’s life could be at risk and 2) that the risk wasn’t worth taking. The rest of the room, feeling the pressure to meet the corporate goals, made the argument that race car drivers know the risk they are taking when they get behind the wheel. That essentially, the drivers are agreeing to maybe die when they race their car, so a little risk is ok.

PLOT SPOILER: By the end of the day, the workshop group had decided to put the F-1 car into the race. After that decision was made, the workshop leaders revealed that the scenario the group had just worked through was based on the decision tree NASA followed when they sent the Challenger into space. In that process, there were people who had felt it wasn’t a good idea too, but their voices were DROWNED OUT.

Let that sink in.

One of my best friends was one of two people who made the right call in this set up, but she got overwhelmed by the room.

I asked my friend what the experience had been like for her. First, she doubted herself because she didn’t have a firm grasp on all of the data, she just had feelings that the scenario wasn’t safe. She could not imagine taking on the majority passionate people in the room based on her feelings about the situation. She spent a good part of the day letting the loud voices bark at each other and she more or less disengaged.

Here are some thoughts about this story in no particular order:

1. Feelings are data too. Period. My friend’s feelings about the risk inherent in the decision were the product of her moral compass working properly.

2. What went wrong, in my opinion, with the workshop group and with the Challenger is that the group in power (see the rule of thumb about consent above) abdicated their collective moral responsibility and transferred that group responsibility to the individual driver/astronaut. Instead of behaving as a proxy for the most impacted stakeholder (the one who might die and was not in the room and was only one person) they made the case that the astronaut/driver consented to maybe dying in their mission, which on some level is true. But that does not mean that the group did a good job making a decision on their behalf.

3. I don’t think that arguing with the loud voiced majority in the room would have been productive. I hate imagining the tennis match of arguing when when really the group needed a new game and a new scoring system that activated everyone’s moral compass. The only ideas that come to me in this set up are arty and weird. Like what if the two people (who were in stark minority) held a fake funeral for the driver where while the other folks were plowing ahead with their go-forward decision? It would have been odd, but would they have gotten people’s attention? They probably would have been ridaculed, but at least they would have been on the record for their views.

Anyone out there have ideas about how to feel confident when the data we’re working with is OUR OWN FEELINGS? Or how to disrupt a misguided majority in a productive way? Or how we quantitatively measure the morality of a situation?

While I don’t have answers to these questions, maybe the art of asking good questions actually matters.

I’m choosing to take inspiration from monarch butterflies. A friend recently shared with me the fact that monarch butterflies are the only butterfly species on record to make a two way migration, sometimes traveling as far as 3,000 miles to reach their seasonal home. But not a single butterfly makes the whole trip. It takes 3-4 generations to fly from their winter homes to their summer destinations. If anyone knows more about this migration, I’d love you to share in the comments.

Point being, what if we don’t have to have the whole answer or solution? What if our job is to create the conditions for generations beyond us to fly to new solutions. Is asking better questions and teaching processes for non-violent collective decision making a way we can do that?

Meanwhile, we still have seasons, which is pretty great.

XO

Cristina

A few things that caught my eye this week:

Podcast: Lidia Yuknavitch talks to Debbie Millman about writing and the importance of lots of people telling their stories (especially as it relates to the book Lidia edited called The Big M: 13 Writers Take Back the Story of Menopause. In the podcast Lidia describes her initial list of 100 writers that she wanted for the collection LOL my DIVA. BUY THE BOOK, every single essay is a hot gem)

Primary source: A study in Nature that documents brain changes that correlate with changes in hormone changes in puberty, first pregnancy, and menopause. Very incomplete, but new important research for people with vaginas!

Primary source: Bill Gates’s open letter on his thoughts about the future of AI

PS The year-long version of the Henry James class is SOLD OUT, but the individual classes are still available. The next one starts Nov 7 and includes The Turn of the Screw, which I think is one that people love)

What we do with our days is what becomes of our lives. If we can find some structure; if we can commit to even an atom of our dream in our day-to-day, we draw that future much closer to us than if we just scroll through someone else’s airbrushed version of a dream on Instagram (I am very guilty of this btw).

So with that in mind, as promised, here is my “class schedule” for the 2026-2027 school year:

Art: 100 day collage project, day 258 to 365, 1 collage a day (classroom: kitchen table)

Writing: Year-long Memoir Class with master author, educator Faith Adiele, Tues 9AM-12PM, 6PM-8PM, Weds 9AM-12PM, Thurs 9AM-12PM, and additional homework time as needed (classroom: my office desk and zoom)

Reading: Year-long class with Garth Greenwell, in which we will read a lot of Henry James. Garth calls it Why We Love Henry James. BONUS: Graham will audit this class with me. ( Wed 2PM-4PM, Sat 2PM-4PM classroom: Graham’s den where we listen to audio books and the zoom)

PE: Weight training with Sarah and Sal, for women of a certain age who have received the PSA that strong is the new skinny (Weds 1PM-2PM, Fri 12PM-1PM classroom: Axis gym)

The dreams these “classes” are aiming toward include, but are not limited to: writing a fabulous second memoir, building a sense of belonging in a community of likeminded writers and artists, teaching something? (but I don’t know what I’d teach because my interests are all over the map and my time is available only in bursts. Who would hire an an all over the map teacher who is only available to teach in bursts??), getting physically strong so that I can get to know our beautiful, struggling planet better—through intimate, adventurous encounters—on my own two feet, full body, minus all the info noise that comes at us 24-7.

If you’re curious, here are my full class descriptions.

100 day collage project, day 258-365

Of all my classes, this one is the best current illustration of two artistic mantras that make my writing possible: START and KEEP GOING. Both START and KEEP GOING are paradoxically harder and easier than they seem. On the one hand, both tend trigger overthinking for me. On the other hand if I can break a large task down into its smallest, most humble, most doable unit and just keep doing that very, very small, very, very humble bit I can breakout of the overthinking rut and eventually finish a project.

I produce work incrementally. Producing work and spending time with other people producing work is what it means to belong to a community of artists.

Here is day 1 of my 100 Day collage project

The fragment of text: “‘It’s something of an emergency,’ I say. But no one, including me believes in such a thing as a tiling emergency,” comes from January 2021 when, in the middle of the pandemic I went to a local tile store, because I had been helping Graham to shower, but he was all of a sudden losing the strength to stay standing and we needed to redo a bathroom, which was the first of many renovations ALS forced us into. It was a a real crisis, which was only a little bit about the tile.

This fragment comes from the hundreds of pages of notes I’ve taken about our family’s ALS experience. In January 2026 I knew I needed to read the notes, but I truly dreaded the idea for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I cringe at reading my own writing the same way most people don’t like listening to recordings of themselves. I just feel ICK about it. But I needed to read the notes as I thought about writing my second book.

So I let myself START by taking it one page at a time. I picked a random page from the pile and just read it. Usually, I could find a sentence I liked. Hence the fragment.

I also tend to hoard magazines. And rather than shame myself for all the wasted paper (and wasted money!) I doubled down on my guilty pleasure and got the idea of using the magazines to make collages for my favorite sentences.

This course embodies KEEP GOING. I’m at 60/100. And here is my space set up for tomorrow.

May days 258-365 of my 100 day project give you permission to KEEP GOING on whatever straggling process you’re in!

Writing: Join other humans for the audacious and simultaneously masochistic enterprise of writing memoir, aka year-long memoir class

I am ready to start writing what I call my “Ikea” draft for my second memoir, by which I mean I’m going to write a very loosely constructed draft, knowing that I will inevitably have to take it apart and start over. IYKYK.

The problem for me with writing a book is that I can get lonely when I write, especially in a long term project. So to combat loneliness I’ve joined a memoir cohort for the year (and I’ve restarted my substack, so we can be in touch!).

The extra fun aspect of this class is that it is taught by Faith Adiele, who was the first boss I ever had! She was the program director for Education 4 Action, a Radcliffe grant making org that gave money to undergraduates for summer social justice projects, and while I was an undergrad and I was her assistant. Way back in the 1990’s I remember Faith co-writing novel with her friend Michael. And now she is a writing DIVA—she is the author or editor of many books, is the chair of the creative writing department at CCA, is the recipient of about a million cool writing residencies and awards (the link is to her amazing class about applying to residencies), and is the founder of the first BIOPIC travel writing workshop. That’s the short list. Plus, she is hilarious.

MEMOIR WRITING HAS BEEN ENERGIZED!

Reading: The year-long Henry James class in which I read novels I’m pretty sure I don’t like with a famous author I admire, but you’ve probably never heard of (AKA if Garth Greenwell says I should read Henry James, I’ll read Henry James)

While I was at Bennington Garth Greenwell gave a talk about the creative life and I have never thought about writing the same way since. He is the author of three literary novels, is an instructor at the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is one the literary thinkers I admire most right now. The fact that I am taking an actual class with him all year makes me want to look over my shoulder and ask people, “Do you see this? Am I stealing? How are there not more people in this class?”

I think Garth will go down as one of the most important literary figures in my lifetime. He is that smart and that beloved in the literary community. This class, from what I gather, is part of his own experimentation in what he believes an aesthetic education should be, which includes deep dives into the careers of writers that one admires. Hence, an entire year’s journey with Henry James. The class is taught in 6 classes over the course of the year and students can sign up for any or all of the classes. Me being me (an over-buyer), I signed up for the whole year.

Graham, who is a self proclaimed audiobook HATER—he has literally not listened to a single audiobook in the thirty years that I’ve known him—typed, “I love it,” when I suggested we do the class together. This came as quite a surprise, but has added a sweet activity to our time together. Many Saturdays you can find us in the afternoon with the cats listening to as many chapters of Portrait of A Lady as we can jam through. We call it James Jamming.

And finally…

PE: Weight training with Sarah at Axis

In response to the PSA that women of a certain age need to be “lifting heavy,” I am adding weight training to my exercise routine. Wish me luck. I know I’ll never be as ripped as my queen Robin Arzon of Peloton fame, but a gal can try.

Will these classes lead to all of my dreams coming true? Not exactly. But they will help me keep stepping toward what I want.

You may not consider yourself an artist, and so the “classes” I’m taking wouldn’t be right for you. BUT everyone I know has a dream for what their legacy will be, what they will leave behind of themselves in and for others.

“Art is a habit of intellect, developed with practice over time, that empowers the artist to make the work right and protects [her]…from deviating from what is good for the work.” —Nell Sonneman, as quoted by bell hooks in Art On my Mind

May we all set up practices that help us make our work right and protect us from deviating from what is good for our work.

XO Cristina

A couple of things that caught my attention this week:

An essay: A Postcard from Dolly (10 min read, a really fun essay by Lauren Hough in which she offers an homage to the great Dolly Parton in the form of a deep dive into her own lifelong obsession with the singer songwriter)

An essay: On a Sentence by Raven Leilani (20 min read, if you want to nerd out literary-style with Garth Greenwell)

A podcast: On the 40th Anniversary of the Oprah Winfrey Show (I loved the old clips from the 80’s when she had just started out in Chicago, was going head to head with Phil Donahue, and could not get a single celebrity to come on her show)

Hey friends,

I’m coming back to posting in my substack this fall as part of my Back to School season. I find September a more productive time to reboot my routines than the start of the new year, which if you want to know the truth, I have moved to February.

As most of you know for the past few years I’ve been raising my kids and managing my husband’s ALS care. Even though lots of people have reached out, the journey has been isolating. I have wanted to stay connected but getting caught up has often been too exhausting and I have let my life get small. Which is ok. Sometimes we need a life that is our cozy bed and whatever we can reach from there. But this fall I’m ready for a little more. So I am giving myself a real back to school season, and I want to invite any other caregivers out there who feel ready to expand again a little to do the same.

If you don’t consider yourself a caregiver, you might change your mind after reading my definition.

Caregivers are people who have invested a significant portion of their adult lives caring for other people. I’m especially looking at you--stay at home moms—who are might now also be caring for your adult parents--or for whoever in the family needs care. But I’m also looking at you, hard working moms. Even if you also have a paid full-time job, if you were the primary carer for your kids, chances are you’ll end up caring for your parents at some point too.

See Gloria Steinem (from her final essay):

“Females do the majority of work in the world when you account for paid and unpaid labor, yet only receive about a third of total labor income globally, and own less than twenty per cent of land worldwide.”

RIP Gloria Steinem

OK, thank you Queen Gloria for that gut punch of truth.

What I’m taking from this quote today is the idea that the world is not going to just liberate us. We, who do the most work on the planet, still have to liberate ourselves.

Right now, my own version of liberation is giving myself the gift of a school year.

For me, “going back to school” means consciously building an enriching schedule, which literally includes taking a couple of classes. In my next post I’ll tell you more about my actual schedule.

But for now I’m wondering, if liberation includes your expression, your rest, your well being, your happiness, your fulfillment—what kind of schedule would you build?

I know, this is a tough, maybe even indulgent question when life feels full of constraints. But what if good energy precedes good outcomes? What if engagement or laughter or connection or feeling good in your body were prerequisites to easing the constraints of our lives? What kind of schedule would you build that could prioritize those things?

To be honest, this is an experiment I’m running. My energy has been lower more frequently during the ALS years. My life has been more constrained. My world has gotten smaller. I feel kinship with the legions of women who are doing the lions share of the world’s labor, though I understand I have it better than most women. Rather than be paralyzed by guilt or get stuck in the why do I feel so bad when I have it so much better than other people, rut, I’ve decided to create a schedule of structured enrichment. I’m calling it a school year for myself. Other people might just call it fun.

Turning fun into something earnest and analytical that looks like school so I can give myself good grades, uhhh, for better or worse I’m pretty sure that’s on brand for me. If you are better able to have fun for fun’s sake, have at it. Take me with you. For now I’m going back to school.

That’s me, at my next to last Back to School night ever.

XOXO Cristina

A few things that caught my attention this week:

An episode of the Smartness podcast with Sandra Bullock discussing her experience taking care of her husband with ALS in which she teases Will Arnette for the crappy window boxes at his beautiful home in LA

Jennine Oulette’s 100 day writing experience

Karen Karbo is a Portland writer who repatriated to Coullioure France where she hosts writing retreats. Her summer 2027 schedule is open and includes workshops with Meg Wolitzer and Cheryl Strayed.

For the Tarot curious among you, I really love Lindsay Mack’s work. She has some upcoming retreats. And if liberating yourself includes playing Tarot with me, let me know I’ve been practicing and I’d be happy to make time to hold a question with you and the cards.

In my previous post I shared pictures of my in-person book events. Only a small percentage of books go on a “real” tour and this first book of mine was not that kind of book. The in-person events I did were facilitated by friends who contacted Powells (the Hawthorne location) and Amherst Books directly on my behalf.

Beyond that I relied on inclusion in my publishers book catalogue (JKP catalogue—my publisher’s list is particularly strong for parents raising queer kids or parents raising neurodivergent kids) and an online publicity campaign I paid for out of pocket.

I wish I could tell you that I did a lot of research and picked my perfect publicist who is now a life long friend. Instead, I was totally overwhelmed at the time I felt I needed to hire a team (about nine months before my pub date, and this was already a little late), and I went with a company called BookSparks because they frequently collaborate with She Writes Press, a hybrid publisher (if you are wondering what that is: here’s the definition) directed by Brooke Warner, a writer and publishing professional I don’t know personally, but whose career I have been tracking for decades. If BookSparks was good enough for Brooke Warner, I figured, it was good enough for me. And I think it was.

Through BookSparks, a plug for my book appeared on about 60 websites and was “bookstagramed” by over thirty bookstagramers. In addition, they helped me pitch and place an op-ed on the front page of MSNBC.com. The team was responsive and it was exciting to see my book pop up in different places on the internet. The ultimate measure of how the publicity tour went will be in sales, but I don’t have those numbers yet.

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Now that my online publicity tour is completed, my goal is to participate in virtual and online bookclubs in 2026. If you are interested in hosting a book club, together we will pick a date, and I will join your group to do a short reading and participate in an AMA (ask me anything). For any book club willing to buy ten books, I will ship copies of my book, personalized for each member, directly to you.

These are perfect for families with gender creative kids who want to help educate their family and friends about gender diversity. My book is also a great fit for moms generally. Overall, my book is an anthem to motherhood. Moms change culture one child at a time and are rarely recognized for this work. My book offers an opportunity for moms to reflect on the broader impact of mothering and on the wisdom they have gained through motherhood. Email me at cristinacolivetti@gmail.com if you’d like to host a book club next year!

Three things worth sharing:

Susan Cheever was one of my favorite professors at Bennington. Her new book about her father, John Cheever’s writing, is called When All the Men Wore Hats. Vogue ran a great excerpt from it in September.

This week I’m organizing my kitchen for holiday baking. After I started this process I read this piece by Ingrid Fetell Lee about finding more flow in the day-to-day, and I was like, YES, more holiday flow please!

I have finally created an instagram profile for my writing life. I would love it if you would follow me there @cristinacolivetti.

This week a well respected gender clinic (The Fenway Clinic) in Boston announced that it has stopped offering gender affirming care to anyone under 19. This includes hormone blockers, a reversible therapy that gives trans kids time to make informed, thoughtful decisions about how they want to grow into their gender. The Fenway Clinic is one of over twenty gender clinics that have restricted their offerings this year, even though in their states these treatments are currently LEGAL. It is not clear exactly what is going on behind closed doors, but hospitals in blue states are being pressured, one by one, to shut down their operations.

For the trans community and anyone who cares about and for trans kids, the walls are truly closing in around us. Gender affirming care for minors is quickly and quietly disappearing across the country. In this context, I am so happy that Free Mom Hugs, has invited me to participate in a book club for their organization. Next week I’ll be sending out 87 books to volunteers in the organization and in January I’ll be doing live book talks over zoom.

Now, more than ever, in person conversations about gender affirming care are very important. If anyone who reads my substack would like to do a book club in their community—I’m in. I’m happy to appear on zoom, or if you really twist my arm (Meredith E and Amy C, I’m talking to you!) I’d be happy to visit IRL. Real life, in the flesh, person to person interactions have been the lifeline for the trans community for far longer than I’ve been a part of it. And from here on out, I will be learning from trans elders about how to get people to the help they need, as transgender people have been doing for decades in this country.

******

This past September, for the first time in decades, I slept outside on the ground in a tent. I chose to do this so that I could sea kayak and study writing with Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Deep Creek, and Without Exception (among others, but those three are my favorite). It was as fabulous as I thought it would be and then some. I’ll write more about what I learned. But as it relates to a book launch, there was this…

Every morning on the trip, the twelve or so of us, circled up with Pam to talk and share and write. In midday there was some free time to write, and in the late afternoon before the sun set, we read our work to each other. We heard about orcas, a snapping turtle with a soul, a “cool” girl pool shark, Icelandic horses and more. As the week went on, I noticed myself writing more and more toward this moment in the day—I wanted to offer a tasty morsel of aliveness to the group.

So often writers are told to write for themselves first, and in order to develop your own voice, this phase of writing is real. But also, outside in the woods with a group of women sitting in a circle, we were writing for each other in a way that felt as old as giant sequoias. I wasn’t censoring myself to please the group, I was polishing a small pebble then saying, “Hey, check out this cool stone I found.” There was no book launch or building a platform or growing our audience. There were no lonely days at the computer, followed by grocery shopping and pick ups, wondering if some editor out there would ever love my work.

I don’t know how this comparison is going to change my writing life, but I’m holding onto the goodness of writing in a small group, immersing myself in the outdoors, and reading to each other for fun. None of which is usually happens in a book launch, but maybe should!

During my launch I did two bookstore events. One in Amherst, MA and one in Portland at one of the extensions of Powells. In both cases, these events happened because I had local friends work with the bookstore to generate an invitation. I loved both of them, but reading in a bookstore makes it viscerally obvious why publishers care so much about audience, platform, etc. Both of my events were attended by real people, but not many, which was ok by me. But when a publisher buys a book they want to know if you can sell books, and however charming an author might be, if people don’t know who you are, it is difficult to fill seats in a bookstore and/or sell a lot of copies of your book.

The tension between making great art and then making a business out of that art is real! I have no solutions, but my inner guidance is that I don’t need to solve this equation all at once—I just need to keep doing my thing and sharing it—in the woods and at bookstores, in conversations (and through bookclubs!). For writers out there, this is why community is so, so important. The work we do matters, and we need to invest a lot of time and effort before we ever have hope of material gain (if ever) from our larger projects. Inside of capitalism this makes no sense at all, but sometimes I think the absolute lack of sense in the enterprise both contributes to the authenticity of the enterprise while it also severely limits the writers any of us ever hear from. Writers, keep going. Readers, keep reading. And I will keep thinking about how harness the magic of my outdoor storytelling experience to write my best work and share it.

And now for some photos from my very small (but VERY FUN) bookstore events.

Amherst:

Portland! Getting to read from my book at Powells was a bucket list DREAM COME TRUE!

****

A few quick reads that you might like…

An essay by Pam Houston that will make you want to read her other books. I read this essay a couple of times a year.

An op-ed by John Palfrey, the President of the MacArthur Foundation (of the famous Genius Awards) that describes in plain language the way the current political situation is testing the rule of law.

Generalities about what makes a “good” book launch are out there. How many books you sell is a common measure of success. It’s like having a good SAT score. It’s good to have a “good” number, but the number is not the whole story.

It’s reasonable to think about the number of books you sell as an author, and in certain ways the number is important. (for an interesting story about the length of a book’s life as it relates to sales numbers check out this article about Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit).

But unlike SAT scores where there is at least the illusion of being able to study for the thing, the number of books an author sells will be influenced by an infinite number of outside variables—everything from the size of the book’s marketing budget (in my case the publisher’s budget was approximately $0) to the independent resources the author is willing to contribute to their publicity (I invested somewhere between the cost of a season of club volleyball and a typical course of orthodonture…for those of you without kids these are the shockingly expensive costs of “typical” American childhood), to very, very random events like which other books are coming out at the same time, whether or not the author and her team know about how to make the NYTimes bestseller list, whether a social media post goes viral, and which way the political winds are blowing.

In short, after investing five to ten years of soulwork into a book, how it sells is, to some large extent, in the hands of the gods or fate or dumb luck.

Given that, as a debut author, I went in knowing that I was not going to measure the success of my first book around my sales numbers (I don’t even know how many books I’ve sold). My initial goals were, in chronological order: write the best book I could, secure an agent, sell the book. Checking each of those boxes feels huge!

So, for me, step one in publishing a book as a debut author is celebrating the accomplishment of publishing a book! For any other first time authors, in case you need encouragement to feel excited about publishing a “small” book by industry standards, here are some stats to let you know that you are awesome and you should celebrate.

According to Google less than 3% of people who start writing a book finish it. And less than 1% of US citizens publish a book. In the context of capitalism where the main way to measure success is by earnings (writing a book is rarely a success in this way) it’s easy to wonder why we do what we do. The stats don’t answer the why, but they do sometimes give me a sense of “heck yes" publishing a book is an awesome accomplishment.

So this post is about step one: celebrate the win! I will also do a post about the events I did and another post about the publicity that I paid for (and the dilemmas wrapped up in all that).

So how about a bit of before and after to celebrate?

Here’s who I was when I dreamt of publishing a book.

And here is what our family looked like when publishing a book was just a dream.

And now here is the published author celebrating her big bucket list dream come true.

A couple of incredibly fun parties were thrown by friends and family. I read aloud at both events, and at one of them my friend Debbie, who was my boss when I was a product manager in the late nineties, interviewed me about the book. That conversation was one of the highlights of my life.

And here’s how our family looks now. It’s been awhile since we’ve taken a family photo because of college and travels and all of the grown up family things. So much has changed, but when I look at these photos, while there is a lot of sadness from ALS (and there is a lot of sadness there, I’m not going to sugar coat that), there is still joy and growth and a sense that our family is fully alive.

Next week I’ll tell you more about the outward facing stuff I did for the book (in case anyone out there wants to know more about what it’s like to have a first book). Until then, take good care.

If you’re interested any of the books or writers I mentioned, here’s a list of the mentions in this post. The essay’s are 5-10 minute reads and more than worth the time. Each is an absolute jewel.

Rebecca Solnit Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit. If you haven’t read this book yet, it may be the one you need to help you whether our current national politics.

Cliff Thompson’s graphic novel Jazz June is coming out on October 1.

His essay, originally published in the Three Penny Review, “The Moon The World The Dream,” was included in the 2018 edition of Best American Essays

Benjamin Anastas’s novel Too Good to Be True is raw and relatable. This New Yorker essay about a somewhat infamous Bennington professor is so juicy.

Ariana Kelly, my classmate, has a book in development (that I cannot wait to get my hands on someday). Her essay entitled “Elevation” at Cleaver online magazine is also just so good.

I have not posted since the day before my book launched in June. I’ll send a wrap up celebration post this month. It’s been a whirlwind, but I’m back!

Over the last couple of months I’ve traveled more than I usually do. As always, new places have sparked new thoughts for me.

One I want to share today is about grief. I’m going to try to be brief and I’d love to hear your responses to this idea.

I define grief for myself as the experience of losing any primary attachment. This term “primary attachment” comes from parenting, but I think applies to any connection that contributes to my sense of identity: my vocation (writing), my family roles, my relationship to my gender (fem), my citizenship (American), my physical abilities and on and on and on.

Graham’s ALS has catapulted our whole family onto a steep grief learning curve. There is lots to say there, but for now I want to describe two different states that grief can put me into.

One state feels dull and weak, like day old coffee (this is Eloise’s description, but I think it’s perfect). In this state my body feels like a sand bag, my eyes are tired, my energy is weak. I tend to feel bored (even though I have a million things to do!) and distracted. I numb myself out with doom scrolling, eat food just to feel something pleasant, and in a less dysfunctional direction, find solace petting my cats when they settle down on my lap. In this state, if it goes on for too many days, I slip into despair. Nothing feels possible, and life feels like it might just be an endless treadmill of days.

This state is like depression, but not depression, because it is more mutable than depression. It takes will power to shift it—and I can usually muster the will to exercise or walk with a friend, activities which almost always clear the fog for me. I’m not sure, but I think this state is the way I feel when I am avoiding my grief.

The second state is more rare for me, but my travel led me to it more than my day to day life does. In this state I cry—sometimes gently and sometimes violently (I just finished a deep dive into Jane Austen, and that victorian use of violent is what I’m meaning—messy, uncivilized, out of control). Sometimes it feels as if life is a rushing river and I am caught in its current. Sometimes it feels like my heart is an over ripe peach and even the lightest touch will leave a deep bruise. Sometimes it feels like my life is a shattered mirror (this is a description that I feel and Gwendolyn has also described) in front of me and I have no idea how to put the pieces back together.

This second state hurts more, but even from my brief descriptions, the state is more energetic. There is more movement: rushing, bruising, shattering. The sensation is more visceral: a river, a ripe peach, a shattered mirror. The second state requires all of me (the first one does too, but because it’s more like being a zombie, it registers somehow as easier and less of a full body take over, BUT IT IS). The second state tends to be episodic, and when an episode passes I am lighter, and life feels precious. I think this second state is what happens when I stop avoiding my grief and finally let it flow through me. It’s painful and I don’t exactly know how it gets unblocked, but travel and time in nature helped. And I feel healthier for it.

I’ve taken the time to describe these states, because near all of us are living with much more grief than I think we realize. The ongoing political crisis is breaking our sense of who we are as Americans, and day by day the climate crisis destroys our deep, symbiotic, sacred relationship with the planet.

We worry all day, every day, either in the front of our minds or the back of our minds, if our children will be able to marry who they want to marry, share their opinions without fear, find good jobs, have enough clean air and water, be able to afford homes or educations for their children. And, friends, we know we are among the fortunate, so we also grieve the unimaginable hardship of other people who we know have it worse than we do. The litany of what we once took for granted that is now up for debate is endless. This loss of confidence in our basic human security is enormous. And we don’t have the language to name it, much less process it. But if we want to stop feeling like zombies, which I hope you don’t, but I’m afraid you might, I think we need to experiment with how we touch into that second grief state.

This is one of the ways ALS is working on me—it’s teaching me about grief—which is something we will all experience in our lives and which most of us may be experiencing every day lately without knowing it. Travel, especially getting out into nature, really helped me shift into that healthier second state of grief.

I came home thinking maybe autumn, if we let it, if we can tolerate the sadness of it, could offer us some grief medicine. The reddening leaves might remind us that our lives are always changing color and that eventually all will fall. The waning light, the “golden hour” of the year will glaze every tree, every puddle, and all of our faces with honey light, slowing us down to beauty and opening a subtle window for experiencing bittersweetness. Maybe the sound of leaves beneath our feet can take us back to a day in the beginning of a school year when we had brand new sneakers and jumped both feet first into a heap of crackly, crunchy leaves piled in our backyard. That moment is gone, gone, gone, but is still alive in our bodies, begging us to stomp those leaves collecting on the edge of the sidewalk. The little one inside us desperate to hear that crunch, crunch, crunch of fall in the northern hemisphere one more time.

I’m so curious how these ideas land with you. What are you sensing about our current collective losses? What has helped you get un-zombied lately? Where have you traveled—I always love to see other people’s photos of where they have been.

Wishing you lots of leaf stomping.

Cristina

The American Medical Association

The American Academy of Pediatrics

The American Psychiatric Association

The American Psychological Association

The American Child and Adolescent Psychology Association

to name a few.

While this is a setback, it is also a time to be grateful for the states, like California, where this care is still available, and double down on efforts to support these laws and the the transgender community generally.

It is worth noting that according to James Essex, spokesperson for the ACLU, this decision is a narrow one and only applies to the state of Tennessee (in future posts I will confirm this, as I do believe this decision will impact other states, I’m just not sure how yet). In addition, it is not a mandate for states that support gender affirming care for minors to deny that care.

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At issue in this case was whether or not the law required heightened scrutiny in judicial review based on the fact that gender affirming care bans are by de facto sex discrimination.

A quote from her dissent:

“Consider a mother who contacts a Tennessee doctor, concerned that her adolescent child has begun growing unwanted facial hair. This hair growth, the mother reports, has spurred significant distress because it makes her child look unduly masculine [as can happen in teenage girls with PCOS]. The doctor’s next step depends on the adolescent’s sex. If the patient was identified as female at birth SB1 [the Tennessee law in question] allows the physician to alleviate her distress with testosterone suppressants. What if the adolescent was identified male at birth, however? SB1 precludes the patient from receiving the same medicine.”

The majority however, made the argument that the law did NOT command heightened scrutiny in judicial review, because in their logic, no child of any sex would have access to gender affirming care. The same logic has been used to make the case that IVF, for example, is not gender based health care and so does not rise to the level of heightened judicial scrutiny.

If you were in my ConLaw class at Andover and your heart belongs to Tom Lyons, you can read the decision and the dissent for yourself here (Sotomayor’s dissent is toward the end).

At the same time, and I will be writing about this more soon, a Federal Judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Trump policy of refusing to issue passports that align with people’s affirmed gender. Needless to say, I’m planning a trip to the passport office STAT.

Well, tomorrow is my book’s Birthday, and while the news is mixed, I feel more certain than ever that our family’s story will help others. To the families who live in states with gender affirming care bans, we see you, we support you, we’re here to help and will be in conversation with you over the next few months about how to get you the help you need.

*****

If something in this post moved you, if you learned something new, if reading this made you feel more empowered to support the trans community, I hope you’ll consider sharing my free newsletter with a friend! My hope is to double my subscribers this month. Let’s do this!

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See you tomorrow! XOXO

My Author’s note frames our family story. If it moves you I hope you’ll consider buying my book and perhaps a second copy to send to a friend who needs it. Families raising trans kids need all the support they can get right now.

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Parents of gender-nonconforming children are overseeing a cul-

tural sea change in gender. We are required to make high stakes

decisions impacting our children’s long-term social, emotional,

and physical health while learning a new model of gender that

shakes the foundations of what we thought we knew about life

and about ourselves. During a time when social scientists, biol-

ogists, health practitioners, and transgender individuals learn

something new about gender diversity almost daily, even the most

supportive parents struggle to keep up with current information

and best practices.

At the same time, we have had no choice but to confront the

volatile political backlash that is currently occurring against

transgender rights. Many of us, myself included, have become

accidental political activists. In the few years it has taken to write

and publish our family’s story, more states than ever before have

filed and passed legislation to restrict the lives of trans people.

To give a sense, by the end of 2020, which is where the book you

are about to read concludes, 60 state-level anti-trans bills had

been filed. At the end of 2021 that number increased to 132, and

at the end of 2022, anti-trans bills introduced at the state level

numbered 155 or more.* In 2021 Arkansas became the first state in

the nation to ban access to gender-affirming care for minors, and

since then Tennessee, Arizona, and Alabama have followed suit.

Numerous other laws restricting access to sports, locker rooms and

bathrooms, preventing people from changing state-issued iden-

tity documents to align with their affirmed gender, and banning

insurance coverage for trans healthcare have been filed and passed.

At the same time, states like California, Oregon, Washington, New

York, Massachusetts, and others have strengthened their protec-

tions for the trans community, guaranteeing insurance coverage,

providing safe harbor, and offering the trans community the kind

of legal support necessary to live what most people would con-

sider a “normal” American life.

Looking back, it seems to me that our family grappled with

the issue of my son’s gender at a flash in history that encouraged

us to think proactively and ambitiously on his behalf. We had the

mental space to think creatively about what could be possible for

his future, rather than worry over how we would keep him safe in

an increasingly hostile environment. To be sure, the threat of hos-

tility loomed, and yet, we lucked into a historical and geographical

context that supported our bold hopes. For parents reading this

book, my hope is that our story will give you both respite and in-

spiration. Professionals across the board—psychologists and psy-

chiatrists, pediatricians and endocrinologists, educators and social

workers—have come to the unanimous conclusion that gender is

wildly more complex than the binary model my generation and

generations before us understood. If your child is presenting a

different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, they

are going to be okay. No, more than okay. Your child is unique,

perhaps even gifted. Many, perhaps most, of the difficulties you

and your family will face have everything to do with American

culture wars and very little to do with the child you love so deeply.

In the current context there were many reasons, most espe-

cially to do with my son’s privacy and his safety, for me not to

share my family’s story with the world. But my son has made clear

for many years now that raising public awareness about gender

identity is important to him. He has believed in this book from

the beginning. And although he is a minor and his thoughts on

many things are likely to change, my sense is that his commitment

to helping others in his community is one that will stay with him

throughout his lifetime.

He and I are both aware that our family has lived in a fortu-

nate context when it comes to gender diversity. We live in the San

Francisco Bay Area, we have stable finances and excellent health

insurance, and because of my work as a writer, we have had easier

access to trans writers and their stories. Because of these factors,

my son is safer and has more robust support than other trans kids

his age. As a family our collective imagination has been freer to

envision a bright and generative future. Especially in the face of

the current political backlash, it feels important to speak out from

our vantage point to celebrate gender diversity and normalize the

expectation that our trans and nonbinary citizens will live bold,

proud lives, with full access to their potential and their human

rights.

I wrote this book to organize my own thinking during the year

before my husband and I made some of the most long-lasting

health decisions on my trans son’s behalf. I had already been in

the habit of writing to my three children for many years. With

the birth of each one I purchased a beige hardcover notebook

in which I jotted down notes to them from time to time. The

stack of three has lived on my nightstand or near it for as long as

I have been a parent. Some years I recorded many observations

and some years I hardly wrote a word. But as the reality of my

son’s life became clearer to me, it felt natural to consider the many

aspects of our experience within the container of a habit I had

already established.

When I decided to share our journey, I thought I would be

writing in traditional narrative form, but I ran into a problem of

language that every transgender person knows intimately. The

assignment of gendered pronouns tends to obscure transgender

children’s identity. For years trans children are referred to in words

that do not reflect who they are inside, and the current conven-

tion is that once a person’s correct gender has been affirmed, they

will be referred to using the name and set of pronouns that aligns

with their identity even when telling stories about the past. For

many trans people, using the name or pronouns that were as-

signed to them before their correct gender identity was affirmed

is painful. “Deadnaming” is one word used to describe the harsh

discomfort of using these old names. When I tell stories about my

son in spoken language, the current convention works imperfectly

but well enough.

But when I began writing down stories about my son’s child-

hood, it interfered with accurately immersing you, the reader, in

the relationship I had with him during his early years, which, in

its essence, transcended the language we had at our disposal. I

decided to tell our story in the epistolary form using the second

person in reference to my son, because it renders our relationship

with much higher fidelity than other pronoun conventions allow.

I’m offering the most visceral representation of my relationship

with my son that I felt I could create.

These letters make deep sense in another way, too. Ultimately,

this book is for my son. My hope is that through an honest and

thoughtful documentation of our journey together, he will know

his foundation with all its cracks and weaknesses so that he can

build a sturdy adult life characterized by wholeness. I am hum-

bled by the fact that many of my parenting decisions, including

the one to write this book, have been a leap of faith. And like all

parents, I hope that on the whole I have done right by my child.

May love always guide us as we labor on behalf of a future we

will never know.

*****

If something in this post moved you, if you learned something new, if reading this made you feel more empowered to support the trans community, I hope you’ll consider sharing my free newsletter with a friend! My hope is to double my subscribers this month. Let’s do this!

Share Bliss Notes

See you tomorrow! XO

Meet We’wha a Zuni artisan who lived from 1849-1896. She was sought out in her community for her weaving. We know about her life from a journal kept by a missionary’s wife who claimed We’wha as a friend.

Meet Kumu Hina, a master hula teacher from Honolulu who is Mahu, a gender term that identifies people as being “in the middle” from Hawaiian culture. When Jake was about six he learned that in Hawaii there was a term for a gender that was in the middle. He asked if we could have that in California. I told him we could—a statement that was true in our household, but not true in the world outside our door.

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Meet Deborah Sampson who served in the Continental Army from 1782-1783 as a man named Robert Shurtliff. Shurtliff was chosen to join the Light Infantry Troop that traveled with few supplies and took part in small, risky missions. A high fever caused Shurtliff to lose consciousness. A subsequent exam revealed Shurtliff’s intimate body parts. After being honorably discharged Shurtliff lived the remainder of their life as Deborah Sampson and received a pension for soldiers who were injured in combat.

Meet Laxmi Narayan Tripathi who is a bollywood actress and trans rights activist. In 2014 the Supreme Court in India officially recognized transgender people as belonging to a third gender, a victory won in large part to Tripathi’s activism.

Around the world and throughout history, a small percentage of the human population has been born into a gender identity that is not purely male or female. In the mid-twentieth century it was considered “best practice” for western physicians to persuade parents to raise intersex children according to the physician’s best read of their babies’ external genitals (this is where we get the “sex assigned at birth” lingo). This process was far from perfect, and some children received surgeries and were raised in a gender that did not match their true gender identity. Many of these children experienced what we now call “gender dysphoria,” because they had been assigned the wrong gender at birth. This is just one way that the variety of gender was hidden in the twentieth century.

Our culture is awakening from a gender dark age in which gender diversity was eliminated or hidden from view. Trans kids who are brave enough to share their true identity with us are helping us course correct from a medical practice that has caused undue harm to a small, but fabulous population.

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In the middle of Season 34 one contestant, in a desperate attempt to stay in the game, outs Zeke for being transgender.

By that point in the show we knew that Zeke worked in finance. We loved how he often celebrated moments of proving things to himself, like that he could start a fire or win a challenge. He was a favorite of ours. A fun, relatable, savvy player who coordinated blindsides and seemed like someone we’d want to get to know. When he was outed, it was the first time in my life that I had ever gotten to know someone (albeit on tv) before knowing their gender history.

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I still remember the five of us sitting on our sectional couch, the room darkened, and the light from the tv dappling over us like water. Jake was 11, we were just starting his transition journey, and in my head it felt like a bunch of legos clicking into place. I was upset for Zeke, of course. At the same time, I saw that Jake was going to grow up and be a man, and that lots of people would get to know him without knowing his gender history and that would be both amazing and always a little scary. I felt the way my own assumptions about gender biased the way I read other people, and the way my own blindspots could be a set up for feeling shocked. But I also understood that Jake would mostly grow up to just be a guy named Jake.

I’m ever grateful to Zeke for being brave enough to be himself on Survivor. He endured a transgender person’s worst nightmare and showed the world that he could come out the other side and thrive.

If something in this post moved you, if you learned something new, if reading this made you feel more empowered to support the trans community, I hope you’ll consider sharing my free newsletter with a friend! My hope is to double my subscribers this month. Let’s do this!

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In the fourth season, the stakes are raised. Trump hasn’t been elected yet, but will be, and our heroines are on a mission to support queer people who are finding themselves increasingly isolated and scared. This series is an awesome introduction to the art and joy of drag, and gives a sense of why drag, which a lot of people who feel “mainstream” may not totally understand, is a central aspect of the campaign for the human rights of all queer people in the US and around the world.

Plus, drag queens are having more fun than most of the rest of us and that’s something we really need to think about. Where do we self-censor, why does that happen, and what do we have to learn from these out and proud divas?

Free episodes are available here if you don’t have HBO/max

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Connecting with people from the middle of the country has been a mission of mine for awhile and I’ve become more passionate about since writing my book. 26 out of our fifty states have banned gender affirming care for minors and most of those states are in the middle of the country. An important part of my work with this book is to help parents of trans kids in those states feel supported and empowered to care for their kids without fear.

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John’s podcast also airs as a radio show on KFMG 98.9 in central Iowa so this interview allows me to talk to lots of people for whom the information in my book might feel either very new or very encouraging. It was an honor to be asked to be on the show and a blast to talk to John. We even talked about having me back on the show again to discuss ALS caregiving.

Listen to to our fifteen minute conversation!

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I have been a fan of S. Bear Berman ever since reading his essay collection called The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You.

I read it when Jake was young and some of the images in Bear’s essays felt like they had been lifted out of Jake’s imagination. Bear’s work, along with lots of other trans writers, provided material for me to pattern match between what I saw in my kiddo and what these incredible trans adults were putting on the page. In the company of trans writers, I was able to see Jake much more clearly than I ever could have without their stories. I just didn’t have enough information or experience.

There was an auction over at his independent press, I think. One of the prizes was a visit. Among other amazing treasures. I wanted to meet him. And I did. It was one of the most important moments in my life as the parent of a trans person. Since then, we have been supporting each other’s work. And I’m so, so thrilled to open this window into his thinking for you.

You should also buy his books. You would probably really vibe with Special Topics in Being a Parent or Special Topics in Being a Human. Since most of you here are parents, and human beings!

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S. Bear Bergman is the author of nine books, founder of Flamingo Rampant press, and frequent consultant in equity and inclusion to business and government. Bear began his work in equity at the age of 15, as a founding member of the first ever Gay/Straight Alliance and has continued to help organizations and institutions move further along the pathways to justice ever since. Bear’s work in equity education has brought him to sporting arenas, field offices in actual fields, code-named government buildings in unplottable locations, and many unremarkable boardrooms in which great and lasting change has begun and continued. These days Bear spends his time making trans cultural competency interventions however he can and trying to avoid stepping on his children’s Lego.

Cristina: It’s Pride month! Do you celebrate? If so, how? If you don’t celebrate Pride specifically, what is one way you keep joy alive during hard times?

Bear: I do celebrate Pride, but let’s be clear: I don’t celebrate it as a corporate holiday or a rainbow-branded sales event. I celebrate Pride like it’s a religious observance: with reverence, storytelling, and chosen family (okay, also a great outfit, but that too is very Jewish). My Pride is full of potlucks, movie nights, crafts fairs, sharing experiences and ideas with queer and trans people 30 years younger or older, and reminding basically everyone who crosses my path that joy is resistance—especially joy that’s shared, accessible, and unapologetically queer. And as a queer Jew, I keep joy alive the way my people always have: through ritual, humor, delicious food, and helping each other through. Some years, joy is a protest march. Some years, it’s a snack platter and then a nap in your fancy pajamas.

Cristina: We are six months into the current administration and on the cusp of hearing a decision from the US Supreme Court regarding gender-affirming care bans for minors. What is top of mind for you about our current political moment? How does it impact you personally?

Bear: What’s top of mind for me is the young people. It’s grotesque how much political capital is being generated by targeting trans youth and their families—how expendable our most vulnerable have become in the eyes of people who should know better. And yes, it impacts me personally. I’m a trans parent raising a nonbinary kid. I have young trans people in my life who are literally uncertain whether there’s a pathway to being allowed to grow up, if anyone will fight for them. They want us demoralized, despairing. They want us to stop building trans futures. But we’re still here, building them anyway.

What I would love to see is the affirming straight cis parents of trans kids - like you - being intentional and active about making sure their GIaNT (gender-independent, nonbinary, trans) kids are in community with trans and nonbinary adults. I am startled recently to discover that there are a lot of GIaNT young people whose parents and communities have affirmed them in their genders, which is excellent, but because they never had to make their own way about it they haven’t had any reason or opportunity to be in community with trans nonbinary, or genderqueer adults. That’s a problem right now. We really, really need each other. The adults have been through a lot of nonsense that many of those young people have been spared up to now, and we have resources and tools and encouragement and validation they need to be well and feel more prepared.

Cristina: During a speech at the 2025 Peace Ball Angela Davis recalled Martin Luther King’s mindset about combating oppression. She said, “we cannot capitulate to finite disappointments, and what we do is we confront those finite disappointments with infinite hope.” Infinite hope is a level of faith that I can only aspire to, but I do aspire. I’m wondering who or what sends your spirit in the direction of infinite hope?

Bear: I definitely do not move through the world in a state of “infinite hope,” (mostly what I have, left to my own devices, is anxiety and indigestion). However. What I do have is a community that lends me hope when I’ve run out. What keeps me going is watching people love themselves out loud. Seeing GIaNT young people build a world that’s funnier, sharper, more visionary than anything I knew was possible at their age. It’s my friends who organize mutual aid like it’s a love language. It’s elders who keep showing up to remind us we’re part of something much bigger and longer. Infinite hope isn’t something I possess—it’s something I’m held in, when I need it most.

Cristina: So many friends and families want to be good allies to the trans community. What is one action you’d ask allies to take to support the community during Pride month?

I’d ask you to speak up. Especially when there are no trans people in the room. At your school board meeting. At your family dinner. At your workplace. Allyship isn’t just about marching with us in June; it’s about making the world less hostile in December, too. If I get to make a request for Pride month, I’m asking allies to pick one system they’re connected to—schools, clinics, libraries, places of worship—and work to make that space safer for trans people. Not just performatively, but materially. Make the call. Show up to the meeting. Ask the uncomfortable question. Donate. Volunteer. Be the reason someone trans feels less alone, even if they don't take up your proposal or change the signs. Stand there and make the request as though there is no reason in the world not to (because there isn’t). Hold the space for us so we can have a little rest for a minute. I promise, it makes a huge difference.

*****

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Gabe Cole Novoa is a transmasc writer who writes speculative YA fiction. However, I am personally THRILLED that he veered into the venerated tradition of adapting Pride & Prejudice to give us another delightful version of everyone’s favorite archetypal rom-com.

In this version, our favorite feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is trans. As expected Darcy offends “Elizabeth” in their first encounter, but charms Oliver, the boy, the truest self, in “Elizabeth’s” heart, when the two meet out in public. Does Oliver dare dream of true love? Will he give up the safety and security of a false identity and conventional marriage?

You’re welcome, this might be your favorite book of the summer.

Buy Most Ardently.

Incidentally, Pride & Prejudice has become something of an accidental obsession of mine. I read the book and watched the Colin Firth miniseries and enjoyed them both, but did not become a superfan overnight.

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But then Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld (a modern day take on P&P) was recommended to me by Susan Cheever while getting my MFA. This great read introduced me to the idea that all romantic comedies might actually be some version of P&P. If you haven’t read Eligible, pick it up—also a beach worthy summer book.

Then last year my youngest was cast as Lydia Bennet in her school’s production of P&P, which led us to watch the version of the movie in which Matthew MacFadyen plays Darcy. Friends, PUL-eeeze, I cannot crush on the guy who played Tom in Succession (that pig scene by the fireplace, I can’t unsee it IYKYK). I am Colin Firth all the way. This has become a very fun mother-daughter debate.

And THEN, as this whole P&P thing started to heat up for me. A good friend invited me to take a trip to England for what is called a Pride & Prejudice Pilgrimage. “This September, pilgrims will gather in a small group in Derbyshire, England for a pilgrimage dedicated to author Jane Austen.” We will be staying at an English manor, taking walking tours, and meeting 1:1 with the chaplain who will accompany us. I have as many questions as you do, but I could not resist.

It did not take me more than a minute to sign right up.

For me, one of the great joys in life is going deep on topics I love. Turns out the P&P topic is vast, and I intend to explore as many nooks and crannies of it that bring me joy. Currently, Most Ardently is the bit that lights me up the most.

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In About Bliss, I interview trans thought leaders so that other parents of trans kids can meet full grown adults who are able to look back and help us understand the trans experience. At the end of the book, I include an interview with my favorite trans leader, my son. Here it is:

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Jake is my son, a 15-year-old boy who enjoys drawing, playing

video games, and petting his cats. He is training for his black belt

in taekwondo, and when he grows up he wants to draw graphic

novels and spend some part of his life working as a fire fighter

and first responder.

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Cristina: Jake, it was a really big deal to let me write about your

story. What made you feel supportive about the book and why

do you want people to know about your life?

Jake: I think it’s important for people to know that this is what the

reality is or could be like. You always see these bad stories, but my

story encompasses a realistic idea of a supportive parent. It’s not

gonna be perfect, because nothing’s perfect, but there hasn’t ever

been a time where you told me “Oh, no, you can’t dress like that,”

or “Oh, no, you can’t do that.” Whatever I felt like doing, I kind of

just did. And that was the key to figuring out my identity. I feel

like it’s a lot more confusing if you’re trying to fit into something

instead of just letting the kid figure it out.

I always kind of saw myself as a tomboy. And then when I

started to get to puberty I realized there was stuff that I wanted to

change about myself. I remember whenever I was thinking about

myself when I was older I would always think of myself as a dad.

And then I would correct myself, “Oh, wait, no, I have to be like,

a mom.” And then I remember when I first started

using he/him pronouns: I was like, yeah, I like this. It was a lot

more fitting. I thought about staying “middle,” but when I used

he/him pronouns and thought about the deep voice I felt like it

would fit me better. I thought would be awesome.

Cristina: Yes, that’s the joy I’ve always seen in you. That’s why

I called the book About Bliss; whenever you’ve done something

that’s taken you more down the masculine spectrum, I have al-

ways seen your energy increase. Can we move to a new topic? Talk

a little about what motivated you to do the egg retrieval?

Jake: It was about having options. I knew it was kind of gonna

stink to do it. But I also knew if I grew up, and I realized I wanted

my own kid, it would stink even more to know I had the option

and I didn’t take myself up on it. I thought it would be better to

just have one hard week instead of a lifetime of “Dang, I really

wish I could have my own kid.” I’d be totally happy with adopting

a kid. I just thought in the long run there could be some point

where I’d want a biological kid.

And honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I did it over a break, too. So

it wasn’t disruptive. In the moment it seemed kind of bad. And

it was overwhelming to have all the female stuff, like getting a

period. I really felt uncomfortable with that. But it was only a

week. And then it was over. It was pretty easy.

Also, not many people have retrieved eggs without going off

blockers. So I wanted to do it also for, not for science exactly, but

just because it could be helping a lot of other people. I knew if

I did it, and it ended up successful, then that would be pretty

monumental for other people. I’m always keeping in mind that

it might not work, obviously, because it’s prepubertal. But if it

does work…

Cristina: It’s really brave to share your life with other people.

What it’s like for you to think about other people reading about

you? Is there anything you want readers to know or to take from

your story?

Jake: I think it is a little nerve-racking in the sense that it’s always

going to be out there. That’s why I want to change my name in

the story. Because, if it does get published, it’s for the rest of my

life. I just want to be seen as me. Not like he’s trans and he has

a story. If my story is introduced before, say, I go into a meeting

and other people are talking to me as a trans person rather than

just seeing my personality, it’s a lot different. I’m totally fine with

who I am, I just want to be seen as me first.

But I also really want other trans kids to know they can stay

true to themselves. I think the best thing about my story is that

I always just did my thing. And by doing my thing I really grew

to feel confident in who I was. And I feel really strong about my

identity. I know a lot of people go through a time of panic or

distress, or wanting to act, like, hyper feminine if they were born

female-bodied, to convince themselves that they’re not trans, but

I just want people to know that being trans is a real thing. I espe-

cially want other people who are more conservative to read the book and really get it.

Because there are a lot of negative opinions

out there. I want people to realize being trans is just people being

true to themselves.

*****

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Showing up, marching, and putting our bodies in motion has always mattered in social protest movements. The history and tradition of Pride is an explicit example of how gathering IRL changed society. So in that spirit, make your signs, get out your sunscreen, and on Saturday June 14th take a stand against any of the many offenses being committed by our current administration. Plan to attend the No Kings protest in a city near you. For local friends, there are events planned in San Francisco, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and San Jose, just to name a few.

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During the summer of 1969, events at the Stonewall Inn in New York City marked a turning point in the gay rights movement.

In 1969 same-sex relationships were illegal, and from as early as the 1950’s a movement had been growing to put an end to these laws.

Since same-sex relationships were illegal, a gathering of people who participated in same-sex relationships was considered “disorderly” based on old prohibition laws. These laws prohibited serving alcohol in “disorderly” establishments (ie all gay bars), and so police raids on gay bars were not uncommon.

In June of 1969 the Stonewall Inn was one of the most popular gay bars in New York and over a series of six nights police raided the bar and arrested patrons. The queer community at Stonewall resisted. It is not clear how the more violent aspects of the confrontation between the police and the queer community escalated but by the sixth night a few stores in the Village were looted and the events were considered “riots.” By my reading, what occurred over these six nights was a series of acts of resistance against police harassment that resulted in an uprising.

The events at the Stonewall sparked a flash point in the gay rights movement, and the following year, on June 28, 1970 the first Pride parade marches were held in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

By 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental health disorder and removed it from their authoritative encyclopedia of disorders known as the DSM.

Of note, and of personal importance to me and my family, the gay rights movement of this era sidelined the trans community. At Stonewall on the night of the riots, one aspect of the resistance took the form of trans women refusing to submit to “gender confirmation checks.” Considered too “out there” for a mainstream movement, the trans community was distanced from the movement and in a quite literal sense, the controversial times we are all living through right now represent unfinished business in the ongoing struggle for the queer community to establish full fledged human rights in the US.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transwomen who participated at Stonewall, continued to be involved in the gay rights movement throughout their lives. For trans writers who seek an MFA, there is a scholarship at the Bennington Writing Seminars, named the Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera Endowed Scholarship that seeks to fund emerging trans writers.

This time, let’s do our best not to leave anyone behind. Certainly, the administration has cast a wide net in its effort to restrain freedoms of all kinds: from self expression, to health care, to workers rights, and on and on…Let’s stand up and be counted. Attend a big rally or stop by a local rally. Either way, make your voice heard. This July 14th. Remind the world that the US is no country for a King.

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See you tomorrow! XO

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) called herself a, “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” and came into my life as one of the many writer/scholar/activists I studied when I was a Women’s Studies major as an undergraduate. Many of her writings influence the way I think, but this very well known essay, “Poetry is not a luxury,” has been a life long inspiration.

In it she makes the case that revolution, evolution, progress—whatever you want to call the process of creating a more inclusive, sane, fair, humane world—has its genesis in the human body and in the imagination. This idea is why memoir is my heart-and-soul genre. In memoir great writers share their embodied experience inside the rigor and structure of language. A memoir writer’s work is to render their own deeply felt, fundamentally subjective experience on the page in such a way that it changes her reader. At it’s best, a memoir gives us a new idea about ourselves and our place in the family of all things.

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Lorde’s essay makes the case for why this difficult work is worth doing.

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

Read Poetry is Not a Luxury

Listen to Poetry is Not a Luxury

The Marginalian on the work of Audre Lorde

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See you tomorrow! XO