When commenting about Simone Biles’s decision this week, I made a mistake. I was meaning to respond to people mocking her for giving up, so I pointed to her accomplishments. To how hard she worked. To how complicated her decision was. In other words, I gave her permission to be mentally overwhelmed. In so doing,…
Month: July 2021
On “You might change your mind!”
Less than one in ten people who being transitioning step backward (“detransition”) at some point. Not all of them detransition completely. About two out of five first marriages end through divorce rather than death. (This number is higher for second and third marriages.) And yet… it is far more common for people to try to…
North American Traveler
In the summer of ’76, my family–my father, mother, older brother, and myself–travelled from Michigan to Alaska and back by car. Our family station wagon started out towing our trailer, which is where we slept, and where my parents cooked our meals. On the side of trailer, my father had painted a map of North…
Unwrapped Candy
on the coffee table in my grandmother’s house in a depression era green glass bowl on a doily that was handcrafted by my great great aunt: there was a mass of unwrapped peppermints the pillowy kind half crunchy half chewy which had been there long enough that they had grown together inseparable covered with a…