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where we began
These true first-person short stories, published 3 times a month, are some of the fabulous, horrifying, hateful and loving ways strangers, family, friends and those of you that inhabit all the other spaces – usually unintentionally and unknowingly – changed my big beautiful unconventional life and shaped me.
They are my way of unshutting the fuck up after being silenced for far too long by family, friends, strangers, governments, the world...
And they are what “we’re in this together” is all about.
And that’s why I write these stories – so we all can know how our words and actions can change a person, change a life and perhaps embrace and experience the transcendent freedom of taking responsibility for those words and actions.
Because every move you make and every word you choose to say has ripple effects you most probably will never know about.
You play a part in shaping if and how humans can come together and operate as a species.
So if you knew how your words and actions impacted other people, would you wield them with more mindfulness, care, compassion… ?
The Chinese fortune cookie fortune was right.
My mad sesame noodle obsession that defined my culinary existence the last couple of years of the seven I spent straddling an 80s/90s New York City may be gone, but the fortune cookie fortune I unfolded after one of my last meals from my favourite 1st-Avenue-near-16th-Street-place at the time) is not.
I highlighted it, tucked it into into my wallet and never left home without it as I flung myself OuT tHeRe…
and there you were.
Being your own self. Not knowing your smile, your words, your flair, your actions, your very existence dented, rippled, reverbed into my life and changed me enough for me to want to tell you. To write your story. Our story.
Because yes – these are my stories too. And these collaborations would never have happened without you – whatever you did, whatever you didn’t, whether you do or don’t know that you did. Or when. Or where or why.
Or how.
Until now.
So here ya go. A continually expanding collection of real-life lessons you (most probably) unknowingly gifted me, gifted right back in these first-person short stories.
For all of you for changing me
For all of us to know that we change each other. And how.
For all of us to find the consciousness, courage and compassion to take on that responsibility like it’s a hUgE one.
Because it is.
You are complicit.
You are my teacher
Not just about you, not just for you, not just to you, these stories were written bEcAuSe of you.
Imagine that.
You and Chinese fortune cookie fortune.
Wow. This is like a punch in the gut. Aligning with where I am right now too. I look forward to more. Your writing…amazing. I hate that word. I need a better one, more descriptive. It’s a lazy word, and right now my brain is reaching for lazy because it’s tired from grief, loss, and rupture. Because every new grief awakens old ones. Memories rush in like water uncontained, wild, and powerful. So let’s say your writing is…sharp. Hits close to the bone. Exactly the kind of writing I want to read.