Audio Transcript:

When I write about home, it’s not a physical place but a state of being. An unfortunate lesson that queer and trans people have to learn is, home and family are not a given. When you come out, if you come out, you offer up some of your most vulnerable parts to the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally. You hope they accept you. Mine eventually did, but it took time, and there was a lot of pain in getting there.

During that uncertain in-between time, and for a long time after, I didn’t believe I was worthy of any kind of love. I’d been told that who I am is wrong. That I was hurting my family. That being trans is a sickness or affliction that could be cured by God. That I would end up alone because no one would want someone like me. Those messages became a part of me, stitched into the fabric of my identity, value and self worth.

As I’ve grown older and more comfortable with myself, my relationship with gender and queerness has become more expansive. I’ve stopped trying to be a certain kind of man, and let myself open up to all the possibilities of who I could be. Now, I see the versions of myself  I became in order to survive. I see the versions of myself I became in order to thrive. I see hurt and forgiveness sewn together making me stronger. I see a scrappy, patch-work collection of family— given, chosen and self made.

The text and idea for You Belong, are a continuation of two zines I published through the Maine-based art collective, A Clearing Maine. Little Bird (2019) and Who We Might Dare To Be (2020). Both zines explore gender, sexuality, identity, and parenthood. They are an evaluation of my ever-evolving understanding of self. In going back through my writing, I found I used the word home over and over again– trying to feel at home in my body, finding home in partners and friends, and eventually becoming a literal home to my child when I paused my medical transition to carry and give birth to her almost a decade ago.

In, Who We Might Dare To Be, I write; I thought that when I transitioned from female to male I was coming home to myself. But it wasn’t until my body grew you, that I finally understood my own strength. As I felt you begin to grow, I was never more thankful for the body I had been given, for the life I had lived that led me to your Daddy, and for the miracle that made me both your Papa and your home for those nine months.

This banner serves as a love letter to my current self, to my inner-child, my teenage self, and all the versions I’ve been on the way to becoming who I am today. It took me almost forty years, and many different identities, but I feel at home with myself now. I know that I belong in this world.

You Belong is a free-form quilt that is a reimagining of the trans pride flag. The pink fabric was left over from a quilt I made for my daughter, the blue linen is from a sale bin at a local store, and the white flannel scraps are from one of my old shirts. The text on the banner is my own words.