One step forward, two steps back.

Author Gillian Zed - Photo by hoff96734

2019 was not my year. It started well, a prolific, relaxing month writing in HI, then launching this blog, and my ambition to - finally- share share share. But I didn't make it through March before the Universe sent me a completely different message.    

I will someday, no doubt, write about the long version of this experience- but it seems too hard still. So, the bullet points are this: A shattered disc in my lower back, a dropped foot, partial paralysis, pain at #14 on the 1-10 scale, emergency spinal surgery, and months- MONTHS- of physical therapy. I still have no feeling in a few toes, but it continues to improve.

Essays on aging? Kiss my ass.

FREE on Amazon 12/27-12/31/19

Needless to say, I have not really been able to write anything worth a god damn. So I've had to reflect. And re-reading the last big piece I published, Pier View, (an optimistic short story about acceptance and friendship between a breast cancer survivor and a transgender pre-teen surfer,) left me with two feelings:

1) PROUD of the completion. It is so fucking hard for me to finish anything and put it out there for judgment. (Creatives- show of hands?) All the reviews were kind, and one in particular, saved me when I was wondering if my queer mom POV message even mattered.

2) PISSED OFF that in five years, not enough has improved socially for trans kids, LGBTQA youth in general, and conversion therapy continues to exist. Queer kids are still abandoned by their blood kin for the sake of public (read: church) appearances. Further, society continues to ignore the growing list of missing and murdered trans women of color, as if they are disposable. Under this country's current dark political cloud, it has become acceptable, maybe even status quo, to not acknowledge, or engage with, an entire segment of Americans worthy of respect and dignity: someone's family.

So we have not moved forward in a meaningful way in those areas and that is deeply troubling to me.  And, yes, as I have written before, we continue to fail Leelah Alcorn who pleaded, with her last breath, for us to fix society.

A few weeks after I published Pier View, a tale driven by my hopefulness for the future as a breast cancer survivor, as well as a member of a queer family, I, along with the world, learned about Leelah Alcorn: a young transgender woman from Ohio, whose parents denied her existence, sent her to conversion therapy and isolated her into a level of depression that caused her to choose to walk in front of a semi truck to end her life- and suffering. I mourned a child I never met. 

I re-dedicated Pier View to Leelah Alcorn in January of 2015. The fifth anniversary of her death is tomorrow, 12/28/19, and the story is available for FREE download as an e-book from Amazon today, 27th to the 31st. You can click on the cover graphic above or HERE

Thank you Aleks, whoever you are, THIS is why I write.

Maybe this short story can help start a conversation, or give a kid a glimpse of what support might look like? It's that time of year for lots of human interest stories filled with warm and fuzzy happy endings. I admit that I write that stuff too: even in the face of people's ignorance, judgment and bigotry, I'm looking for that glass half full of humanity and compassion. 

A new decade looms and I'm frustrated by being able to focus on only the simplest of tasks, as I continue to physically heal. But perhaps I can at least encourage basic understanding and appreciation for fellow humans, and plead with adults not to shy away from letting a trans kid in your community know that you see them, and accept them, just as they are.