The Dialogue

In my last post, I wrote about Animorphs #31: The Conspiracy. Not just the family tension, but Jake’s opening description of the war with the Yeerks: a secret war that most people don’t see. I talked about how that framing becomes a roadmap, not only for the rest of Animorphs, but for how we recognize and resist cults; and, more broadly, modern fascism hiding in plain sight. 

And of course I also had mentioned how the series became a major literary fulcrum in my memoir. It is a major part of my childhood that affected my thinking regarding the fundamentalist cult I was raised in.

I hadn’t planned to keep writing about the series.
But as I've continued my reread, #33 The Illusion stopped me cold.

Most readers remember this book for its torture sequence. Team scout and loner, Tobias, is captured, restrained, enduring unbearable psychic pain as a terrible Yeerk leader and her machine twist his brain’s pain and pleasure centers. It’s one of the most excruciating scenes in the entire series. But what struck me most wasn’t the physical torment. It was what surfaced during it.

In the middle of the torture, Tobias’s mind slips—or maybe the machine drags him deeper—and suddenly he’s in a memory. A dim living room. The shades drawn. His uncle in front of the TV, a beer in his hand. Tobias speaks, tentative, trying to share something that matters.

He says his drawing has been chosen for an award. It’s an honor. He’s excited. He just wants someone to see him. His uncle doesn’t look up. Doesn’t pause the TV. He asks if there’s prize money, and when Tobias says no, the man mutters that he had a job at that age. The words land flat.

Tobias feels the beginnings of tears and chokes them down, before retreats to his room and gazing forlornly out the window.

Outside, a mother and daughter are getting out of their car, the daughter clumsily juggling a school project in hand: a finger painting that’s getting slightly crumpled in how she is managing it. The mother stops, rescues it, and holds it up "like it was the Mona Lisa" as she carries it into the house.

Tobias watches. Realizes he’s alone. The tears start to pour, but when he moves to wipe them away, he sees his hand is covered in feathers. It’s a wing. And that snaps him back to the present. Back to the pain, the restraint, the violation.

It’s such a quiet, devastating moment. The boundary between memory and reality dissolving in the very act of survival. And that’s the line that undid me. Because I think every former child of neglect, knows that window. And as a trans parent, I'm on alert for it.

The duality of the glass

I read that scene and felt two people inside me: the child looking out, and the parent looking in.
The part of me that still aches to be seen, and the part of me trying to teach my daughter that she already is.

The other night, she told me there’s no representation anywhere for kids with trans parents. Not in books. Not in movies. Not even online. She said it gently, but the loneliness behind it was heavy.

I said something small... something like, “Yeah, I know. There really isn’t much.”

Later, I realized I could’ve said more. I could’ve turned it into a moment—a Mona Lisa moment—where I stopped everything I was carrying and held her words carefully in my hands.

But then I remembered that she felt safe enough to tell me. And our conversation had closed with her remarking that her friend was making an animation, and she’d asked her to include a trans mom. And I told her how proud I was of her noticing things like that, and being so bold in trying to change narratives to show real lives that get overlooked.

So hopefully she did feel seen, after all. My daughter is an artist and animator herself, and we ended the night by sitting together and watching an anime we enjoy.

The hawk mind

When Tobias retreats into his hawk mind, it’s supposed to protect him. To dull the pain, to detach. But even inside that refuge, the human part of him bleeds through: the boy in the dark room, speaking into silence.

Reading that, I wondered what my own hawk mind has looked like over the years.

When you’re raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, you learn how to hover above your own feelings. You learn to perform bravery, to be “proud” of being different, even when it isolates you. You learn that openness is duty, not authenticity.

I carried that habit into adulthood... into parenthood, even. Generally, when I think about my daughter out in the world—talking about her family, trying to fit that story into other people’s narrow templates—I am looking for ways to make it easier for her. Little adjustments to language that might save her from having to explain too much. Even expressing little exceptions...  Just to let her know her needs are what come first.

But sometimes, the hawk instinct comes out louder than I mean it to. I tell my kids they should be proud of who they are, proud of their family, proud of having a trans parent. And I mean that. They should be. But I’ve realized that sometimes I’ve said it like a commandment—like it’s their job to feel that way. Like pride is a duty.

That’s not what I mean or want for them. I don’t want them to inherit pride as another duty. A mask like mine was, to wear in spite of people, or in front of me. I want it instead to be a well they can draw on when people don’t understand. I want them to arrive at it naturally, formed on its own from love, and in their own words. 

And I do feel we've accomplished that, even if situations are not always easy.

Because for most people, family still comes in tidy shapes: mom, dad, brother, sister. Ours doesn’t. She has two moms, and we’re separate, and she moves between our homes. It’s not something she should have to justify. So I tell her that however she needs to talk about it—whatever phrasing helps her move through those moments with dignity and calm—is okay with me.

It’s not that she needs to redefine who I am... she already knows. I'm the custodial parent. We are close and the relationship with the other is somewhat rocky. But it’s that my daughter deserves to feel at ease while navigating a world that still isn’t sure what to do with families like ours.

So maybe my hawk mind isn’t what protects me anymore. Maybe it’s what keeps me from swooping down to meet her where she is.

Default pride

That’s where I’m learning to draw the line. Between pride that’s assigned and pride that’s embodied.

When I was a Witness, pride was mandatory. Visibility was obedience. Now, as a trans woman and a mother, pride feels different. It’s not something I expect from my daughter; it’s something I want her to have room to define for herself.

If it’s easier for her to talk about us like we’re a single mom—one word, one presence, one safe explanation—she can. If it feels better to say “my moms,” or to call us separately “Mommy” and “Mama,” that’s hers to decide. She doesn’t owe anyone the logistics of her family.

All I want is for her to move through the world without shrinking. To know she can adjust her language without betraying who we are. That it’s okay to choose comfort over confrontation, and that doing so doesn’t make her less brave.

That’s what I mean by default pride: not a performance, not a duty, but the quiet knowing that your family is whole, even when you have to describe it in shorthand.

Because the words don’t make us real. The love does.

Through the window

Sometimes I think about Tobias at that window, and how many of us grow up staring through our own versions of that glass. Some of us never stop. We spend our lives trying to become the parent in the scene. The one who knows when to stop, take the weight, and carry the painting gently inside.

Maybe that’s the real miracle of stories like Animorphs: they hand us our old selves in ways we can finally understand. They remind us that the hawk and the child are still in dialogue, still teaching each other how to be whole.

And sometimes, the only thing between them is a window: one we’ve spent our whole lives learning to open.

Who's fighting? Where Are the Uniforms? Whereas The Conspiracy...

How an Unlikely 1990s Series Becomes a Map for Resisting in Today’s Invisible Wars...

We’re in a war, fighting for the survival of the human race. 

You’re thinking. Yeah right. That’s okay. I know... I probably would’ve said the same thing once. 

No way. Not a chance. If it’s true, where are the troops storming the beaches? Where are the bombs? Where’s the battlefield, the RPVs, and the cruise missiles? 

…But it’s true. Every now and then the crazy becomes real. 

And this is not a clean war, if there is such a thing. A war like World War II, where thousands saw the wrongs being committed and stood up to correct them. Where you attacked an enemy you could see, an enemy who wore a uniform and came right back at you, guns blazing. 

This isn’t that kind of war at all.
[It's]... more subtle than that...

When I first read these words, they kind of sounded like they could’ve been written for today. About creeping fascism. About MAGA, maybe. About another deceptive political or religious movement, perhaps. About the way cult‑like movements don’t march in uniforms, or bedsheets, anymore — they infiltrate, they whisper, they spread online.

But these words aren’t from a think piece on our current politics. They were written in the 1990s, for the 31st book in a children’s science‑fiction series called Animorphs. I've been rereading much of the series for nostalgia-sake, but this is the first time I've read this entry. If you’ve never heard of this series, or only vaguely remember the covers with kids turning into animals, then you’re not alone.

Here’s why it matters: Animorphs might just be the most relevant, overlooked survival guide for our current moment.

---

What Animorphs Is About (and Why It Matters)

Animorphs was a 54‑book young adult series created by K.A. Applegate—the writing duo of Katherine Applegate and husband Michael Grant—published between 1996 and 2001. On the surface, it’s about five teenagers — later six — who gain the power to morph into any animal they touch. They use this ability to resist an alien invasion of Earth.

That might sound simple, even cheesy. But the genius of Animorphs is that the aliens — called Yeerks — don’t invade with spaceships and laser guns. They invade quietly, by slipping into people’s minds. A Yeerk is a slug‑like creature that crawls into a person’s ear canal and takes over their brain. From the outside, the person looks completely normal. On the inside, they are a prisoner. Their body and voice are being used by someone else.

The Yeerks set up a youth group called The Sharing, which looks like a community club. It’s fun, it’s safe, it’s welcoming. Kids sign up, families get involved — and slowly, piece by piece, more people fall under control.

The teenagers in the series — Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Tobias, and later Ax — discover the truth and are forced to resist. They can’t tell anyone. They can’t trust the police, or their teachers, or even their own families. The invasion is already happening, and no one believes them.

Sound familiar?

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Book 31: The Compass

By the time you get to Book 31, The Conspiracy, the war has dragged on for years. Jake, the team’s reluctant leader, opens the book with the passage quoted above. He’s trying to convince the reader that the war is real — even though there are no tanks in the street, no uniforms, no clear enemy you can point to.

This moment matters because it captures the feeling of fighting an invisible war. A war where the biggest obstacle isn’t the enemy itself — it’s convincing anyone else that the enemy exists.

That’s why Book 31 is somewhat of a compass for where the series is headed. It points us to the reality that this kind of war doesn’t look like the ones we grew up learning about in history class. It’s not Normandy or Pearl Harbor. It’s infiltration. It’s narrative control. It’s disinformation.

And that’s exactly what our politics feels like today.

---

The Series as the Map

If Book 31 is the compass, the entire series becomes like a map. Because Animorphs doesn’t just identify the problem — it shows what resistance looks like. And it’s not clean. It’s not easy.

• Jake shows us how leadership is necessary, but corrodes when every choice is between bad and worse.
• Rachel shows us how the strongest and most dedicated can be the most energetic, inspired, and triumphant; but can so easily be consumed by violence and death.
• Marco teaches both strategy and cynicism as a survival tool, always asking: who benefits? 
• Cassie embodies empathy, along with the painful truth that it can be weaponized and that compassion has limits.
• Tobias shows how trauma reshapes identity — but also brings clarity or purpose.
• Ax represents loyalty fractured by conscience. He helps us recognize the value of found family, and the cost of blind obedience.

Together, their stories form a guide. Not to victory without cost — but to survival when the enemy is everywhere and nowhere.

Animorphs teaches that to resist systems like the Yeerks — or MAGA, or QAnon, or any movement that functions like a cult — you need more than good intentions. You need strategy. You need empathy sharpened into a something dangerous. You need the willingness to act ruthlessly but strategically when it matters, even at great personal cost.

---

Why This Resonates Now

The Yeerks were never just aliens. They were metaphors for the systems that hollow people out: fascism, religious extremism, propaganda, authoritarian politics. Before we could put words to is, they were every movement that says “we’re here to help” while demanding absolute control.

The Sharing was never just a youth group. It was a stand‑in for how cults recruit, how authoritarianism spreads, how people are seduced by belonging.

Reading Animorphs today feels unsettling because it doesn’t read like the past. It reads like a warning we ignored.

---

The Takeaway (and series spoilers... sorry)

In the end, the Yeerk War doesn’t end with one clean battle. It ends because each member of the team makes a choice — a choice so costly that without it, Earth would have been lost.

• Jake, the leader, chooses to sacrifice his own brother, who has been enslaved by a Yeerk. Destroying the enemy ship that Yeerks is on also means destroying part of his own family. His choice means the loss of both his brother and cousin, Rachel. It’s a ruthless calculation, and it breaks him. But without it, humanity would not have survived.
• Rachel, the warrior, chooses a mission of near-certain death. She accepts the one-way assignment to take down a powerful enemy, almost certain not to return. She becomes a blade the others cannot wield, and without her sacrifice, the war would have continued. But she loses her life in the process.
• Marco, the strategist, chooses pragmatism over innocence. He becomes the voice who justifies the impossible, who says aloud what the others won’t. Without him, hesitation would have paralyzed the team.
• Cassie, the healer, chooses compromise. She intervenes to stop one of Jake’s most devastating orders from being carried out, pushing for a surrender rather than total annihilation. Without her, the war might have ended in ashes.
• Ax, the alien teenager, chooses humanity over his own people. His defection proves decisive. Without him, victory might have belonged to his race — but not to Earth.
• Tobias, the team scout/surveillance.... and the outcast... carries the grief and embodies the cost of the war. He is traumatized, and he's broken by the unbearable loss of Rachel, the one he loved, and becomes the witness to everything the team sacrificed. Though he remained bitter, unable to forgive, carrying grief that never healed. Without him, there would be no memory, no reckoning.

Each choice is devastating. Each choice leaves scars that never heal. But together, those choices end the war. And that’s the point: if even one of them had refused, the Yeerks would have gained the upper hand and won.

---

What That Means for Us

We are in our own invisible war now. Not with alien slugs — but with authoritarianism, disinformation, and movements that hollow people out while smiling to their faces.

The lesson is that survival doesn’t come from waiting for a clean, cinematic victory. It comes from choices:

• Choosing when to be ruthless.
• Choosing when to sacrifice.
• Choosing when to be pragmatic.
• Choosing when to compromise.
• Choosing when to resist.
• Choosing when to bear witness.

None of these choices are easy. None of them are pure. They all come with costs. But if we refuse to make them — if we sit back and hope it all resolves on its own — then the war will be decided for us. And not in our favor.

In my memoir, I use Animorphs and other books from my childhood to help chart my path out of the cult I grew up in. With Animorphs, I use it as a literary fulcrum to display my own developing callousness to the cult I grew up in and my family. To show how it felt to live under control, being told I must lead the congregation from an early age, and living with family that felt like sometimes they weren't speaking from their own, real thoughts.

Like they were under control of some parasite that found it's way into their ear.

Such things, like the fictional Yeerks, only gain the upper hand when no one is willing to confront. When no one is willing to make choices from their own gut and good sense, and instead of from social pressure and perhaps what appear to be social norms. 

The same is true now.

Atheism is True, Proof is False, and Assertions are Null

Having grown up as a fundamentalist Christian, I still really love symbolism. I think it's why I enjoy coding, encryption, and illustrative, allegorical writing so much. So if the title to this essay seems a bit presumptive, here's what "Atheism is True" means from an initial, strictly logical, mathematical perspective:

Atheism exists.

We’re often told life is about choosing a side. You either believe or you don’t. You either say yes or no, true or false, right or wrong. But what if that’s not the whole picture? Some people aren’t choosing a set of beliefs—because those answers, for them, just aren't there to choose from.

In the disciplines of Data Science and Discrete Mathematics, there’s a concept that explains this, if you aren't seeing the bigger picture.

When examining a data structure that contains a boolean—which is a simple True or False choice—there aren’t just two options. The structure can contain either that True or False value, or it can simply be empty. When that happens, we describe the emptiness as "Null." That doesn’t mean zero. It doesn’t mean false. It means undefined. It means no value has been provided. The field is blank.

And if a computer program looks for a True or False answer without recognizing that the structure might be Null—it might be empty—the program can literally fail. It won’t know what to do without the missing information—unless it’s been encoded to expect that possibility.

This is essentially what many atheists are trying to express in real life.

Atheism describes the consideration of God as a structure—as an entity or institution—and it isn’t necessarily claiming “False.” Instead—as you've probably heard but maybe had a hard time wrapping your head around—atheism is the absence of belief.

A-belief. A-theism.

Atheism, as a concept, isn’t saying “False.” It’s saying “Null.” It’s saying there is no real True or False information available. The structure is simply empty of data that can be evaluated. It’s not a denial. It’s not a rebellion. It’s a recognition: the field has not been filled.

The data structure for God, from this view, just doesn’t contain evidence that can be classified one way or the other.

And this isn’t just a technical point. It matters in real life—in families, in classrooms, in communities. When people are pressured to take a position they don’t actually hold—or to claim belief where none exists—it can create distance, even harm. Some of the deepest tensions in our culture come from that push to choose, when all someone really wants is to be honest: I don’t know. I don’t believe. I haven’t seen the data.

This doesn’t mean all atheists think alike. Some do actively claim that the God proposition is False. That’s often referred to as strong atheism. But what I'm describing here is the actual definition of atheism—the absence of belief. Sometimes called implicit or common atheism. Atheism in its clearest conceptual form.

And when you understand that, you see why the pressure to declare True or False can feel so off. For atheists like myself, the identity doesn't stem from refusing to believe, and it shouldn’t be framed as something negative. It’s a way of holding space for the unknown. Some people are just living with Null.

And there is meaning in recognizing Null. It's honest. It’s real. It's utility within the structure of our cultures—available to hold any True or False information the future. And it's just as valid if it never does, even if some refuse to see it that way.

Trans Inclusion and Sports: What Is 'Fair'?

Something we all know, but for some reason, it's controversial on this topic: If your support stops at words, it isn’t support. 

Quickly, let's look at the ideals of an “ally”. In theory, it means to show up in real, personal ways. But when it comes to trans people, its usually more perfunctory. It's a post online or a sign at a rally, isn't it? But when the chips are down, the number of people who show up for the trans people in their lives is often disturbingly small.

Today, I watched a video of a trans girl's mother defending her daughter to other moms at a championship sports event. Her daughter, AB Hernandez, won two golds. Other girls who competed have also praised her win.

That's family. That's community. That's real support and care.

It is against that kind of love that the contrast is sharpest. Without real inclusion, flags and pins and noddings of formal approval can feel just as hollow as the cold embrace so many other queer kids still chase from their own families.

Picking and choosing areas of 'fair' and 'appropriate' inclusion and exclusion for trans people misses the point and the needs. And if you don’t make space for trans people in your communities—your workplaces, your friend groups, your families, your politics, and yes, even your sports teams—then nothing else you say really matters.

No, it doesn’t help to create new categories. No, it doesn’t help to draw new lines in the sand. Because these roles—sister, mother, girlfriend, teammate—aren’t just about function or ideology or athleticism. They’re social spaces, emotional spaces, places where people feel like they belong.

 

To be welcomed in those roles is to feel like your sense of self actually means something to the people around you.

When that’s denied? Many of us don’t want to live. That’s not hypothetical. That’s not poetic. That’s reality. And the blood from that reality—that genocide—will be on the hands of every cis person who refuses to include. All while you keep arguing over who gets to win a game.

But the trans kid? They just want to play. They want to be seen. And what we’ve collectively forgotten is: that’s what sports were supposed to be about in the first place.

My grandfather was a football coach—an amazing one. He was once offered a job coaching college ball, but he turned it down to stay close to his family. He loved sports, but even more than that, he believed in what they were meant to teach: teamwork, accountability, showing up for each other. He never taught me that it was about domination. Sure, he’d say, “Winning matters.” But he’d always follow it up with: “It’s about the people who help you get there. Your team. Your coach. Not just you, but your family.”

Then he'd add, “That's your grandmother and I, you know. We'll be your greatest allies in life, and you cannot ever afford to forget that.”

I wish I’d been able to tell him what happened. I stopped speaking to him after I transitioned—not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid of how he’d see me (or not). Those words he said felt like he must have meant them for someone else, so I never came out to them. My mother had already rejected me by then, and she never told him the truth. He and my grandmother died without ever really knowing why I was gone. They only knew that my mom was unhappy with me, and that I’d left the fundamentalist cult she raised me in.

I guess I forgot the things he taught me—about showing up for people, about the strength of a team.

And somehow, I convinced myself he wouldn’t be on mine. So I separated myself. I preemptively separated myself for them. I carved out a separate space for myself—just like people are trying to do to trans kids now. But in the end, it wasn’t really fair to me. And it sure as hell wasn’t more fair for them.

Competition should teach us how to be part of something. How to lift each other up. How to belong to a community that values more than just the winner.

Yes, someone wins. But no one gets there alone. Not cis athletes. Not trans ones. Every win is the product of practice, of coaches, of teammates, of support. The belief that some people just deserve to be idolized—that they “earned” a spot above the rest of us—and that trans athletes are somehow threatening that? That idea doesn’t come from truth. It comes from a country with broken values. A country that worships winners and punishes difference.

And trans people were never the threat.

“They Say ‘Men’, But If I Believed In a Higher Power...”

My daughter turns 18 in just four more years.

I hate that I’m counting the days.

Not because I want her to grow up faster—but because of the way our government is collapsing, the way threats keep building. Because at 18, I’ll no longer be so directly and legally tied. I always want to guide and protect her and her older brother, but at 18, the magnitude lessens a bit.

My words and actions won't directly affect their lives or security. I'll pretty much be free to speak as loudly as I want, without fear that my words will be used to hurt my children, who rely on me and this home I've made for them to grow.

And I will speak, no matter the consequence.

What I don’t understand is why so many people—people who don’t have children, who don’t have vulnerable lives hanging in the balance—are so quiet while democracy unravels.
This is it. These are the moments that define you. The ones that history remembers.

We look back and celebrate bold men: Teddy Roosevelt, John Lewis, Frederick Douglass. But there were always women standing just as firm—Eleanor, Rosa, Sojourner Truth—often even more persistent, though less remembered.

Lately, I find myself asking: Where are the strong, good men now?
The ones who stand up publicly to hatred and tyranny? I keep searching.

Sometimes, I get this absurd flash of a thought: Was I supposed to be one of them?
Is that why people ignore what I say—because I’m not that? Or because I was supposed to be? Or is it just because I am a woman?
Or is that the joke? That the good men in the history books were just trans women nobody knew about?

Then I laugh, cry a little, and go lie down.
Because while I don't believe in destiny, I’m pushing 40, and anxiety does wild things to the brain, no matter your beliefs.

Still, I have hope.
My son is becoming a good man—kind, capable, thoughtful.
My daughter? She's full of love, full of curiosity. But she’ll need to be sharp, strong, ready. This world? It’s shifting fast.
I have to prepare her. Teach her how to spot threats from a mile away. How to care, and how to protect herself, too.

And maybe—if I believed in a higher power—I’d think this was the reason. That this path, this life, this perspective… it was given to me for a purpose. I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe there’s a grand plan. But sometimes, it’s hard not to wonder.
Because there’s no way my daughter would be ready for the world she’s growing into if I hadn’t gone through everything I did to become her mom.

Transitioning has been both joy and burden. A need I couldn’t escape.
A door I had to walk through just to breathe.

I love being a woman—but I hate that it had to be like this.
That I had to trade parts of myself just to be seen. That I’ve known more violence in this body than ever before.
That my value is seen, not from brand new ideas, but only with the sorts of safe ideas that are capable of meeting others' expectations of me as a woman.

But I’ve also known life. Real life. Not survival, not reaction—living.

The past 5–8 years, I’ve gotten to choose more, and choose willingly and authentically. Even where the choices didn't turn out they way I wanted, it was me considering and it was me learning and it was me living. I’ve dated, loved, lost, built friendships.
I’ve been a mom, a boss, a sister, a fiancée.
Wife hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not counting it out.

And through it all, I’ve moved through the world as a woman—even in the ways I’ve been attacked.

It’s strange, isn’t it?

The bigots call us “men” with their mouths, but the way they treat us? The way they react to us, obsess over us, and try to shame us?
That’s not how men are treated, typically.

Bigoted men don’t challenge trans women the way they challenge other men. They don’t engage in debate or test strength.
They rage the way men rage at women.
They’re angry that we have a voice. That we take up space.
Sometimes they’re jealous of the attention we get. Sometimes they’re ashamed of their attraction.
But when they lash out, the insults they throw aren’t masculine ones.
They don’t say, “You’re weak” or “You’re wrong.”
They say, “You’re ugly.” “You’re disgusting.” “You’re mentally ill.”
They mock our appearance. They sexualize us. They call us unstable.
That’s not how men fight men. That’s how they try to cut down women.

Bigoted women don’t treat trans women like men either.
They treat us like bad girls.
Like outsiders who skipped the rituals, broke the codes, didn’t pay the price for entry.
They resent our confidence. Our softness. Our refusal to be quiet.
Sometimes they’re jealous of our youth, or our joy, or the love we receive.
Sometimes it’s our visibility.
But whatever the reason, they treat us with the judgment and coldness that cis women are trained to aim at other women who don’t observe the nuances and rituals of female culture. They don't tend to treat us as perverts or confused men that need redirection, despite that being the claim.

So even while those JK Rowlings of the world shout “You’re not a woman”—everything about how they respond to us proves that we actually are, but they just can't handle it.

They typically gender us correctly in action, even when they swear they don't or won’t.

So whatever happens under these crazy times, under this awful administration—whatever comes for people like me—I know one thing:

I'm still me. It won’t be the first time I’ve faced it. And I’ve survived before.

I’ve lived as myself. I’ve raised children who are becoming strong and kind.
And even if the world ends, I’ll have done that. I’ll have loved them, protected them, and showed them what it means to woman up. And when they are adults, none of that will change either. There will just be more of it.

The Warmth of Spring Desire and the Sheer Electricity of Libido

There’s something I’ve come to notice about my body—about my being—as the seasons change. From the early days of spring through the thick of summer and into early fall, something stirs inside me. Desire hums. Touch lands differently. Even the wind feels like a flirtation. But come late October, the switch flips. Libido dims. The hum becomes a whisper. By December, I can go days—weeks—without any pull at all.

At first, I thought it was just me. Then I realized it wasn’t. It’s seasonal. It’s hormonal. And it’s part of my womanhood, too.

Winter: When Cortisol Rises, Androgens Fall

Biologically, this pattern makes sense. During winter months, cortisol levels tend to rise—an evolutionary response to reduced light and disrupted circadian rhythms. At the same time, androgens like testosterone and DHEA often decrease. These two forces—cortisol and androgens—are in direct tension with one another. Cortisol is catabolic, a stress signal that breaks down tissue and tells the body to conserve. Androgens are anabolic: builders, motivators, drivers of sexual desire. In women, where androgen levels are already lower compared to men, that winter dip can feel like silence.

And here’s where it gets nuanced: cortisol’s effects are amplified by estrogen. Meanwhile, progesterone can dampen cortisol’s grip—calming the nervous system, promoting GABA, and restoring a kind of internal softness. When progesterone is low and cortisol is high, it doesn’t just mute libido—it can tighten your body into a cold coil of vigilance.

Androgens Ignite. Estrogen Transforms.

From my own experience as a trans woman, I’ve come to understand libido differently than I ever did before. I used to think of desire as pressure—a balloon inflating behind the eyes or between the legs until it had to be let out. It was mechanical. Functional. Maybe feeling a bit frantic.

But estrogen changed everything. Now, libido feels like heat. Not a fire that burns fast, but a slow swelling warmth—like light through a curtain, like breath on glass. It’s not less intense, but it’s more internal. More relational. More about presence than pursuit.

As a big engineering, systems thinking, and metaphors type of person, here’s how I’ve come to think of it... 

Libido is like electricity, with how our hormonal components propel and effect it into our being:

• Testosterone is voltage—the raw current, the drive.
• Estrogen is resistance—not in the sense of inhibition, but in the sense of transformation. It reshapes the current. Adds texture. Turns electricity into warmth.
• Progesterone is insulation—protective, soft, quieting the static of cortisol’s alarm bell.

A lot of people think estrogen and androgens directly oppose each other—that they’re on some kind of hormonal tug-of-war. But that’s not quite right. Androgens primarily counteract cortisol and insulin, not estrogen. Estrogen, in fact, tends to encourage both. And that’s exactly why women—cis or trans—need androgens, too.

Not just for libido, but for energy, motivation, metabolic health, even a sense of grounded selfhood. The interplay is layered. These hormones aren’t binary enemies—they’re voices in a chorus, overlapping, harmonizing, counterpointing each other.

Which is why gender—and sex itself—is a spectrum. Not just socially. Biologically. No one is running purely on estrogen or testosterone. We’re all a blend. A pattern. A voltage map lit differently in every body.

The Poetics of Female Desire

There’s something quietly radical about naming these sensations for what they are. About saying, Yes, my desire changes with the seasons. That my body is not broken, just responsive. That libido, for women, isn’t a function to be maintained—it’s an atmosphere. It builds with safety. It deepens with warmth. It hibernates, and then it wakes.

And maybe that’s the real lesson here—not just a chart of hormones or a clinical footnote. But a realization that female libido is so much more nuanced than the way it's brought out in scientific journals that are largely cisnormative, and often still patriarchal. By trans experience, there's a stark contrast. Womanhood isn’t defined by constant arousal or linear drives. It’s defined by resonance—how heat rises, how tenderness blooms, how even quiet can be hold a sort of sensuality

So when winter comes and the voltage dims, I no longer panic. I listen. I rest. I wait for spring—not just outside, but within.

---

References

• Cortisol's Impact on Insulin Sensitivity – Frontiers in Endocrinology
• Estrogen and Insulin Sensitivity – The American Journal of Pathology
• Testosterone’s Regulation of Cortisol – Nature
• Estrogen and Insulin Action – PubMed Central
• Cortisol – Wikipedia Overview
• Estrogen's Role in Metabolism – Endocrine Reviews

Artificial or Human-Abstracted: Why AI Can’t See the Road It’s Spinning On

I’ve used AI to write code. I’ve used it to tighten complex threads in my writing. I’ve even used it to find language for things I once thought were unspeakable.

And since AI is such a massive—but often misunderstood—topic these days, I want to share what I’ve learned through those experiences (and a bit of computer science education). Not to stir more panic or hype, but to offer my clear-eyed perspective in a world already full of noise.

Here’s what I know:

AI isn’t sentient.
It’s not mystical.
It’s not wise.

And ChatGPT? It’s still Narrow AI. Even now.

It’s a loop machine. A very fast, often useful one. But it doesn’t see the road it’s iterating on.

That might sound abstract or confusing, so let me break it down.

Spinning Doesn’t Mean Moving

Picture a car with bald tires. The engine roars, the wheels spin furiously, but the car doesn’t move forward—it just burns rubber and heat. That’s how AI operates. And it becomes most visible when it encounters a challenge that isn’t neatly pre-structured. It throws itself at the problem, testing permutation after permutation, generating output after output. It looks like effort. But it’s friction without direction.

What’s missing is traction.

Humans, by contrast, don’t move as fast. We can’t try a thousand ideas in a second. But when we encounter complexity, we don’t just spin. We sense. We slow down. We adjust for terrain. We grip the curve, even when the road shifts under us.

That grip isn’t just what helps us solve problems—it’s what lets us notice when a problem is the wrong one entirely.

Seeing in Color

That difference—between looping and understanding—comes down to how we perceive reality itself.

When I was first discovering the internet, I remember using Lynx, a text-only browser. It showed websites as raw text: lists of links, content stripped of imagery, layout, or visual context. Lynx was fast. Efficient. But sterile. It didn’t show you the full web that other users were seeing, just a skeleton of it.

Then browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer came into my life. Suddenly, the web had depth. It had color and shape. You didn’t just read—you experienced. Design became part of meaning. Context shaped comprehension. Emotion was carried not just in words, but in visuals, spacing, even silence.

It is apt to say that AI is, and will always be stuck in Lynx.

Even when it creates images, poems, or essays, AI is not seeing what it produces. It’s parsing data structure. It understands syntax, not significance. It can tell you what typically follows what, but it has no intuitive grasp of why something matters or how it feels. It doesn’t live in the world of gradients and gut reactions. 

It lives in markup. We live in Squarespace. 

We perceive in layers. When something looks wrong, we feel it. When a word cuts too deep or lands too flat, we don’t just calculate it—we flinch. When the road ends, we leap. Our perception is immersive, relational, and always at risk of being changed by contact.

Breaking the Loop

This distinction isn’t just theoretical. It’s personal.

In another example from my memoir, I describe a moment where I found myself performing the beliefs I no longer held—repeating scripture to win a spiritual argument I didn’t believe in, just to survive it. It wasn’t just a betrayal of truth; it was a confrontation with the code I’d internalized since childhood.  But I realized that coding was an abstraction of true reality. It was a simplistic paradigm. It's fair to say I had been reading the world in Lynx: linear, rigid, doctrine-first.

But the rupture—the emotional crisis, the dissonance, the need to choose something different—was Netscape. It was translating the world into something with more color and imagery. Messy, immersive, textured with contradictions. The shift didn’t happen because I was flipping through scripture until I had an answer that fit the status quo—not artificially iterating through parsed text to inch toward a better idea. It happened because that old doctrinal paradigm failed to render something essential. 

So I leapt the gap.

AI can’t do that. It can’t experience failure that rewrites its structure. It can’t reframe the map itself. It doesn’t feel the loss of an identity or the revelation of a lie. It only knows how to follow what’s statistically likely to come next.

We, on the other hand, leap when the loop breaks. That’s what insight is.

Why AI Will Always Need Us

And that’s why AI isn’t replacing us—it’s multiplying us. It’s an assistant, a fast and tireless one, when the road is already paved. But it doesn’t know when the road ends. It doesn’t know how to stop and ask, “Wait—should we even be going this direction?”

And eventually, even its speed will stall a bit. As exhausts the availability and novelty of training data and loops through more of the same, AI will plateau—generating endless permutations of yesterday's ideas without the grounding to create tomorrow’s. It can remix, but not reinvent.

That’s what we’re here for.

AI can spin all day. But someone has to steer. Someone has to notice the curve. Someone has to remember what the journey was for.

We bring the traction.
We bring the context.
We bring the moment when everything stops making sense and must be rebuilt.

Because we don’t just navigate the road—we build new ones.

And we don’t just process the world—we see it.