Family

Dear Parents of Young Kids: On the list of things that must be done by parents, ranked by the amount of sheer terror invoked at the very thought, “The Talk” is at the top. I understand why. Sex one of the few topics that is talked about with hushed voices and innuendos and subtle nods, yet is still talked about all the time, in every conceivable place, or during any event. The younger the audience, the less inclined to explain we are, which means that they look elsewhere for answers. This means that when you finally get around to having that dreaded talk, your kids will probably already know most, if not all, of what you want to tell them. In fact, they will probably know more. When I was twelve, the day after I started my period, my mom and dad wedged me between them on the...

Dearest hosts, sponsors, donators, volunteers, organizers, supporters, community, friends, family, and complete strangers: The lotus is a flower that grows in the mud. The thicker and deeper the mud, the more beautiful the lotus blooms. It has been almost a year of extremely thick mud our precious Emma has been growing in. Although her body may be showing the toll the pain this degenerative brain disease has taken on her; her sweet spirit is continuing to bloom into a perfect, beautiful girl she always has been and continues to be. May 4th , Shelby Jr High hosted with the Shelby Lions Club a fundraiser dinner for our daughter’s mounting medical expenses. The turnout and support for the event was overwhelming. Literally hundreds of people from the Metro Detroit area supported...

Dear Joey, I've wanted to do something like this for awhile but I'm glad I waited until now because if I wrote it earlier I probably would've wrote "to my unborn daughter" (because I was so certain you were a girl. Sorry kid). I think the reason I so heavily thought you were a girl was because I assumed that would be easier. I don't know how much I'll reveal to you about your father, but I'm sure by now you know enough. I am terrified of raising you as a single mother. I don't know manly things, and I don't know what it's like to be a boy. I figured if you were a little girl, it would be so much easier because I know everything about being a girl, I've been one my whole life. The whole story of you coming about into my life is full of scary moments, I won't lie. January 19, 2016...

I know many of you do not understand, and some of you may still not understand after reading this, but I feel that the bonds between us, wheter it be by blood or another form of kinship, obligate me to explain what went wrong. To do that, I feel that I need to tell my story. Please, once you pass this point, read it all the way through. Every story has a beginning, and this one starts with my birth. On October 19, 1997, I was brought into this world through the labor and pain of my mother's childbirth. My physical sex, composing of the physical aspects of genetics, anatomy, hormones, and reproduction had already been determined in the early stages of my development, with one aspect having been determined the moment I was conceived. From this moment, I was assigned the gender role...