I’m explaining to my parents why I believe that we should house and feed everyone.

My dad mutes the news so he can listen.

At first, my mom was bewildered. “Just give them a house?” Yes. “And give them food?” Yes.

I tell them, there are enough houses and enough food.

This becomes a conversation about poverty, so I explain, from a nervous system perspective, what happens when someone experiences blow after blow, until they collapse instead of competing.

We talk about “resiliency factors,” we talk about the neighborhood in Detroit, and how collapse can be the last act of reclaiming in disguise.

I tell them, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can try something else.

My dad turns off the television.

He turns to me and says, “You missed your calling.”

I said, “What’s that?” 

He said, “Teacher.”

What he doesn’t realize is that this is exactly my calling.

This moment, in our family home, is my calling. 

Too many people think that purpose is a role that we wear or audition for.

But I’ve learned that purpose is how you show up in moments exactly like these.

I don’t think my purpose is “teacher,” my purpose is courage.

I found this courage again because, over the summer, when I was dying — despite being mostly estranged from my parents for ten years — I found myself crying out for my mother.

I called 911 eight times. No one believed what my body knew.

The system failed, or it worked depending on who you ask, and when I knew in my bones that I might not make it, all I wanted was my mother.

And the next day, when I survived, all I could think about was Tyre Nichols.

The 29-year-old father and Black man who was beaten to death by police in Memphis, who cried out for his mother as he was murdered.

And even though I was the sickest and weakest I’d ever been, something shouted from deep inside of me, “Get the fuck up.”

In that moment, all the things I called myself — trans, chronically ill, neurodivergent, queer, mixed, abuse survivor, whatever — it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that I was still alive to call my mother.

According to some, I did everything wrong from then on. 

I called my parents and I apologized, which was probably not very “self-respecting” and “boundaried” of me as a trauma survivor, but I didn’t care, because I was sorry. 

Not just for them or me, but for us, and what this world does to people who are just trying to survive in it.

I tried calling my ex, which probably makes me very “toxic” and of course she didn’t pick up, but I just wanted her to know that her love changed me in ways that mattered, and I understood why she had to leave.

I stopped telling myself I was too sick to go outside, and I sat my ass in the grass and soaked up the sun like I’d never seen it before.

I stopped waiting on the doctors to save me and started using my intelligence to try anything and everything to support my body.

I stopped saying I didn’t have enough spoons and started asking myself, what makes me feel alive? I didn’t know I was septic and going into organ failure, I just knew I was going to throw ass every chance I got.

I used to believe that praying on your knees was some weird subservient shit, but you best believe I got down on those knees and thanked every ancestor who survived the unthinkable so I could exist.

I did not wait for a doctor to give me permission anymore, I started walking after three years of being housebound and mostly bedbound.

First, down the hall, then circling the dining table, then I dragged a stool with me around my neighborhood in Minneapolis — I didn’t care how it looked, or how often I had to sit down, because I couldn’t stop seeing this vision of me running, and I knew I was going to run because I decided I would run again.

I told my parents, if you’ll have me, I want to come home.

I went to a party and danced until I almost collapsed, and I remember thinking, “This is how I want to die, I want to go out dancing.” And then the next day, I was hospitalized. 

The nurses touched my body for a moment, and took my blood, and suddenly they were all whispering.

I knew it was bad because when they gave me “something a bit stronger than morphine” and I didn’t ask for that, and I was still in pain.

Then they gave me three antibiotics and they kept whispering with the kind of soft eyes you give a scared child, and then they told my dad it was too dangerous to operate right away, so we just… wait.

But I was smiling the whole time.

The only moment I know is right now. 

And right now, my dad is sitting with me, and there’s juice when I ask for it, and a friend sent me flowers, and the nurses are kind and funny.

And I can feel my great grandmother and grandfather sitting in the corner, watching me, and they’re so proud.

My dad says later, mystified, “There were no windows. It was the saddest hospital room I’d ever seen. And you were so happy the entire time.”

I didn’t know how to tell him, it’s because I was in my purpose.

I knew that when I got out of that hospital, I was going to run.

I didn’t know where, I didn’t know when, but I was going to run.

I can’t tell you what to do in this moment. I can only tell you what I did.

I stopped waiting for the answer to appear, and I stopped telling myself stories about what I could and couldn’t do. 

I started asking myself, what am I going to do?

Instead, I thought about all the ancestors who had impossible dreams. 

Who did what they thought they couldn’t do, because something deep inside of them demanded that they do it.

I stopped telling myself I wasn’t “built for the frontlines,” and started asking myself, how do I build myself for the frontline, become the frontline, wherever injustice lives?

I stopped worrying about who I would offend by believing in myself, and started reminding myself, Harriet fucking Tubman had epilepsy, bitch.

Because rest is short for restoration, and what restored my spirit was breaking all the way down so I could build myself back up in the image of this “hero” I kept looking for everywhere else but inside myself.

Picking up my four-year-old niece and lifting her over my head, knowing this is what I lived for.

From the mouths of babes, when she asks me the day after Renee Good is shot in the face what I would do if “bad guys” ever came to our house, and I panic, wondering, what the hell do you tell a four-year-old that is developmentally appropriate, knowing she’s going to remember what I said?

So at first I said, “I would hide.”

“Hide?” she says. It’s clear she does not believe a word Uncle Sam is saying. She knows I wouldn’t hide.

She doesn’t know that I would want her to hide, because while she’s imagining burglars, I’m thinking about ICE.

So she says, “If I call 911, won’t that mean the bad guys go to jail?”

I nod and tell her, “Sometimes that happens.”

And then she says, “Doesn’t that make you sad?”

I tell her the truth: “Yes, it makes me very sad.”

Then she asks, “Why are there bad guys?”

I tell her, “Most bad guys are just scared guys. They’ve seen bad things, and they forget that the world can be good.”

She says, “Do you think, if the bad guys came to my house, and I gave them my toys, they would want to be good?”

I know that what I’m saying won’t keep her safe — I can’t keep her safe — but as an uncle, I just want to keep her soft for as long as I can. 

So I tell her, “I love that you’re thinking about how you can be kind. That’s so important. It’s like how you’re such a good big sister. When we’re kind, we teach each other about how good the world can be, and how good we can be to one another.”

She lights up and says, “Yes, I’m a really good teacher!”

That night, I run on the treadmill so hard, it pops the circuit.

Then I sit by my altar and ask great grandma, “Did you see me running?”

She echoes back, “No, love. I saw you staying.”

—

Looking to support folks on the ground in Minneapolis?

My dear friend Kya has set up a mutual aid fund for targeted community members, via the Minneapolis–Saint Paul Queer Exchange.

This fund supports LGBTQ+ community members facing legal and safety barriers, with a focus on people being targeted, questioned, or profiled — including immigrants and mixed-status families, and those impacted by racial profiling.

This fund helps cover urgent needs like legal support (including immigration-related support), basic needs, and safer access to essentials.

Please donate via Venmo (Kya-Concepcion) or Cash App ($KyaConcep).