This was written prior to the news of Nex Benedict’s brutal beating that ultimately resulted in their death. May conversations like these continue to be had. May we honor our youth that will not be placed in a box. May we honor them, indigenous folx, non-binary, two-spirit, and trans kids. Fight like hell, y’all. We’ve got kids to keep alive.
xxx
When I was little I always wanted to be a mom.
When I was little I was fat.
When I was little I was taught the peculiarity of loving//hating one’s body.
When I look back on being little I think fondly of the kid that had a penchant for frilly dresses and hiking boots. Refused jeans then refused dresses and vice versa several times over. That loved the curve of a hip underneath a boxy button-down.
It is crystal clear to me just how queer I have always been. Listen, I’m not just talking about my fashion choices but remembering the people I thought were beautiful, the crushes, and why. The obsession with Erica’s lips in second grade and Laith’s ultra-blonde hair in third and how captured I was by where he parted it. I hold little-me in such softness and admiration. I was a fucking stud.
When I was little there was a kid at my school that asked if I was a boy. It wasn’t based on my gender expression which vacillated between high-femme and masc, shocking to nobody as it remains that way still, but because I was “tough”, I didn’t “sit like a girl”, and because even at the age of seven I had a low tolerance for fuckery towards other kids and was often the bully’s bully.
I didn’t think much of his comment. I knew what he meant even if neither of us knew what he meant, you know? I have always existed in this very fluid space in between what we know to be the female and male binary.
I played with dolls and I was feral in the mud. I wanted to be held and I wanted to do the holding.
I still do.
xxx
I was born highly-sensitive at least this is what I tell myself instead of the alternative- that I was so emotionally and even physically neglected as an infant that this was the outcome. I wish my mother were here so that I could ask her questions about growing up together through her eyes and not my own, or not by having to piece together the realties of suppressed trauma that spills out of my seams on occasion with my therapist. She (my therapist) believes that a lot of my trauma around protectiveness isn’t just a byproduct of growing up in dysfunctional environments in relation to access, or food insecurity, or housing but rather the very basic “were you tended to as you needed to be? As any baby needs to be?”
Obviosuly I can’t answer with absolute certainty but my gut tells me I wasn’t. Not out of malicious neglect but rather the generational trauma that was passed along. My mother didn’t know how to tend to herself.
I cried easily and over most things. Things that were scary or unknown felt big to me, huge even. I couldn’t stand to be away from my mom. I didn’t like being touched by other people. I was horrified of men.
I was relentlessly teased for how sensitive I was. Not by my mother, at least not with the same intensity as other family members, but when I say relentless…
I lived in black and white. I either trusted you to a fault or not at all. I was either a too-open book or entirely closed off. I was either being the class clown or crying in the bathroom.
I can see how and where, due to the society we live in, these things were broken down into gender-binary attributes. I was either high-femme or “feminine” re: too emotional, cried easily or masc or “masculine” re: hard, protective
I have always been a split of the western idea of gender binary and while I hate that there are just the two boxes here, I know I have a home in both. I know that Anaya knows he is a man the way that I know I am everything. I know that our children will see his soft and my protective and both//and of the two of us and that will be a marker of successful parenting in my eyes.
I am all of these things and I am a mother and I am a mother and all of these other things.
Just like mother is part of me it doesn’t mean that I am a monolith, a one singular thing, life meaningless outside of the care and tending to anything other than the lives I have birthed.
Outside of my gender and how I express it, neither of which places me or anybody else in a box, my motherhood also doesn’t place me in one box aside from the simple fact that I am a birther. I birthed children who are also not just one singular thing being “children” but are humans with their own brains and thoughts and dreams and wishes for their own selves and their own lives etc ad naseum.
I recently shared a quote from a friend of ours that said “If you are trying to understand me through the gender binary it isn’t going to work” and it has pressed on me ever since. Now that is a nice and neat box I can get behind. I think about motherhood through this lens as well. If you are trying to understand me through my identity solely as “mother” it isn’t going to work.
It simply isn’t.
Motherhood, my motherhood, is in fact something that makes up such an expansive part of my entire being because I decide that it does, not somebody else. Motherhood has changed me and my brain and my body repeatedly in a multitude of ways and I imagine it will continue to do so but mother isn’t my identity. It is easy to assume that every facet of my life, of mother’s lives, intersect with motherhood itself but I don’t think it does and I don’t even think it should.
I don’t feel guilty when our conversations at dinner are not centered around our children when they’re gone. I don’t center their extra-curricular activities the ways western culture has said we need to and I also don’t judge the parents that do- we’re all just out here trying to make it out alive, I reckon. But, no. If an activity for a 3 or 7 year old requires their presence every single weekend for an undetermined amount of time throughout the summer? Count me/us out. Perhaps this will change and I imagine it will someday and when it does in the event they fall in love with soccer or swimming or XYZ we will reevaluate. But, no, for now I am not checking my toddler’s itinerary prior to planning a weekend trip with or without our kids. There, I said it.
Children are children for a literal second. Children are not mine or yours or belongings that are meant to be whipped into submission, quiet, nonreactive creatures that fall in line and do the things we like to do and listen to the music we like and chase the same dream and live the same places we do forever. Children are actual people who will grow up to be adults and their own person with their own identity. The best I can do is facilitate navigating their world the best way I currently can, the best way I can learn how, and with enough softness and patience for a hundred lives. At best, they grow up feeling held and seen and safe and the harm we cause as parents, while inevitable, is hopefully minimal. Success as a parent, to me, looks like raising individuals that are empathetic, harm-reductionists, discerning, honest, and soft people to themselves and their community and the folx they meet along the way. That is at least what I hope for my children.
And so what? As a mom and as a vagina-haver, I am dynamic as hell. I am soft and I am protective. I am emotional and I am a provider. I cry easily and I will defend my family tirelessly until the end of time. None of which makes me male or female. None of which puts me in a box. I use the word cunt loosely and I’m a mom. I wipe tears and have my own tears wiped and I’m a mom. My naked body is on the internet and it doesn’t make me less of a mom or more of a bad mom or more or less of anything. It is simply a fact. My ass is on the internet and my kids see my naked ass pretty frequently around the house. We don’t teach our kids that bare skin is synonymous with sex and vice versa. A body is a body and bodies are cool. We don’t assign moral value to modesty or lack there of when it comes to showing skin and if you feel like your baddest bitch self when you are covered all the way up and embodying your modesty? We love that for you.
So when people send me messages or emails asking me how I could show my naked body on the internet as a mother, and in the event I actually respond to said messages, it is simple.
I set a timer to take a photo of my bare ass, tucked my kids into bed and read, Who Pooped On Me for the 987th time this month, kissed them (on the mouth! the horror!), and then uploaded the photo to Instagram.
That’s how.
While most of this is tangentially related they are related and that’s the point. Yes, I own a business and I also use my voice/access/privlege to advocate for people and things that matter and I gladly mix the two. Does this inherently mean I will lose out on potential sales/clients? Is this in itself not a privilege? Yes, yes, and yes. Listen, I don’t want to be in community with you, copywriter for you, or even feed you biscuits if you do not support and champion basic human rights, you know what I mean? You are not for me.
I want you to see me and to know me and not have to decide what box to put me into. I am all these things. I allow myself to be tended to and I do the tending. I have passionate sex with my partner and I pack lunches. I become paralytic with grief on occasion and then I have friends over for dinner an hour later. I am a protector and I need protecting. My ass is on the internet in various forms and that doesn’t mean that I am a shitty parent or that I should lay awake every night obsessing over the idea that perhaps someday my children might see that or their teacher might see that. Why? Because I am a whole ass, messy ass, big ass person just living the human experience just like anyone else.
I am a mother and a million other things unless you want to box me in somewhere.
I am also masculine and feminine and not even that requires a box.
Multitudes, baby.
News- if you are a paid subscriber you can now access all of the recipes, mine or otherwise, that have been shared on food//and in a nice and neat box//place (the only kind of boxes allowed) at the top of food//and’s home page under the “recipes” tab. No more deep dives into the archives! I’m so glad I was able to spend the time to do this for y’all.
I promised y’all a mochi cake recipe and I stand by my word.
If guava isn’t your thing, don’t do it.
I love the versatility of mochi cake. Top it with whatever you want. Make it savory. Don’t top it with anything and then make up your mind later if maybe you need to but a little pb&j on the top at 11 pm or melt some cheese on it for an afternoon snack.
Makes an 9x13 pan or 24 “muffins” *cook time is way shorter. I’m talking 30 minutes
I did riff off this recipe for my own but since I made it off the cuff and for the first time, let’s honor the mochi cake and use this recipe as it states before we go off the rails.
If you do decide to do guava and cheese, I used about 3 oz of guava paste and 4 oz of softened cream cheese but next time I would add more cream cheese as guava paste is very sweet and very sweet isn’t really my bag.
I mashed them both together with a fork, added a bit of lemon juice and a pinch of salt, dolloped on top, swirled it/pushed it down a bit, and then popped them in the oven.
Biggest love,
AT
Currently Reading: A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Currently Listening To: Boo circling the table like a shark
Recently Published: Being a poor kid/unhoused teen shaped my parenting for Business Insider