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a heads up, this episode contains some

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adult language. You're

0:24

listening to Code Switch. I'm Laurie

0:26

Lizarraga. I

0:28

recently read a book of poetry that a producer

0:30

colleague of mine has been recommending. Actually,

0:33

it's a book of love letters. And

0:36

once I read it, I bought several more

0:38

copies to share with my mom and my

0:41

sisters and with

0:43

Parker, my Code Switch co-host.

0:45

But for the purposes of this episode,

0:47

she's the friend I roped in on

0:49

yet another adventure. I'm

0:52

recording. I'm recording too. Okay.

0:55

Hi Parker. Hi Laurie. Parker,

0:59

I have brought you here under

1:01

the pretense of potentially assigning you

1:03

some homework. Okay. It's

1:07

called Falling Back in Love with

1:09

Being Human by Kai Cheng

1:11

Thom. A collection of love letters

1:13

to lost souls. Kind of

1:16

poems, kind of prayers, each

1:18

trying hard to explore love and harm.

1:22

And after each letter, there's a prompt,

1:24

an opportunity or challenge to

1:27

go somewhere, do something, write to

1:29

someone, think. Let's see. Go

1:32

somewhere you have never been before. Think

1:34

of a lie you've told about yourself. Design

1:38

and perform a ritual to release

1:40

something from your life that you love. Write

1:42

a letter of forgiveness to someone that

1:44

someone can be yourself. Adorn your body

1:47

with something beautiful. Build an altar of

1:49

offerings to your ancestors. Write

1:52

a letter to someone you loved who

1:54

didn't love you back. Go

1:56

somewhere beautiful and burn the letter.

1:58

Treat yourself to something. nice. Oh

2:01

my god, this is when I can finally write

2:03

that letter to Oscar Isaac I've been dreaming

2:05

of. Okay,

2:08

wow, you had somebody like top of mind. What?

2:11

We were, we were destined to be.

2:14

Never let someone's wife get

2:16

in the way of the love of your life. Read

2:22

this one, Parker, that gathers some small pieces of

2:24

paper. Wait, which one is that? I

2:26

don't know. I don't know. Gather some small

2:29

pieces of paper on each piece, write

2:31

down one thing that you like about the world,

2:33

fill a jar with dried flower

2:35

petals in your pieces of paper.

2:38

When you are feeling down, pull

2:40

one of the pieces of paper

2:42

out of the jar to remind

2:45

yourself of what you love about

2:47

living. Ooh, that's, I

2:51

mean the current climate, it feels

2:53

very difficult to amass enough pieces

2:55

of paper to fill a jar.

2:58

Does it? A little bit.

3:00

I mean, we do

3:02

news for our living, Lorsh. So

3:05

of course, that had to be

3:07

Parker's homework. To write down enough

3:09

things she likes about the world to fill a

3:11

jar with. But I mean, the

3:13

book is called falling back in love with being

3:15

human. And

3:18

it also makes me realize that maybe I'm

3:20

not in love with being human at

3:22

the moment. That really

3:25

got me thinking about the author of

3:27

this book, Kai-Ching Tom.

3:29

She, like Parker, needed to find her way

3:31

back to love, to build a

3:33

bridge back to hope. And

3:35

isn't that where so many of us are at

3:38

right now? With all

3:40

that's going on in the world, it's

3:43

easy to feel like humanity is beyond help.

3:46

That everyone and everything is just

3:49

bad. So

3:52

I guess I just wanted to know, what

3:55

is falling back in love with being human

3:57

even look like? Did

4:00

she do it? Can

4:02

we? First

4:07

of all, thank you so much for doing this with us. Oh

4:10

my god, thank you for having me. NPR, I feel like

4:12

such a star. I learned very

4:14

quickly that Kai contains

4:16

multitudes. I'm Kai-Chang Tom. I

4:18

use she and her pronouns. I am a transsexual.

4:20

I have a savior complex, which is

4:23

why I do all the things I do. Kai

4:25

is, of course, an author. He's

4:27

Chinese-Canadian, a former social

4:30

worker, clinical hypnotherapist, intimacy

4:33

educator, conflict resolution

4:35

practitioner, essentially a conflict coach.

4:38

Like I said, multitudes. I

4:40

do a lot of work around trying

4:42

to heal ruptures or wounds inside of

4:44

particular groups or communities. And then

4:47

I'm also a writer. I write a lot

4:49

about conflict. I write a lot about human

4:51

beings and the

4:53

intersection between those two things. How do

4:55

you support your soul to

4:58

survive even while coming into

5:00

contact with some of the least

5:02

savory aspects of oneself and other

5:04

people? I feel like

5:07

that's a question I have for you in all of

5:09

that work. Right.

5:11

Well, I

5:14

wrote the book to try and answer that question. And

5:16

I'm not sure there's a concrete answer. I

5:18

think soul survival is very much about

5:21

refusing to see oneself or

5:23

others as political objects. Something

5:26

I think about all the time as a former

5:28

sex worker is that human beings have a right

5:30

to beauty and a right to

5:32

pleasure. I think those are the first things

5:35

to go when we start to do austerity

5:37

or prisons or occupations or whatever. But

5:39

if we really think that every single human being

5:41

on the planet, no matter who they are,

5:44

what their identity is, their privilege or lack

5:46

thereof, that we are entitled to beauty in

5:49

our lives, that makes it impossible to treat

5:51

human beings like objects. And so I think

5:53

this is sort of the way. And

5:55

a lot of your work, as you've already mentioned, both

5:58

as a writer and as a facilitator. Seems

6:00

to center that right love and dealing with

6:02

conflict. What do you think draws you to

6:05

that? You mentioned the Savior complex So I'm

6:07

curious if those if those things are one

6:09

in the same Oh, yeah,

6:11

it's my deep-seated psychological trauma and the like the

6:13

persona that I have formed in order to deal

6:16

with that, you know, I Grew

6:19

up in Vancouver as like a

6:21

little gay kid and yeah,

6:23

it was very challenging in a lot of ways Coming

6:27

out as a trans girl in my teens. There

6:29

was like a lot of turmoil. It was like

6:31

the mid thousands it wasn't really heard

6:33

of you know at that time and So

6:37

much of the work I do is about

6:39

trying to create the world that I want

6:41

to live in and I used to think

6:43

that Was bad and narcissistic and I still

6:45

think it's kind of narcissistic but I

6:47

also think that you know If everybody was

6:49

doing that more honestly like trying to create

6:51

the world that they want to live in

6:53

then at the very least We'd have clearer

6:56

communication about what is going on. Um, how

6:58

do you approach conflict now? Has that I

7:00

guess have that changed a lot of the course of your

7:02

work and your writing? Yeah,

7:05

I would say so, you know, I started out

7:07

as a Psychotherapist

7:09

and I was doing sex work on and off

7:11

to try and like to pay for school and

7:14

stuff and I got into conflict Yeah,

7:18

largely by accident, you know, I'm a dramatic person

7:20

and so I'm in a lot of conflict and I

7:23

yeah was losing a lot of friends and

7:25

relationships and I have to say it wasn't

7:28

just me all the queers Seemed

7:30

to be very dramatic, you know around me

7:32

and At

7:35

some point I was like, I think this is because of trauma

7:38

We were all really struggling to survive

7:40

Absolutely, you know and if I

7:42

drop into the seriousness of that for a moment

7:44

I think you know, there's

7:46

something here about when people are struggling

7:48

to survive It's hard to be kind

7:50

to oneself which makes it hard to be kind to

7:52

others But the paradox of that

7:54

is if we are not kind to

7:56

ourselves and others that makes it

7:59

even harder to survive and I

8:01

think that is what the the

8:03

actual you know serious core of

8:05

my work is It's

8:07

about trying to undo that loop of life.

8:10

We treat each other badly So we'll treat

8:12

each other even more badly and it's sort of

8:15

like what would happen if

8:17

we responded to bad treatment with

8:19

compassion instead so

8:22

tell us about falling back in love

8:24

with being human then because it sounds

8:26

like that is sort of a Really

8:30

good description of that

8:32

book So falling back

8:34

in love with being human is

8:36

very much like an exploration of this question What

8:39

if we responded to people's hatred with love which

8:41

for me is like a very fraught question I

8:43

think it's a very fraught question for most people.

8:45

Yeah, because I think in today's day and age

8:47

You know, we're not in the 70s the flower

8:49

child movement is over firmly and people are like

8:51

Well, if you respond to people who hatred with

8:53

love then they'll just keep hating you and kill

8:56

you, right? And

8:58

sometimes that's true And so, you know

9:00

the inquiry in the book is like is

9:02

there a way to do compassion

9:05

in love that is still preserving

9:07

ourselves and our lives and

9:10

holding on to whatever like kind of magic and

9:12

power there might be in in

9:14

love and compassion and The impetus

9:16

for starting to write the book was

9:18

this moment in 2021 when you know,

9:20

a little-known author called JK Rowling made

9:24

a public statement about her feelings on Trans

9:27

people and trans rights and

9:29

I wrote an open letter in response. She never Answered

9:32

she may never have seen it also Um,

9:35

and then I was like I like this letter thing

9:37

I think I'm gonna keep on writing letters and

9:39

that is how the book Came to be

9:42

well, you tell us a little about the letter

9:44

for those who haven't read it. Yes for

9:47

sure so, you know, I am

9:49

a Spoken well

9:51

was so I'm sort of a spoken

9:53

word poet and so the letter to

9:55

JK Rowling is like in poetic format

9:57

it's like dear JK Rowling and then

10:00

And it's a series of sentences that

10:02

are reflecting on all of

10:05

the sentiments and morals that she writes

10:07

about in Harry Potter. But

10:09

focusing them on this trans thing, right? What's

10:11

interesting about Harry Potter is that J.K. Rowling

10:13

writes a lot about how fear

10:16

can turn us into the monster that we

10:18

don't want to be and how we should

10:20

do the thing that is hard instead of

10:22

the thing that is easy. And I'm like,

10:24

J.K. Rowling? Like, what is

10:26

going on with you? The letter

10:28

is very much about, like, you know,

10:30

if you fear death, you might become,

10:32

you know, a noseless Voldemort person. And

10:35

you know, also if you fear trans women,

10:37

you might become the most famous trans exclusionary

10:39

feminist in all of Britain. Wow, so you

10:41

feel like it was a mirror. It

10:43

was, absolutely. And it's

10:45

very ironic, you know? So

10:48

that's the ask. And I think the compassion

10:51

part comes in where

10:53

in the early days of J.K. Rowling

10:56

being, you know, vocal about

10:58

her feelings. She spoke a lot about

11:00

her experience as a survivor of domestic

11:02

violence. And so, you know,

11:04

the compassion, you know, that I want to

11:06

tap into is that her fear comes from

11:08

a real place. Absolutely. She is a survivor.

11:10

And then, you know, the challenge is

11:13

how can we not allow our fear

11:15

to make us cruel? Why

11:18

turn to love in that context? Because

11:22

it's about mirrors. Like

11:25

you know, J.K. Rowling is

11:27

a survivor. And you know,

11:29

based on what she said in the public,

11:31

my own conclusion is that her fear has

11:33

turned her into someone who is doing

11:36

transphobic things. And

11:38

then because I fear that, you know, she's a very

11:41

powerful person. Because

11:43

I'm afraid of that. It would be easy for me

11:45

to be like, oh, well, you stupid bitch. Like it

11:47

would be really easy for me to dehumanize her in

11:49

response. And I think

11:51

that's very understandable. But for me,

11:53

I just want the hatred to

11:56

stop in my body. Like I actually don't

11:58

want to be the mirror. I want to

12:00

be something else. When

12:03

you talk about this book or

12:06

that approach, do

12:09

you feel like it's ever perceived or is it

12:11

often perceived as a naive

12:14

approach? All the

12:16

frickin' time. Yeah,

12:19

naive, offensive sometimes

12:21

even, you know, a traitorous.

12:25

Wow. Yeah. And

12:27

I understand. I get why that

12:30

is. I think the really

12:32

tricky piece for people is

12:34

that choosing love

12:36

or compassion doesn't mean, doesn't

12:39

have to mean choosing self-destruction.

12:41

It is

12:44

more about refusing to allow

12:46

people who are dehumanizing us

12:48

to take away the part

12:51

of us that holds compassion. It's

12:53

so interesting to think like some

12:55

of the main transphobic criticisms

12:58

that come out of the TURF movement are

13:00

like, well, keep trans women out of prison

13:02

so that women can be safe and no

13:04

trans women in women's shelters. And I'm like,

13:06

yes, the problem is that we live in

13:08

a world where women are impacted by poverty

13:11

and domestic violence and have to live in

13:13

shelters. The problem is that women are trapped

13:15

in prisons. And like, if we could just get

13:17

some solidarity on that, maybe we actually could make

13:19

a world where we didn't have to have this

13:22

argument because not so many women

13:24

would be living in shelters and there would not

13:26

be prisons with women in them. Kai,

13:29

you write a lot about love and

13:31

forgiveness to people who maybe probably

13:34

haven't asked for it from

13:36

you. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Why?

13:39

If I

13:45

really dig deep for that answer, I think

13:50

it's because that's

13:53

what I would want people to do for me. Like

13:57

it's always possible to lose our way. always

14:00

possible to fall

14:03

into ignorance,

14:05

hatred, becoming not the

14:07

person that we hoped to be. And

14:13

I think in my heart of hearts, I'm

14:16

always hoping that

14:19

other people can see me

14:22

for who I could be instead

14:24

of the failures that I am.

14:27

And that might help me to become better.

14:30

That's what I long for for myself. And I don't

14:32

think that I can hope to

14:34

receive that unless I

14:37

offer it to other people. Does

14:39

it matter if they accept your

14:41

forgiveness or not? No.

14:46

I think that if we make success

14:48

contingent on people accepting forgiveness, we're going

14:50

to have a lot of feelings of

14:53

failure. It's much more

14:55

about our own process of

14:57

doing that. That still feels

14:59

healing. Exactly.

15:02

After the break, more from Kai-Ching

15:04

Tom, plus how Parker's jar of

15:07

joy turns out. How many of you am I

15:09

supposed to do? How many have I done? Why

15:12

is this hard? That's coming up. Stay

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17:10

Lori, mostly Lori, with

17:12

a Parker cameo, cold switch.

17:15

We've been talking to Kai Jing Tong, author

17:18

of Falling Back in Love with Being Human,

17:20

a beautiful book that is a collection of

17:23

love letters, particularly to the people

17:25

who have felt harm and to

17:27

the people who have done the harming, often

17:30

one and the same. But before

17:32

we get back to that conversation, I

17:34

have to do a quick check-in on Parker. She

17:37

graciously, albeit skeptically, accepted the assignment

17:40

to follow one of the prompts

17:42

from Kai's book, to

17:44

fill a jar with notes about all the

17:46

different things she likes about the world,

17:49

things she loves about living. And

17:52

like every great student, she turned it in late

17:54

at night, slightly tipsy. What

17:58

do I like about the world? I

18:01

like the occasional delightful

18:04

unpredictability of a day. Like

18:07

you start with a day thinking you know what's gonna

18:09

happen, and then you pivot

18:11

and all of a sudden you're having like some

18:16

grand adventure for an afternoon, you know? All

18:22

right, I'll write that down. And

18:27

now it goes in the jar. What

18:32

else do I like about the world? I

18:36

like donuts. I

18:38

think that was a great invention by a

18:40

man. Donuts. Donuts.

18:48

I just underlined it three times. Um,

18:52

I like, I like about the world.

18:56

When babies discover new things, I like

19:00

that. You know, I saw

19:04

a video of a baby realizing he

19:06

had opposable thumbs. Like

19:09

he realized he could do a thumbs up, but it took him a second and

19:11

he figured it out. Pedro

19:14

Pascal and Gong Yu are

19:16

very important investments

19:18

in our society. They

19:21

go in the jar. How

19:23

many of these am I supposed to do? How many have I

19:25

done? Why is this hard?

19:29

Crows. I like crows. The

19:31

Atlantic Ocean. I like be-eyes.

19:35

The pronunciation of Kansas,

19:37

Arkansas, and the Arkansas

19:39

River. Now we pretend

19:42

Groundhog Day means something.

19:46

So clearly Parker was getting into the swing of

19:48

things. Meanwhile, in my conversation with

19:50

Kai, I wanted to have her read one

19:52

of the letters that felt really special to

19:54

me, because this one wasn't just

19:56

a letter to others. It

19:59

was a letter that was. in large part, to

20:01

herself. Do

20:07

you mind opening to the

20:09

ones whose bodies shall shake the heavens?

20:12

To the ones whose bodies shall shake the heavens.

20:15

Dear trans women, the only way to

20:17

live as a being cast as irrevocably

20:19

monstrous is to embrace a monster's power.

20:22

The power to inspire

20:24

awe, horror, unbidden desire. A

20:26

monster is a creature made of the truth, no

20:28

one else dares to speak. A monster is

20:31

a being beyond fear. Dear trans

20:33

women, when they come bearing torches, remember

20:36

that you are a being born aflame, and

20:38

every moment you love yourself is a moment

20:40

they can never take from you. Dear trans

20:42

women, we are the original

20:44

witches. The reincarnations of the ones they

20:46

burned, lesser outcasts, will turn against you

20:49

to save themselves. Forgive them,

20:51

for they know not what they do. Never

20:53

forget, a lineage of monstresses stands behind you

20:55

and stands proud. Dear trans

20:57

women, blessed are the hideous, blessed

21:00

are the horrifying, blessed are the cursed, blessed are the unforgiven,

21:04

the forgotten, the ones who must not be loved, blessed are

21:06

the mad, for our bodies

21:08

shall shake the heavens. Whoo!

21:16

Whoo! It's like the church. I don't know

21:19

which church, but some church. Some church.

21:21

Some church. So beautiful.

21:24

Oh my goodness. Many

21:26

of the first poems give love to aspects of

21:29

yourself or your own experiences,

21:31

Kai, particularly trans womanhood. Yes.

21:35

Why was that important to you? Oh

21:37

yeah. Well, I

21:39

come from a lineage of

21:41

trans women of color, activists,

21:43

writers, and artists, who,

21:46

you know, really believe, or

21:48

believed in some cases, no longer on the planet with

21:50

us, that the trans feminine experience has

21:52

something to offer all of humanity, all

21:55

of humanity. And

21:57

I think that's so true. And then there's

21:59

something specific. for trans feminine people

22:01

and trans women, which is like that

22:03

we're always being kind of put into

22:06

the predator role or the monster role

22:08

and so many of

22:10

the contemporary queer rights movements are about

22:13

like, no we're not monsters, we're actually

22:15

good and I like that

22:17

but there's also so much power

22:19

in embracing the monstrous. I

22:22

really like that. Thank you, I like it

22:24

too. You

22:26

write about some of your experiences as a

22:29

sex worker and you invoke things about the

22:32

contradictions and complications of that experience in this

22:34

book and early on you

22:37

ask readers in one of your prompts to imagine a

22:39

world in which all

22:41

sex workers are considered sacred and

22:43

wholly deserving of workers rights, health

22:45

benefits and compensation of their

22:48

choosing for an industry

22:50

that's still criminalized in

22:52

so many ways and infrequently

22:54

framed in the context of how

22:57

you're describing it. Did

23:00

you expect this prompt to be

23:02

challenging for readers? I did,

23:05

maybe not some of like the die-hard audience

23:07

of mine who are like kind of used

23:09

to me now or

23:11

who are sex workers you know but this

23:13

is my first book with a major publisher

23:16

and I was like probably a

23:18

lot of people are going to read the work

23:20

who have not encountered this before so

23:23

I did think it would be challenging for two reasons first, poor

23:26

phobia or the hatred of sex workers which is

23:28

just like the like instinctive disgust that people feel

23:30

towards sex work and like the stigma around

23:33

that I thought that would be hard and

23:35

then I also think that there can be

23:37

this thing of like saviorism actually like the

23:39

wanting to rescue sex workers and being like

23:41

oh like what a horrible thing but you

23:43

know what I really hope people get out

23:46

of that exercise if they really do it

23:48

in a depthful way is that a

23:50

world that is safe and that

23:53

honors the contributions of sex

23:55

workers but not only be better

23:57

for sex workers but for everybody

23:59

because Because a world that

24:01

acknowledged that people who

24:03

do that kind of labor still

24:05

have workers' rights is one

24:07

that I would have to acknowledge that everybody has

24:10

workers' rights. We

24:12

turn to page 113 and read us to the

24:14

ones who watched. This one hurt.

24:19

You were the only ones I couldn't forgive. It's

24:22

strange. It took me almost no time

24:24

at all to let go of my rage toward the

24:27

men who sexually assaulted me. I

24:29

had happened so many times and I rarely thought of revenge.

24:32

Once I was physically attacked in public, strangled

24:34

from behind by a stranger, and it never once

24:36

occurred to me to be angry. The

24:38

way I grew up, violence was like the weather. A

24:41

lightning strike, a monsoon, ferocious and

24:43

tragic, yes, but also something

24:45

to be expected. You prepared

24:47

for it. You endured it. You picked up

24:49

the pieces and moved on. So that's what I

24:52

did. And the fury that

24:54

stayed with me wasn't about the assailants, the

24:56

abusers, the perpetrators. It was

24:58

about everyone around me who watched and

25:00

did nothing. Well, not quite nothing. You

25:03

gossiped about it, whispered about it, told

25:05

lurid tales about it, picked sides and

25:07

made innuendos and cooked up pious opinions,

25:10

waving your banners of judgment, innocent, guilty,

25:12

wicked, righteous, over and over, an endless

25:14

cacophony. You made what happened to me

25:16

worse because you turned it into melodrama,

25:18

a soap opera for your entertainment and

25:20

education. I want you to know my

25:23

body is not your education. My life

25:25

is not your entertainment. You want to

25:27

know the truth? You were the

25:29

ones I wished vengeance upon. I wanted

25:31

to look into the eyes of the people who

25:33

hurt me and see into their souls. I wanted

25:36

to braid flowers into their hair and bathe them

25:38

in healing herbs. But the bystanders? I

25:40

wanted to ride on a dragon and set fire to your

25:43

homes. I wanted to plant my teeth in

25:45

the earth so that hydro's would spring up to come after

25:47

you. I wanted you to

25:49

feel how I felt, consumed by an insatiable

25:51

burning demon to whom my person had never

25:53

mattered. You, the clamoring, hungering mob, multi-headed and

25:56

faceless. You were the beast that stopped my

25:58

nightmares and every time another celebrity is

26:00

convicted in the court of hashtag me too and

26:02

the crowd goes wild. I want to scream. Where

26:05

were you in your righteousness when those girls were

26:07

being rinsed and killed? Where were your demands for

26:09

social change and justice before the attacks? While the

26:11

violence was still happening, where were all my activist

26:13

friends when I was being groomed and used and

26:16

lied to and tortured? Where were you then? Only

26:19

to remember all the times I also did nothing.

26:21

The time when I was 19 and one of my

26:23

best friends told me he'd thrown his boyfriend down the stairs

26:25

and I did nothing. The time when another

26:28

friend punched his partner in the ribs at a party and

26:30

we did nothing. The time a trans

26:32

woman was sexually assaulted and murdered in public and

26:34

the whole city of queer activists did nothing. And

26:37

then I remember why I still reach for you. The

26:39

ones who watched as I was hurt. Why

26:42

I'm still trying to believe, to hope against hope.

26:44

Why despite all the rage in my heart I'm

26:46

still trying to make peace with communities that still

26:49

allow violence to happen. Because

26:51

despite all my denials in the end I'm still

26:53

nothing more and nothing less than one of you.

27:04

You said they were the only ones you couldn't

27:06

forgive. But

27:08

you also, in that

27:11

particular love letter, when you

27:13

think that you're not going to land on a

27:15

place of forgiveness, not only do you turn

27:20

to a place of empathy but you also turn to

27:22

a place of common ground. Of

27:26

putting some of the accountability on

27:28

yourself. Totally. Was

27:30

that hard to do? Yeah. Well

27:33

you know, like I said, I spent a

27:35

lot of years very enraged by this feeling of like

27:37

oh my community betrayed me and let me down and

27:40

they're all such hypocrites because they say all these things

27:42

but then they do different things. And

27:44

I was asking myself why, why, why, why, why? And

27:48

you know, in that inquiry,

27:51

like started to remember stuff. Like

27:54

the examples in that love letter are

27:56

real. They happened and

27:58

have haunted me, right? a long time

28:00

and I think about what happened in my body, when

28:03

that friend told me I threw my boyfriend down the

28:05

stairs, I remember being like, I'm

28:08

not saying anything. And I

28:11

think a big growing edge for me is like, if

28:14

I can understand how someone can come

28:16

to be in a place where they throw someone down

28:18

the stairs, I also really have to be able to

28:21

understand how can it be that someone could hear that

28:23

and not know what to say. Because

28:25

I also want to be like, and we have to intervene,

28:27

we have to be better. And I'm like, right, we're human

28:29

no matter what role we're in, which is to say, why?

28:34

There's a lot of rhetoric though in the work

28:36

of organizers in the trans community and other marginalized

28:38

communities about embracing that anger

28:42

or embracing the

28:44

rage and writing it to

28:46

energize a movement. So this

28:49

feels very counter

28:52

to that. Yeah.

28:55

Why not stay angry? Well,

28:57

you know, I don't

28:59

want to stigmatize anger. I do think

29:02

there's such power, healing power in rage

29:04

and we need it to change society,

29:06

but it's the staying there that I

29:09

get worried about and yeah,

29:12

I think I've become harder lying about

29:14

this as I've gotten a bit more

29:16

experienced and stuff. But I

29:18

think what I will say is if you have been hurt, it

29:21

makes all the sense of the world to be

29:23

angry and probably we should be angry. Rage is

29:25

the impulse toward justice. But if

29:27

we stay in range, if we don't let it to move

29:29

through us and out of us, then

29:31

what happens is we become unable

29:34

to recognize when we are the ones

29:36

who are doing harm. And

29:39

that's how all those weird hypocrisies and mirrors

29:41

start happening is that we say in this,

29:43

like I'm the victim, I'm the victim, I'm

29:45

the victim. And so anything I do is

29:48

justified. And really that is

29:50

not true. Actually that is if you talk to

29:52

people who commit domestic violence or intimate partner violence

29:55

and they have not come around to realizing

29:57

that they're wrong, that is what they will say. They

29:59

will say. I am the victim and that

30:01

is why I did what I did and

30:04

that Is a mirror that we

30:06

need to pay attention to? I love

30:09

thinking about it in the context of Moving

30:11

in and out of it moving away from it so that

30:13

you're not always the perpetrated But

30:16

you know in many ways the overcomer

30:18

and that you know, your whole story

30:20

isn't victimhood that it's the The

30:23

thing you do after yeah, it's the

30:25

thing you do after yeah And

30:28

I think you know We want to make a lot of

30:30

space and time for this right like I

30:32

think we can get weird and victim blaming or victim

30:34

shaming if we're like well, why haven't you healed yet

30:36

and like you sort

30:39

of healing takes a long time and

30:42

We don't have to forgive Necessarily someone who has

30:44

harmed us, but I think we do have to

30:47

Really the big part of forgiveness is

30:49

like forgiving ourselves being a person who

30:51

has experienced harm. Yeah, you know, yeah

30:54

I love that This

30:57

is my last request of your love letters

31:00

that I'd love to hear you read to the

31:02

ones this world was never made for I've

31:06

never worried about dying It's the world

31:08

we live in that I fear and all the things I

31:10

might have to see before it ends The

31:12

things that people do to one another and the things

31:15

I might do to others I read

31:17

in a book that when lightning strikes a person that

31:19

leaves Lichtenberg figures on their skin Stars

31:21

in the shape of electric currents the

31:23

lightning still lives inside them and sometimes

31:25

it changes their personality Sometimes

31:27

it causes phantom pains and memory loss

31:30

the uncontrollable spasming of limbs Sometimes

31:32

it grants mysterious gifts like a genius talent

31:34

for playing piano or the ability to foretell

31:37

the weather I think this is

31:39

what violence does to the soul The

31:41

other day I watched a stand-up comedy special

31:43

in which the comedian told joke after joke

31:45

about how trans people are apparently harming Our

31:47

allies and our own by fighting for our

31:49

human rights. It wasn't very funny

31:51

But it did make me cry as

31:54

I listened to the comedian I could feel the

31:56

violence still burning in the place where it entered

31:58

my soul and I could hear where the violence

32:00

had entered his. He says he

32:02

doesn't hate people like me and I believe him,

32:04

but hate has almost never been the reason that

32:06

humans hurt humans. Fear is. I

32:09

spend a lot of time these days thinking about

32:12

the kind of person I want to be and

32:14

all the courage it will take to get there.

32:16

Today, I looked inside the ocean of my sadness

32:18

and found a volcano of anger there. The lava

32:20

said, I am the courageous part of love. Where

32:23

in the body does courage call home?

32:25

The same place where lightning lives. Tource

32:27

is Old French meaning heart. Raj is

32:29

Old French meaning fury. What does that

32:31

tell us about what it means to

32:33

be brave? Choosing love is a practice.

32:35

Every day it takes all my strength.

32:38

Still, I believe in this body,

32:40

this soul, this fallible flesh that

32:42

still burns with wanting. Somewhere, after

32:44

the lightning strikes, there will be

32:46

a world for us. Are

32:56

you the same person you think that wrote those letters? Yeah,

32:59

I do in many ways. I

33:02

think parts of me have evolved

33:04

and kept on moving. The book

33:07

was in so many ways, like an

33:09

actual spell casting, like a declaration of

33:11

who I wanted to be. And I

33:13

think I'm becoming that person, you know?

33:18

You know, Kai, you wrote that at the very

33:20

beginning of your book. From the

33:22

depths of my rage and despair, I needed to

33:24

find my way back to love. Did

33:28

you fall back in love with

33:30

being human? 100%. Yes. I

33:36

didn't know, honestly, what you would

33:38

say. Yeah,

33:41

I think I'm not sure if I've been asked

33:43

that before, but it's so interesting

33:45

to like feel into that and

33:47

be like, Oh, I did. Yeah. Because

33:50

writing it and manifesting it and

33:53

praying it and casting spells is one

33:55

thing, but feeling

33:57

it. Another. Yeah. So

34:00

I'm really happy to hear you say 100%. Me

34:06

too. Yeah, I'm so

34:08

delighted. It's kind of a surprise, but

34:10

yeah. I

34:14

love being human. Kai,

34:20

thank you so much for talking with

34:22

us. Truly, this has been such a

34:24

pleasure. Thanks for making

34:26

some magic with me. All

34:33

right, so I shake this up. And

34:36

when the world's got me down,

34:38

and it's bummed me out just

34:40

enough, I can close my

34:42

eyes, grab a piece of paper, and

34:45

open it. The thing that brings me

34:47

joy in the world is babies

34:51

discovering new things. Babies

34:56

don't work. That's

34:59

coming, baby smile. Okay.

35:05

And that's our show. You

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