Andrea Gibson

And one of the stories that hurt the most is the story that you're alone and what you're going through.

That was the one that always hurt me.

And then finally, something that I heard that helped me so much, and this was years ago, but it didn't resonate until this year.

I think I heard Pema Chodron say it.

She said, if you want to have an easier time in life, you can cover the whole world in leather.

So it doesn't hurt when you walk or you can make leather shoes.

And that's something that I have been learning because I think I had a lot of my focus outwardly for a lot of years of like, okay, I want to make the world safer for my queer community.

I want to make the world safer for myself.

So I'm going to do all of this stuff on the outside to try to

get the world to be a safer place.

At that time, there were ways I was abandoning the building of my own shoes.

And so I'm not saying to stop trying to make the world better.

I'm saying we have to really understand the importance of doing both of those things at once.

Because even right now, I see is what we're doing with trans and non-binary communities of saying,

We have to do all this activist work.

We have to do all this stuff to change this legislation.

And yes, we do.

We do.

And also at the same time, are we building communities where we are teaching each other inner resilience so we are not completely undone by the way the world shows up?

Both of those things have to be happening at the same time.