Let's make 'transanctuary' happen—and then give Miss Major all the credit.
"Miss Major taught me dreaming is a discipline."—Tourmaline
I bought a house in Connecticut.
Plot twist!
I really didn’t see it coming until I woke up one morning this summer with something akin to an epiphany: it was time to create my own sanctuary in the woods. Now, I fill all my extra minutes pinning interior inspiration and scouring second-hand furniture outlets. Ok, that’s actually not new behavior. The change is that the mood board now has a freshly-installed pewter gray roof overhead.
At zero points in my life could I have imagined myself uttering that opening sentence. I’m still in disbelief, shy about telling friends. I haven’t figured out how to confidently weave being a solo homeowner—outside the city!—into my story without some sheepishness.
Why do I feel so guilty? Is it because I still struggle with taking up any kind of space? Or because, especially post divorce, all my dreams about the future disappeared? Did I ever have them? I’ve lost track.
I’m not the only person to struggle to see past what’s right in front of me. TherapistNyle Biondi wrote this week in his newsletter Queer Resilience about how claiming our trans futures is an act of resilience, devotion, and defiance:
Many of us also struggle to imagine futures for ourselves. I hear regularly from my trans clients “I never thought I’d make it this long and I don’t know how to picture what comes next.” I’ve never been actively suicidal, but I’ve felt that too. I couldn’t imagine growing old. I couldn’t imagine much of anything far into the future. My early thirties were the first time I had the “well, shit, here I am. Now what?” moment.
He describes how the recent injuries to his body and the persistent administrative threats here in the U.S. made him doubt his ability to keep going. And then something shifted:
I decided to stay. To make a conscious choice to stay. In my house. In my town. In my life. For the first time in my adult life, I’m putting down roots intentionally, based on what I want. I’m making my home feel like my home, our home, my daughter and me.
I relate. Nyle and I are both divorced trans dads, in our mid 40s, with daughters turning ten this year. We’ve never met, but have quite a lot in common—not just three-fourths of our handpicked names. (Our daughters’ names are also uncannily close!) We’re living parallel lives, in different parts of the country, choosing to live.
But, Connecticut?! Of all places? This Southern boy always projected his heart (and body) into San Francisco. Twelve years, countless Broadway shows, and a Mamdani vote later—I’ve become a proud New Yorker. I don’t even know what you call someone from Connecticut. My real estate agent kept referring to herself as a Yankee. I couldn’t bear to tell her that the word still rings in my ear like a slur. I googled the answer: Nutmegger?! Now that’s some defamation.
I feel at peace when I wake up in my new house. It’s spacious, not yet weighed down with material objects and compromises. Every moment there feels like opportunity. And it’s quiet, except when I’m playing showtunes as loud as the hell I want. I spend evenings there imagining how much more I will love it when it looks more like me. Benjamin Moore describes Powder Buff as a “sweet shade that glimmers with a slight orange undertone.” I’m here to report that it is an offensive beige at every time of day.
I’m enjoying watching the season change outside every window. There are trees! Trees in every direction that recently gifted their leaves and needles to feed the soil. Woods now barren, I can see farther into the distance. There is so much sky. Last week there were flurries and I woke up to snow dusting the backyard. I’m reconsidering my choice not to park in the garage.
The house is in a small town, anchored by a single coffee shop with five tables, four counter seats, and made-to-order pancakes on Saturdays, cinnamon rolls on Sundays. The kind of place where you are greeted by name when you open the door and people introduce themselves if they don’t recognize you. It reminds me of the best parts of living in the South. I already feel like home.
I’m planting seeds and painting walls in this new house all while continuing to raise my kid primarily in Brooklyn. It makes for a lot of time in the car, but even just one night replenishes my battery. Then, a few hours on the road, and I’m all the more grateful when I return to this city I love so dearly and step inside this old rent controlled apartment that made my new dream come true.
Gearing up to drive back to Brooklyn Saturday morning, I opened my phone and pressed play on my podcast queue. Up popped The Daily:
My name is [BLEEP]:. I live in Tennessee. I’ve got four kids. And my wife and I decided a few months ago that we needed to pack up and move. We actually feel like asylum seekers in our own country. Our hope is that in Connecticut, the powers that be will be able to protect us.
We’re leaving all our friends behind. We’ve been here for 13 years. All our family lives in the South. We’ll be 1,000 miles away. I don’t know. The whole thing is heartbreaking. My wife cried a bunch this morning because we’re going to do a big farewell party this afternoon, and do a little country boil, and say our goodbyes.
All the best.
Connecticut?
The voice memo ends, and NYT’s Natalie Kitroeff introduces the episode, "Parenting a Trans Kid in Trump’s America":
Since coming into office, President Trump has thrown the full weight of the federal government behind denying the very idea of transgender identity and pushing to prevent trans minors from getting gender affirming medical treatments. In the middle of all that, are families scrambling to figure out how to best support their children without becoming targets of the government. Today, we talk to one of those families.
What follows is a deeply-reported, 47-minute portrait of a family doing everything they possibly can to provide a nurturing community and affirming healthcare for their trans daughter. After Tennessee passed the ban in 2023 the family was forced to cross borders to access care. I cried listening to the father describe how he felt driving over eight hours to see a doctor.
So I drove Allie up for her first appointment at the clinic at UVA. We stayed overnight at a hotel, got up early, went there. She was excited. I honestly was excited to be able to — it felt like I was being a good dad.
It was like, it just felt right. It’s like, I’m doing right by my child. That’s what I was feeling.
Yeah, I was proud.
But these extraordinary commutes weren’t enough. Even in states without bans, clinics close and refuse care out of fear of increasingly aggressive administrative action. Meanwhile the social climate had become so toxic, the parents fear for their daughter’s safety in Tennessee. The family begins looking elsewhere, searching for a place of refuge, where all of their children can be safe to keep growing.
New York? Too expensive. They hear of a welcoming school in Connecticut, where other families have settled.
Yeah. And we weren’t this anomaly. There was actually a community. And so then, to have people that understand, and to meet other parents that have moved across the country — there’s lots of us. We’re at this thing, and they introduce us to at least three other parents who had moved from the South to Connecticut. And all of a sudden — and you’re like, OK, we’re not alone. And for me, that’s — yeah, that pretty much locked it up for us that this was where we needed to be.
The story warms my heart. And it also feels like a warning. My new sanctuary state is not mine alone. I spent the next hour of my drive dictating voice memos to anyone I know with a connection to the Nutmeg state. Sanctuaries require strong foundations and reinforcements.
A glittering, gorgeous group of friends and family gathered at the legendary Riverside Church in Harlem Saturday afternoon to honor trans activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy who passed away in October. She was 78. An epic setting for a larger-than-life woman.
On Trans Day of Remembrance, I pulled Miss Major Speaks off the shelf and flipped through the included photo insert with my daughter. We lingered on the last photo of Miss Major reclining alongside her partner and their newborn son. “This is your mom’s college friend, Beck and their kid.” My daughter looked closely. “It’s so sad this boy lost his mother.” Yes. Lots of people lost their mother.
My daughter perked up at the idea of attending the memorial. “I’m kind of excited, this will be my first.” A few days later, she got all dressed up in a white dress, black sweater, and black converse. She fit right in and sat in the pew rapt listening to the eulogies.
Speaker after speaker stood at the pulpit thanking Miss Major for saving their life. For surviving Stonewall. For surviving prison. For starting Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project. For “telling it like it fuckin’ is.” For living.
“She is eternally the gurl that lived. And the gurl that thrived. And the gurl that showed us that we deserved full lives. And deep love.” — Raquel Willis
Miss Major spent the last decade of her life in Little Rock, Arkansas building her own sanctuary, The House of gg aka the Griffin-Gracy Historical Retreat and Educational Center "so that “trans folks would know they have a place, a lineage, and a family to land in.” There, she welcomed trans activists from across the country to The Oasis, a four bedroom retreat center with a pool, screened-in porch, pergolas, wisteria, oak trees, double ovens, and a “yellow bricked road” to follow around while they “recharge for the ongoing fight for their lives.”
About halfway through the celebration, Tourmaline stood up and read a powerful eulogy that began sitting bedside with Miss Major last month:
… even in hospice care, she was reminding us of our power. Still showing us how to lead with grace, even in the midst of a mess of a thing. Miss Major had a gift that can’t be taught. She listened to voices that others couldn’t hear.
That calling that brought her from San Francisco to Little Rock. The one that continues to be filled with harsh conditions, that was prophecy. She went where she was needed most, following divine guidance. She told me, maybe a decade ago, that it was a voice in her head that led her to Little Rock and she trusted it completely.
She modeled it for all of us what it means to follow you intuition, your inner guidance, which is also your inner power. Even when the world calls you crazy for it.
We love our mad queens here.
I kept looking over at my daughter, seeing the celebration through her big eyes. What a gift to sit here, with her mother and brother between us, honoring Miss Major together. I feel like I’m doing right by my child.
xx Kyle
“She taught me that dreaming is a discipline.” — Tourmaline
Keep Going…
Donate to Trans Youth Emergency Project which helps families navigate accessing care.
Watch the Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, A Life Celebration livestream.
Watch the award-winning 2016 MAJOR! documentary. (Avail on Amazon, but buying on Vimeo gets more money to filmmakers.)
Read Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary (Verso, 2023) created with writer Toshio Meronek.
Read NYT’s obit: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Trans Activist Who Saw It All, Dies
Listen to one of Miss Major’s last public interviews with Raquel Willis on her AfterLives podcast.
Listen to Miss Major on LGBTQ&A with host Jeffrey Masters (2021.)
📚️🏳️⚧️✨ Being Alive Book Club
Thanks to all who came out last week to talk Crawl with author Max Delsohn. We had a grand gay time talking about his love-lettter-to-the-editor to queer 2010s Seattle.
We’re gathering next on Monday, December 15th at 5:00p PT / 8:00p ET for a holiday hang & book rec swap. Grab your holiday sweaters, a cozy beverage, and your favorite books from 2025.
📌 Community Bulletin Board
The inimitable Ann Friedman and Jade Chang are hosting PEN TO POWER: A Co-Writing Fundraiser on Tues Dec 2nd at 5:00p PT / 8:00p ET. I’ll be there along with the featured guest writers Justinian Huang and Thomas Page McBee. Thomas’ two award-winning memoirs Man Alive and Amateur are part of A Transmasc Library list. (I highly rec both!)
The event is raising money for mutual aid groups in cities occupied by ICE. You can choose from their suggestions or pick a group in your community. I donated to Another World, “a community space for social change where neighbors in central Brooklyn can come together to solve shared problems.”
▶️ Press Play
Be still my heart.
Ideally, watch Come See Me in the Good Light with someone you love. Even if they’re on FaceTime. ❤️❤️
I’m feeling especially tender going into this holiday season as it marks the ten year anniversary since my Dad passed. We all knew it would be his last and tried to keep a sense of humor despite.
Anyone who has dealt with a treatment rollercoaster will relate to the film’s sensuous portrait of Andrea Gibson and her partner Megan Falley holding on while Cancer took them for the ride of a life. One’s life inevitably gets a little bit smaller, the days and weeks fall into a maddeningly predictable rhythm. And yet, if you’re lucky, you eke out laughs and joy along the way.
I was already a big fan of Director Ryan White’s work (see Pamela: A Love Story, The Case Against 8, many others)—his curious, tender, elegant eye is evident in every frame of this documentary. Streaming now on Apple TV.
Let’s make Connecticut the new Provincetown!
Congrats, you ole nutmegger. Good for you.