David Minerva Clover

After the solstice, the light very slowly begins to return, and every day is a little longer. Yule is a promise: winter sucks, but spring will come again.

When I finally realized I was trans, it was after almost a year and a half of therapy, a lot of trauma, and after becoming a parent.

In today’s world, children may be a financial liability, but that shouldn’t make them a luxury item.

[CN: PTSD, pregnancy, birth] Something snapped inside me and I was transported backwards in time.

There’s just no getting around it, and other than one half-hour spell where he sat with a good friend of ours while both of his moms took a swim, one of us had to be with him the entire weekend. And let’s be honest, because I’m “boob mom” and he was nursing even more than normal, it could never really be divided 50/50. All of that was fine, but it was often just fine, and there’s just no denying that it was a very different trip than it would have been without a kid.

I learned binge-watching Mister Rogers that he wasn’t just being comforting, he was rephrasing many of the things I was hearing in therapy.

Yes, we should be criticizing these straight, cisgender dads. We’ve been far too easy on them for too long. It’s straight out of the patriarchy playbook.

We’re trying to raise him with a lot of options and very few assumptions, but I won’t be mad at you if you call my kid “handsome little boy” or something. It’s fine. People have a hard time talking about babies without gendered labels. Even I have a hard time with it, and I’ve put a kind of ridiculous amount of energy into analyzing this stuff.

However, I do have one favor to ask. Please, for the love of everything that is good in this world, stop calling him “little man.”

I don’t want to deprive my child of these magical Halloween memories, I just also want to light candles and talk about our ancestors.

I am not middle class. Tiny houses are touted as an affordable solution, but they’re still more house than I can afford.