life
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How many places do we touch in an average day that once held meaning for the living? How many rooms have we slept in where someone took their last breath? You might think that sounds strange, but is it really? How many hotel beds, how many houses, how many quiet corners have absorbed a final…
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I woke up this morning missing my dad. The thought of not being able to talk to him leaves this sickening hole in my heart. The grief takes you by surprise and knocks the wind completely out of you. Something good happens and you want to tell him. Something bad happens and you want to…
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“Try to remember the kind of September.” That line has been echoing in my head all day, and maybe it is because September once carried a very different meaning. When I was young, Labor Day was not just a holiday. It was the last day of freedom before school began again. In St. Louis, we…
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There may come a time when the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans are pushed so far backwards that silence is no longer an option. When that day arrives it will not be corporate policy changes or legal filings that shake the political landscape. It will be people. Ordinary citizens who have lived quietly with extraordinary truths.…
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The reality is we are living in a time when our rights can be taken away faster than they are given. If you are a queer couple in the United States, being proactive is not paranoia. It is survival. Make it legal in writing.Do not rely only on marriage laws that can change with the…
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I have died before. Thirty-eight seconds on an operating table. I cannot tell you exactly what happened in those brief moments of death, but I can tell you what I felt and why it has stayed with me ever since. Those thirty-eight seconds stripped my life down to its bare truth. They showed me that…