#but at the same time. the concept of going thru life as my birth gender is... bad. sort of inconceivable at this point. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bo0zey · 4 years

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Pick your favorite questions from the list.

i will do them all for u 0.o

1. Name cianna [see-ah-nah]

2. Nationality mexican irish german romanian hungarian french

3. Age 20

4. Birthday december 17, 1999

5. Zodiac sign (or your primal zodiac sign) sun: sagittarius; ascendant: leo; moon: aries

6. Gender female

7. Sexuality uhhhhhhhhhhhh idk but i will willingly kiss either gender

8. Your looks (add a picture or describe yourself) /tagged/my-face or u could just google pictures of fat rats

9. What do you/did you study? I’m currently a sophomore nursing major!

10. What's your current job like?/What job would you like to have? I’m currently a microbiology TA and I love it :) My dream job would be something with animals, like a vet tech or veterinarian

11. Your birth order i’m the oldest!

12. How many siblings do you have? 2 younger brothers

13. Do you have good relations with your family? my mom was my best friend, my dad and i get along better now that i’m in college, my brothers and i get along pretty well & we’re staring to get closer now that they’re getting older n growing up n developing their own personalities lol

14. How many friends do you have? errrr idk this is a hard question. i have a lot of acquaintances but i’d say i have maybe like less than 10 real friends??

15. Your relationship status single :D

16. What do you look for in a SO? funny!!!!!!!!!must be humorous!!!!and sarcastic and a little weird w darker sense of humor so we can laugh n be dumb together!!!!!!! also i would like them to be kind to me and those around them bc mean ppl suck. also they have to like animals. also i would like them to be loyal and trustworthy and 110% in love w me. and for physical stuff idk kinda attractive but NOT CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE like i personally don't really like the typically ‘attractive’ person???

17. Do you have a crush? currently in love w the cute chinese boy who lives across from my dorm room even tho i have never even spoken to him n he is totally unaware of my existence!!!!!!!! hahah oops :D

18. When did you have your first kiss? i mean technically 3rd grade i think but that doesn't really count so like maybe 16????

19. Do you prefer serious and meaningful relationships or casual dating/one night stands? i mean in the long term i would definitely like to have a serious relationship but at the moment i’m only into casual stuff bc my heart isn't ready to be broken again sknfkjdbnkjd

20. What are your deal breakers? errrr i’m not sure....cheating is a no no, ppl that are interested in fucking every single person they see is a turn off, DUMB PEOPLE like ppl you can't even have a proper conversation with bc they're so DUMB, and ppl who r mean/judgmental/arrogant

21. How was your day? ok! accidentally slept thru my math class but caught a glimpse of my crush across campus when he was abt to smoke a cig and i got chipotle n i online shopped a ton from shein

22. Favourite food & drink deep dish spinach pizza from giordano’s & orange vitamin water

23. What position do you sleep in? i fall asleep on my left side hugging a body pillow

24. What was your last dream about? ate a braid of hair and inside the braid was bacon

25. Your fears not going to make it thru nursing school, not being financially stable as an adult, not having a family of my own, probably more but those r currently top 3

26. Your dreams i don't have any idk....maybe having like a house of my own and having as many animals as i want?? and i would like a loving partner with a daughter of our own

27. Your goals survive nursing school and lose 40 pounds and don't die before my cat

28. Any pets? i have a dog named cherry Cola, a cat named Leto, and a betta fish named Perc

29. What are your hobbies? writing stories about people in love, listening to music

30. Any cool places in your area? in my college town??? NO it sucks. in my hometown??? Not really it’s a small lil village with only restaurants and parks. but at home i’m near downtown chicago so that’s cool i guess

31. What was your last awkward situation? the first thing that comes to mind is my FIRST and so far ONLY encounter with my crush. we live in the same dorm building and i was wearing my nursing scrubs and had no make up on and about to go upstairs to my dorm, and then i heard footsteps and i was like ‘hahaha what if its my crush’ AND THEN HE FUCKIGJNG appeared from down the hallway to go back to HIS DORM [which is RIGHT ACROSS FROM MINE] and i literally STARED at him, then threw open the door and RAN UP THE STAIRS LIKE I LITERALLY DIDNT EVEN HOLD THE DOOR OPEN FOR ME AND HE WAS LIKE SO CLOSE BEHIND ME I WAS JUST SO NERVOUS MY FLIGHT OR FIGHT RESPONSE TOOK OVER AND I FUCKING FLED I LITERALLY RAN AWAY FROM HIM I AHTE MYSELF SO MUCH IM SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!

32. What is your last regret? errrrr idk i regret a lot of dumb things.......

33. Language/s you can speak English n a LITTLE bit of Spanish

34. Do you believe in astrological stuff? (Zodiac, tarot, etc.) i’m really into zodiac stuff and i have got to say they are pretty spot on in accuracy idk

35. Have any quirks? ummmm ofc!!i am the quirkiest person i know hajnjfxbkjx like if u asked my roommates/friends they’d probably be better at answering this than me bc i don't see anything abt me as quirky but they always tell me i am quirky and do weird things but idk man I'm just existing

36. Your pet peeves err idk currently its ppl that constantly brag about dumb shit

37. Ideal vacation somewhere warm with me + the ocean + the loml + unlimited alcohol

38. Any scars? yeah :D both emotional AND physical!!!!

39. What does your last text message say? ‘ok thats a more than fair statement’

40. Last 5 things from your search history how many carbs should i eat, chipotle bowl calories, is the grim reaper the angel of death, ceftriaxone adverse effects, red man syndrome

41. What's your [device] background? lockscreen is a peach-theme background i made and home screen is my weight loss goals

42. What do you daydream about? the characters in my stories.................and being skinny

43. Describe your dream home pretty brick house??? flowers outside??? 3 floors--main floor, basement and upstairs??? 3 bedrooms n 3 bathrooms maybe??? master bedroom has its own bathroom!!! and open concept main floor. big kitchen and very homey n warm all around. as for like an apartment i want something cozy and aesthetically pleasing and warm

44. What's your religion/Your thought about religion i don't have a religion but if ppl do have a religion then thats not my business

45. Your personality type entj but only bc i got 3% extraverted; i am very closely related to intj tho n i think i fit that one better

46. The most dangerous thing you've done uhhhhhh probably operating a vehicle while high out of my mind. definitely the dumbest thing i ever did 0/10 would recommend anyone ever doing that

47. Are you happy with your current life? its ok but it could probably be better. i want to be done w college and skip to the part where i have a successful career and my own home and i can lay up w the loml every night

48. Some things you've tried in your life alcohol???weed??gummy edibles....

49. What does your wardrobe consist of? sweaters/sweatshirts/leggings

50. Favourite colour to wear? black, maroon, peach, purple, gray, idk

51. How would you describe your style? oh jeez idk i wear whatever i want so like e-girl when i really try and basic white girl when i don't care

52. Are you happy with your current looks? no i hate everything about myself lol

53. If you could change/add something to your appearance - impossible or not - what would it be? more freckles on my face....also be thinner n have longer hair

54. Any tattoos or piercings? my nose and septum are pierced!

55. Do you get complimented often? kinda by my friends but i always yell at them to stop so they don't compliment like as much bc they know i hate it but they still do it sometimes idk

56. Favourite aesthetic? i wanna be an e-girl yo!!!!!!!!!

57. A popular trend that you dislike nobody has a crush on me and i hate it

58. Songs you're currently obsessed with? pied piper by BTS

59. Song you normally wouldn't admit you like. anything by BTS lol i used to like be embarrassed for how much i like k pop but now i don't really care lol #stanBTS2020

60. Favourite genre? rap/r n b/alternative

61. Favourite artist/band/genre? i listen to every genre except country sooooooo yeah i really like billie eilish, BTS, the weeknd, juicewrld, lil nas x, trippie red, post malone,

62. Hated popular songs/artists? i don't rlly like selena gomez or justin bieber or taylor swift

63. Put your music on shuffle and list first 5 only - RY X i.f.l.y. - Bazzi novacane - frank ocean jungle - drake bang! - trippie redd

64. Can you sing or play any instruments? no and no

65. Do you like karaoke? no but i like to sing along to songs when I'm alone

66. Own any albums? haha noooo i got apple music son

67. Do you listen to radio? What stations? errr RARELY i used to listen to r n b stations tho

68. Favourite movie/series? idk donnie darko?? i also just finished tharntype n that was really good. also i liked tokyo ghoul. AND GIVEN IS REALLY GOOD

69. Favourite genre of movies/books/etc i like horror/scary/paranormal/funny movies and i like love stories in books

70. Your fictional crush/es danny phantom, ken kaneki

71. Which fictional character is you? uhhhh idk...

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so frerard, ryden, taekook, mewgulf

73. Favourite greek god? idk they all kinda suck but maybe hades

74. A legend from where you live that you like i don't really know any:(

75. Do you like art? What's your favourite work or artist? i like to look at art! i think van gogh is cool

76. Can you share your other social media? ig: ciannnna venmo: ciannnna

77. Favourite youtubers? i don't really watch youtubers but maybe shane dawson and emma chamberlain

78. Favourite platform? twitter

79. How much time do you spend on the internet? too much time

80. What video games have you played? Which one's your favourite? i once played GTA5 that was fun!

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts) idk i don't really read anymore:/ i was into the hunger games and the twilight series when i was young. now i kinda read online manga and i really liked BJ Alex and killing stalking. and like for online books the unholyverse series, a splitting of the mind, the anatomy of a fall

82. Do you play board/card games? no but i like to play checkers and uno and cards against humanity

83. Have you ever been to a night marathon in cinema? nopee

84. Favourite holiday halloween is cool also christmas is alright bc gifts

85. Are you into dramas? i’ve been getting into thai boys love dramas lol sue me

86. Would you use death note, if you had one? um YES.

87. What changes would you make in the world, no matter how impossible, if you had the power to? everyone needs to be a little kinder and have a crush on me

88. Could you survive a zombie apocalypse? absolutely not I'm not physically fit and don't have useful skills

89. If you had to be turned into a paranormal being, what would it be? vampire duh [or maybe ghost]

90. What would you want to happen to you after your death? i want to see my mom

91. If you had to change your name, what would be your pick? idk something cool ... i love the name Daisy

92. Who would you switch your life with for a week? idk probably kylie jenner

93. Pick an emoji to be your tattoo idk the alien? 94. Write 3 things about yourself - only one of them must be true -im very productive with my time management skills -my favorite color is purple -i don't get nervous when I'm alone in public

95. Cold or hot? cold

96. Be a hero or be a villain? anti-hero

97. Sing everything you want to say or rhyme? sing if i’m good at it but if I'm not good then rhyme

98. Shapeshifting or controlling time? shapeshifting

99. Be immortal or be immune to everything aside from natural death?immortal

100. ..... or .....? ......?

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sol1056 · 6 years

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Your posts on clone Shiro have been really interesting - I hadn't considered why the Black lion would lead Keith to the clone when it knew where the real Shiro was (unless maybe it was thinking that Shiro's spirit needed a new body and hey, that one's close enough!). But also, since Kuron had all of Shiro's memories from the time he first escaped back to Earth thru the end of S2, does that mean Haggar's been spying on them via Shiro's arm from the beginning?

Judging from my inbox and comments on other posts, you’re not the only one asking that question. A few examples:

The saddest thing about Kuron is that he wasn’t even actually bad. ... He is compassionate when there are no witnesses. Haggar yells at him to stop resisting when she possesses him, and his screams of agony make it clear that the process is nonconsensual.

i can’t see any [clone resolution] scenario being handled well. the worst one would probably be if keith (maybe lance) has to kill him … the only thing that could be even worse is if they have the clone commit unambiguous suicide. they can’t do that any justice.

If Kuron had wanted to kill the paladins from the beginning, all he had to do was NOT intervene when they were being destroyed in S4E1. It seems like he was a good guy who got brainwashed into doing evil against his will, so it wasn’t even his fault.

I was really disturbed with what happened to Shiro and clone. Do you think they’ll even address this in the future?

A clone plotline – like a brainwashing/personality implant plotline – will inevitably raise heavy-duty questions about humanity, individuality, personality, and how great a role memories play in who we are. Going in unprepared will result in a story crumbling under that immense philosophical weight – or alternately, providing so many conflicting messages that the readers react with a variety of concerns like the ones quoted above.

So, let’s talk science, philosophy, and metaphor.

Behind the cut: cloning vs SF make-believe, the ethics of cloning, the question of souls, fictional metaphors for souls. I’ll do a follow-up that gets into the clues in VLD’s text, how a cleaner metaphor could resolve the clone storyline’s plot holes, and what tweaks could’ve unified the metaphor.

The only way to avoid these reactions is to think through the ramifications, and give the narrative a very clear opinion on the answers. You’ve got to do the worldbuilding and decide whether this story’s world is essentialist or existentialist, and how that will change the consequences. It helps to pick a metaphor, but it must be relatively simple (so you don’t need exposition hell to explain), and it must be consistent. The instant the narrative starts waffling on its opinion of its ‘truth’, audiences will sense this and suddenly all those philosophical questions are going to come down, hard.

real cloning vs SF make-believe

In 1885, Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch produced the first viable clone: a sea urchin. In 1902, Hans Spemann cloned a salamander embryo. It wasn’t until 1996 that anyone managed to clone something other than embrionic cells, when Dolly was closed from adult somatic cells. And now, in 2018, biotech company Stemagen has come up with a process that uses an adult human’s cells to create the embrionic material needed for an actual, human, clone. It’d still need to be implanted in a womb, and from there on follow regular human birth and growth, but yes. It’s a human clone.

A clone is not born full-grown. A clone has no memories of anything that gave it genetic material, any more than you remember a parent’s tenth birthday or first kiss. A clone is no more artificial than a baby created by in vitro fertilization. The only difference between Dolly and other sheep was her method of birth; in all other ways that matter, she was a normal sheep. She grew up, had kids of her own, and died. Once the person (or animal) is born, they are their own person, with their own experiences and memories.

A cloned being does not automatically look like its genetic parent; you can still end up with a crapshoot in terms of appearance. Sometimes genes switch on and off, as a body grows; even identical twins are not truly and perfectly identical. Also, injuries (including scars) do not convey. On a glossy level, what’s stored in the DNA isn’t the injury but the body’s need to create collagen to repair that injury. Think of it like a band-aid: even if the body records the need for that bandaid, the clone’s lack of injuries would prompt the body to dismiss the bandaid.

ethics of cloning & the question of souls

Once you recognize you’re talking about a living creature, the ethics simplify into being the same as what you’d raise for any other living creature. Banks and banks of post-birth clones, even in stasis, are as much living creatures as any other. Slaughtering them is still murder. Enslaving them is still slavery. Brutalizing them is still abuse. Cool clone, still murder.

Where things get sticky is when the issue of clones runs up against religiously-based beliefs, most of which lack a solid framework for this modern concept. (Some religions have addressed in vitro and cloning birth technologies, but the specifics aren’t really relevant here.) Since this show is American-made, I’m going to stick to Western concepts, since that’s the most likely influence on the various creators involved in VLD. But to discuss souls, first we have to talk about the two theories on how personhood develops.

essentialism vs existentialism

In essentialism, essence precedes existence: the person’s essence comes before all other things, even the spark of life itself (or alternately, the essence is the spark that kicks life into being self-aware). Spirit, soul, whatever word you use, it’s some inherent and inviolable thing that forms the basis of the individual’s personhood. It maps roughly to the nature half of the nature-vs-nuture debate – but it’s bigger than that.

Essentialism, at its extremes, is a position of seeing that originating spark/soul as the entirety of a person’s truth. When you reduce someone to their gender, or their race, or some other facet of their birth, that’s essentialism; when you declare that someone born X at birth can never be Y, again, that’s essentialism. When essentialism mingles with religious beliefs, you get a concept of a soul that exists before birth, and continues after: the person’s true essence, for which the body is only a thing to put it in. It’s the ultimate Cartesian separation between the mind-that-is and the body-that-experiences.

Existentialism is the opposite, and maps more closely to nurture-over-nature. Existence precedes essence: personhood is the culmination of all our experiences, our memories, our interactions, our successes, our failures. Everything you’ve ever done, known, said, thought, or dreamed: these are your interactions with the world, and they are the entirety of what has shaped you into who you are. If there is an essence in play, it is formed out of your existence, rather than informing it. We are each born a tabula rasa, and there is no division between mind as objective observer and body as the vehicle of experience. These things are basically one and the same, in existentialism.

This perspective can also be taken to extremes; at its worst, it’s been turned into a kind of AI-like philosophy, where culture, genetics, family, can be swept aside – along with any future paths. Nothing is true; everything is permitted – a phrase whose roots are deeper than any video game, in a murky muddle between François Rabelais and Hassan-i Sabbah (by way of Vladimir Bartol). If you’re curious, this is the best short explanation I’ve found.

fictional metaphors for souls

I bring up those competing paradigms because for most religious worldviews, ‘what brings life’ can be hugely important. If the process of birth is defined as a soul exists, the body is created, the soul enters thus making life, does this change if a body is created intentionally? What SFF likes to ask is whether a creature could be only as the shell, lacking that pre-existing substance. (Existentialism bypasses all of this, of course – but that would make for a boring story. It’s just one more individual who is born, lives, and eventually dies.)

The hitch lies in our real-world metaphors mapping to computers. I’ll walk through a metaphor based on real-world computing rules, and hopefully it’ll become clear how this contradicts with the Western religio-spiritual assumption of a pre-existing, unique, 'soul’.

The mind-body separation exists in the basic metaphor. Hardware is the body, which can run with little oversight; the software (the mind) can usually be updated without disturbing the hardware. Sometimes the hardware ages out and this impacts the software; extend this metaphor and you get the SFF premise of transferring to new hardware so the software (the mind/soul) continues to run. Sometimes the software demands too much and burns out the hardware.

Overall, the computer-based metaphor plays neatly into the Cartesian system where the two (mind and body) are separate but co-influencing. Note that part about 'transfer to new hardware’ – this is where this metaphor breaks down.

Remember that Cartesian (yes, 'I think, therefore I am’ guy) posits a separation, and lends itself to an essentialist view where the mind can exist separately and objectively from the body. The same is not true of computers. Ask questions about pre/post life and the computer metaphor swerves into existentialism.

To illustrate: let’s say you have a laptop running a Unix OS, and one day you uninstall Unix and install Windows. It’s now common enough to do fresh installs that the average audience-member will grasp the metaphor: the laptop is now Windows. There is no more Unix. If there is a ghost in the machine, it’s a newborn with factory settings. If you were to reverse your actions and go back to Unix, the original system doesn’t pop up out of nowhere; you now have a newborn system that just happens to be Unix. Unless you took other precautions, the original is gone.

I mention precautions because there are real-world alternatives in the process, and those impact the metaphor. The first is ghosting to an external drive: that entire Unix setup was copied over to a secondary home, broken away from the hardware. It’s no longer interacting; it’s in stasis.

Yet, from the perspective of the laptop, it’s now Windows and must start over. The computer has no knowledge of once being Unix. Its self-knowledge begins with its 'birth’ as a Windows machine. If the computer is then wiped and the ghosted Unix is returned to the hardware, the re-installation would have no record of what happened in the meantime, because from the OS’ perspective, there’s no break in its experiential record. It was Unix, it was in stasis, it woke and was still Unix.

The alternative is an OS split into two; memory (the database) and personality (the OS). This paradigm gained strength with the rise of large external drives for long-term storage, while the laptop acts like a terminal, storing little and retrieving as-needed. An uninstall/install will produce artifacts: tiny footprints of a previous OS. (In an archive moved from Mac to Windows, you can see this in the .DS_Store files in every folder.) You could say that the newborn Windows system arrives with clues to its hardware’s previous existence, but in this metaphor, those 'memories’ may make no sense to the current OS. Windows has no idea what to do with a .DS_Store file; it doesn’t need it, and can’t even read it.

the narrative needs to be certain of its opinion

Given those variations in the person-as-computer metaphor, it’s imperative that a story know exactly how its world works. Without that strong and settled opinion, a stray remark within the narrative can mislead readers into thinking they should be following a different version of the metaphor.

If your story will stand or fall on the concept of a ghost in the machine, you’d better clarify that there’s a backup copy somewhere. If you want the memory without the personality, you’ll need to bring in the concept of external memory paired with a new OS. Otherwise you risk readers kneejerking at the notion that the unprepared, unsaved, and uninstalled Unix OS is just floating out there in the ether, waiting to return. You’ve broken your metaphor.

Next post: the clues in VLD’s text, fixing the clone-created plot holes, and some minor tweaks that would’ve unified the metaphor.

#voltron legendary defender #metaphors and themes #storytelling #operation kuron #vld #voltron

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haileigh-desire · 7 years

Text

a new beginning

It’s five o’ clock in the morning and instead of getting some sleep I’ve decided to start a new blog. I’ve taken a hiatus on writing for quite some time now and I think I’m finally ready to restart the process of carefully separating my words with spaces in the same way a spruce separates its needles, keeping them just close enough to hold the snow. I tend to write and rewrite the same things with just a slight variation, probably because birthing poetry- or really any kind of writing- can feel almost ritualistic to me. I do it over and over again until I sort out my thoughts in a way that makes me feel content. I am hoping that even after all this time left coagulating inside my head, my thoughts and ideas aren’t too stale and lifeless to mean anything anymore. I don’t know if I’ve been a writer who doesn’t write for too long but I know that I am ready to try again.

I guess it would be a good idea to talk a little bit about where I am in life at the current moment. I’m twenty four years old, living in an apartment next to a jail in Reno, Nevada and I am a mother. If there is a purpose in life greater than being a parent, I do not know of it. I was staying at a homeless shelter in Florida when I found out that I was pregnant and had no concept of the gravity of what that meant for me or of the direction it would catapult my life into. My pregnancy was divided up into chunks of time, each one spent in a different state. I carried my child to be with me while I moved from one place to another, across the country and back again all the while tracking her growth with apps that compared her to various fruits. I believe she was the size of an apricot when I flew to Nevada for the first time to stay with a friend whom I had previously lived with before and had come to love as an honorary sister of sorts. Amanda and I both worked at the Buffalo Wild Wings across the street from our second floor apartment in Sparks and endured the misery of summertime in the desert with a broken air conditioner together. There is a picture somewhere of the both of us standing in a shower, my round belly sticking out far enough to leave only my toes visible while her tummy stands opposite of mine in all of its flatness and glory. We were so hot even in our own apartment that we resorted to taking cold showers together to survive. This is the primary chunk of time where I wrestled with the most difficult of choices- could I and should I keep this baby? I had kept the second passenger joining us in our new home a secret until I was already off of the plane and sitting in the drive-thru at In-N-Out getting my first taste of the notorious Double Double (which was everything I had dreamed it to be and more, in case you were wondering) and after I uttered the words, “I have to tell you something,” Amanda guessed correctly right away. We briefly discussed my options and I was afraid to admit to her at first that a large part of me was telling me to keep the baby so I was very nonchalant about the situation initially in order to conceal my true intentions. The word abortion was thrown into the conversation and over the next few weeks I attempted to warm up to the idea. I knew that I was not only financially not in a position where I could support myself, let alone a baby, but I also didn’t have a place where the baby and I could live once they were born or the support/involvement of the baby’s father. At first he encouraged me towards abortion, stating that he was not ready and did not want to be a father and over the course of many phone calls to each other we argued about whether or not either of us would be able to live with the guilt and even though he tried to reassure me that it was just a clump of cells and wouldn’t suffer, I still believed in my heart that it was the wrong choice. We ended up driving to a clinic in California twice to terminate the pregnancy but due to either fate or coincidence I measured too far along for the type of procedure they offered and I used that as my excuse to get the hell out of there and never look back. As time went on and my baby grew from an apricot to a kiwi to a kumquat to a muskmelon and beyond, I began to get more and more attached to this little being inside of me and became more and more stressed out and terrified about what I was actually going to do about this whole impending motherhood thing. As each tiny flutter of what might have just been gas mistaken for movement grew steadily into what turned into unmistakable kicks and stretches and punches to the rib cage and my bladder, I fell further in love with the little glob that I got to see forming every few weeks on the ultrasound screen. I remember being amazed that I could see the spine and just looking at the face and tiny little hands and fingers curling and uncurling and being in total awe. Amanda came with me to almost all of my OBGYN appointments and when I finally got to find out the gender I closed my eyes and let the nurse show Amanda first.

IT’S A GIRL! I could not have been happier in that moment. She was a girl. Deep down I think I already knew she was a she but it was still exciting to know for sure. As I came nearer and nearer to my due date, which was August 28th 2015, I got even more scared of what the future held. I started to believe that it was impossible for me to keep my daughter and raise her all by myself so I did the only other thing I knew to do- I contacted an adoption agency. I ended up meeting a very kind and understanding woman in the lobby of a Starbucks and after discussing the ins and outs of what adoption is all about, I was sent back home with a stack of books made by hopeful families for me to pick through and a little book of frequently asked questions about adoption. I started reading about the different homes that I could place my daughter in and imagining what kind of life she would have in each one and after some serious thought and consideration I landed on a gay couple from Las Vegas. Shortly after I told my adoption case worker that I would like to move forward with that particular couple, I ended up flying back to Michigan to move home so that I could be with my family during the last few weeks of my pregnancy and have them be there for the birth. Even though I had chosen what I considered to be the best family I could have possibly found to raise my daughter, I still struggled with the idea of giving away my baby that I had carried inside me for so many months and loved so unbearably much and leaving the hospital empty handed. Every time I thought about that moment where I would have to say goodbye, I found myself unable to let her go. Even though I knew there were many things that this other family could offer her that I wouldn’t be able to, like trips around the world and a life of luxury, I still believed that I was meant to be with my daughter. Once I was back in Michigan I decided to cut off contact with the adoption agency and the potential family. The caseworker continued to text me asking for updates and eventually after realizing that I got cold feet she moved on to instead text me to lend me support in whatever decision I was making, which was very nice of her. I did feel a great deal of guilt for essentially ghosting on a really awesome family that had been waiting to adopt for over two years, but I finally felt content with my choice to keep my baby and I was happy to finally come to what I felt was the right conclusion. Whatever it took, I was going to make motherhood work for me. In the middle of the night on August 10th 2015, I woke up to the feeling of my insides being crushed in a death grip intermittently on and off and knew that it was time to get my ass to the ER. The baby was on her way! I rushed to the hospital and immediately upon arrival I begged for/demanded an epidural. I was told that I would have to wait approximately 20 minutes for a bag of fluids to go through my IV first and seeing as I was having a contraction every other minute, I calculated that I would have to endure ten more contractions before finally getting relief. Thankfully, God must have heard my prayers because after the tenth and final minute-long moment of the most unbearable and intense pain imaginable, a nurse finally came in with the longest needle I’ve ever seen in my life and jabbed it into my spine. Right as she inserted it, my water broke. It took a few minutes before my entire left side was completely numb and once I voiced my concern that I could still feel the other half of my body they propped my onto my side and eventually I could feel nothing from my boobs down. My mother showed up, along with my friend Casey and feeling sleepy I decided to rest my eyes and take a nap while I waited to dilate to a 10. A few hours later I was woken up and informed that it was time to push! There was a big mirror propped up so that I had an immaculate view of my own vagina and the top of my daughters head peeking out of it. A nurse gave her a little mohawk and I gave my first push. Her little head stuck out a little and then sucked back inside me and it took four pushes to launch her little chicken cutlet resembling body out of me and into the arms of the doctor. My perfect, bloody, goopy, screaming baby was born! I remember someone handing her naked little body over to me and placing her on my chest and I just kept thinking about how gross she was covered in whatever else was floating around inside my belly with her and I wished that someone would wash her off. I was surprised to see that she was not the cute little infant I was expecting, but some smushed, purple colored creature that was using those tiny lungs to voice her displeasure with being ejected from her home in my belly. Eventually she was cleaned off and dried up and she started looking more and more adorable. I took a picture of her in her first little purple hospital knitted hat and showed her off to everyone on social media. I was so in love with her and I knew in my heart that there was nothing that would ever break the bond we had with each other. August 10th 2015, the day that Charlie Mackenzie Sonego was brought into existence. The day that I became a mother. The very best day of my entire life.

It’s hard to believe that that day was almost two years ago. I look at my daughter now and it’s almost impossible to believe that she was the same baby that I was so nervous to take home with me from the hospital. She was so fragile and perfect, I was terrified that I wasn’t going to know what to do or how to take care of her. Somehow those mothering instincts just kicked in full force and I was able to learn how to do the diaper changes and the feedings and know how to keep her safe and alive with relative ease. Looking at her today, a toddler with all of her teeth and a mop of untamed curls on her head that reaches halfway down her back when wet, its mind blowing to compare this version of Charlie with the newborn version. Being a mother has gotten so much easier in some aspects, like now she is old enough to occupy herself by playing on my phone and watching her favorite songs play on YouTube. She even knows most of the dance moves that go along with each song! One of her favorites is Happy and You Know It. Shes talking more and more every day, sometimes babbling but she knows some words so far like mama, buh-buh, shoes, eyes, hi, bye, ducks, no, and poop! She loves to watch shows on TV and Netflix, especially Sophia the First and Trolls and The Lion Guard. She likes to color, both on the bath tub with her bath crayons and on paper with regular ones. One of her favorite things to do with her Mama is go play at the park and go down slides together and also going swimming at the pool. She can throw her own dirty diaper in the trash and can say please in sign language. She wakes up every morning and calls for her Mama to come get her out of her pack and play, even though I know for a fact that she can get out by herself because I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes. For some reason she is inexplicably fascinated with brushing her teeth and I have a hard time getting the toothbrush away from her after shes finished brushing. All in all, her personality is big and expressive and she gives me a reason and a purpose for living. The world just seems brighter with her in it. I see so much pure happiness inside of her and I pray that nothing ever stifles it. So that is my update. What is new in my life these days? Motherhood, and all of the crazy adventures that comes with it. It’s been a wild two years and I would not change a single thing.

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