tenderness & vulnerability have entered the chat
on rescheduling dates, being chronically ill, polyamory, healing, and entering a softer era
I had to cancel a date this week. Someone I was genuinely looking forward to seeing—a sweet, playlist-making cutie who I owe dinner and a lint roller after my pug shed on them, and joked about bringing canned Rotel and tortilla chips to a potluck. I was excited. Giddy, even. I’d done the little ritual: outfit brainstorming, scent testing, the mental inventory of how much capacity I had to be perceived. But instead, a bout of food poisoning had other plans. So I sent the text. Apologized. Curled up with my heating pad, my dogs, and my disappointment.
Tonight was just the latest reminder of how being chronically ill intimately shapes my life. Being sick means always holding uncertainty. Planning becomes a gamble. Connection becomes contingent. While I want to say yes, and I also want to be honest. And so I say: not tonight. Again, and again.
It’s difficult grieving the parts of myself I only get to meet in glimpses—the flirty version, the spontaneous one, the alter ego who gets to just be without having to constantly negotiate with pain or fatigue.
But lately, something has shifted. My therapist recently asked me to try setting aside my usual coping mechanism—humor—and let softness speak instead. I’ve used humor as armor my whole life! It is the simplest way to mask the soft gooey core of mushy feelings. If I’m funny enough, I get to stay in the room. If I make you laugh, maybe you won’t notice I’m hurting.
But she asked gently: What if you let yourself be seen, without the performance? What if you let your voice be shaky?
So here I am. Voice a little shaky.
Tenderness and vulnerability have entered the chat.
They’ve arrived alongside other slow miracles: I’m dating again for the first time since my last relationship ended. It’s strange and sweet and raw. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. Other times, I do. Sometimes, I cry afterwards. Most times, I leave with a smile I forgot I still had. It’s taken me a long time to admit that my last relationship was toxic. Maybe even abusive. It warped my sense of reality. I doubted myself constantly. It’s taken months of therapy, community care, long voice memos, bodywork and asking my friends, “Was that normal?” to reclaim what I lost.
And through that mess, I’m finding a voice I thought I’d buried for good.
It no longer wants to be loud. It doesn’t crack jokes to make everyone else comfortable. It’s soft. A little broken in. You know, it says things like, “I want to be chosen by someone who doesn’t need to be convinced.” Or, “No, that doesn’t feel good in my body.” It says, “I’d like to see you again, but I can’t push past what my body needs today.”
That voice is coming with me to Southwest Love Fest in Phoenix, Arizona this April 4–6. I’ll be speaking on Friday and Sunday at the Radisson Phoenix Airport Hotel—presenting on disability justice in relational spaces, conflict, and repair. It feels both tender and defiant to take up that space. To speak as someone who’s still healing. To say that care doesn’t look like perfection. Insted, it looks like presence, accountability, and staying even when it’s hard.
And it is hard.
The world isn’t making softness easy right now.
Being trans, being chronically ill, being someone who still believes in connection while watching the state try to legislate people like me out of existence—it’s terrifying. If my voice has been quiet here, that’s part of why. This country scares me. And that fear is real, not theoretical. It shapes what I feel safe saying, where I feel safe going, whether I trust I’ll make it home.
But still—here I am. Saying something anyway.
If I’ve seemed distant, please know I am still here. Still trying. Still learning how to be in my soft era without apologizing for it. Still choosing vulnerability over spectacle, slowness over performance, honesty over appeasement.
If you see me at Love Fest, say hi. I’ll probably be tired. Maybe a little overwhelmed. But I’ll also be glad to be there, showing up with the shaky voice that says: I’m trying.
With tenderness,
C x
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Good luck at Love Fest!!! It's okay to be shaky, I've learned recently people still want to hear what you have to say and feel to the very end. I'm also dating again and while at times it feels embarrassing or maddening, experiencing all those juvenile feelings and butterflies all over again feels more like a gift than something to cringe about. to be older and still choosing tenderness and vulnerability, wow! PS Because of you, I want to attend the midwest one!