I was invited to write a reflection on "Joy as an act of resistance," from my experience as a trans immigrant. But I often struggle to feel joy at all (it's the 'tism & the chronic pain), so something about that premise didn't sit well. Instead, I flipped it a bit. I hope readers find it compelling.

Making uncomfortable noise at the intersection of faith & queerness has been my justice focus for almost 10 years (whoa), & although I've taken a break while trying to settle in as an immigrant, I haven't lost my passion for calling the institution of The Church to account for its part in injustice.

People probably think I'm rude or stupid, but I can't understand talking when loud music is also playing. I'm just here, but I have no valuable skills for such an occasion.

Oh no 💔 were people just unkind? The rude interaction my post references seemed to be entirely motivated by my limited German language ability.

Toan lives at the peak of Mt. Olympus.

I love you, Naomi 🫂

It's not a magical fix. Leaving home eases some pains, but awakens new ones. It's worth knowing what you may be in for if you are planning to migrate away.
If you can do it, & you want to, I am not trying to talk you out of it. Rather, I just hope to better equip you with my experience.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚🩵🤍🩷🤍🩵💜

This makes it easy to feel resentment toward your new location. Even as much you want to be there, it's a decision made under duress, & that feels about as far from freedom & agency as you can imagine. The point is, immigrating is the dream of many, but it can be just as much a nightmare.

In the case of escaping an authoritarian government, even if you want to be in a new place, it feels tainted, more like you have to be here, like it was less of a choice & more of a necessity. Add on to that not having the security of safety to return whenever you want, & something has been stolen.

It is as rife with grief as it is with relief to arrive in a new place, away from everything you knew & built & established. It all begins again. As much as possibility opens before you, so does loneliness surround & envelope you, isolates you in a bubble of cultural confusion & unbelonging.

We know & love so many people who want to & wish they could. But similarly to the commonly dreamed & discoursed "let's buy a plot of land & live in community off-grid to escape the madness," there are considerations & complexities we fail to see when we dream of a better life somewhere else.

That's not to say that Berlin feels wrong. It doesn't. But we are here for a better life than is realistic in the US right now, even if it is perhaps not the best life we could imagine.

Perhaps I should have acknowledged this earlier: we are so privileged to have been able to leave.

I was born in the US, & at 44 years old, am experiencing life away from it for the first time. Laura had only just arrived, & felt she had to leave far sooner than she was ready for. But for both of us, the reality is that we left home. Home in the soul sense of the word; where it feels right to be.

The US is such a complicated place forged by the vices of colonialism, slavery, & genocide, & yet...it is perhaps those evils which have been the crucible for the development of people who reach relentlessly for the extreme opposite virtues of justice, peace, community, diversity, & hope.

It's easy to hate the US for the sick racists, tyrants & tech bro fascists who are making it hell for the average person, but it is far easier to love the US for the resilience, generosity, idealism, multi-culturalism, & deep resourcefulness & creativity that comes with developing under pressure.

Do we have a "better" life in Germany than we could have in the US right now? Probably inarguably yes? Is that the same as the life we want to have, or the place we want to be? Especially under the circumstances of the US's oppression of immigrants & trans people, that's not as easy to answer.

But everywhere must be home. The places we can't be are brought with us in memories, traditions, recipes, the ways we have been shaped by the cultures & people of those places. Longing for the past must be tempered with living in the present, always leaving something behind we may never reclaim.