The last few weeks before.
The book is almost here.
It is finished. The proof copy is in my hands, the one I have held and flipped through more times than I can count. But it is not in the world yet. After years of fighting, the noise has narrowed down to a strange and quiet wait. And I want to be honest with you about what is sitting underneath it.
For a long time, I did not let myself ask the hardest question out loud.
In January 2025, an executive order was signed targeting gender-affirming care for anyone 19 and under. I found out on my drive home from work that evening. Daniel was about to turn 18. Legally an adult in every context that matters, and still inside the reach of that order. The care that had been part of saving his life, the care we fought for across years of hospitalizations and placements and battles with insurance companies and systems that were never built for him, could be disrupted overnight. I sat with that through the night, in a terrible, anxious place.
And it forced the question I had been avoiding since I started writing. Was I willing to publish all of it?
The climate is not neutral. By the end of 2025, more than 500 anti-transgender bills had been introduced across state legislatures. Bans on gender-affirming care for minors had passed in more than 20 states. Visibility carries a cost it did not carry even two years ago. I know that. I thought about my family. I thought about what it would mean for Daniel to have his story in the world in this exact moment. I thought about the risk. I sat with it for months.
And I kept coming back to the same place.
I thought about every parent who has ever sat where I sat, terrified in the early years, not knowing that anyone else had survived this. Every family navigating a crisis right now without a map. Every kid fighting to be seen and kept safe in a body and a world that can feel like it is working against them.
If not me, then who?
I have done this work for years, but not in boardrooms. The advocacy that mattered most happened one conversation at a time. In hallways. In parking lots. In early morning workouts, where someone found their way to me because they had heard a piece of my story and needed to know they were not alone. I have helped people I will never forget, one at a time. This book can reach further than I ever could standing in a hallway.
So I am publishing all of it. Not because it is safe. Because it is necessary.
If you are a parent, a caregiver, a family member, or an ally who is still trying to understand any of this, I want to say one thing to you directly. Give yourself grace. None of us arrived knowing how to do this. I certainly did not. We are all learning, and the learning is the point.
I will not pretend I am calm. My adrenaline is pumping. I am more excited than I have words for, and I am scared. I know that putting this story into the world means some people will respond with hate. I have made my peace with that, or I am making it, a little more each day. Because the people who need this book need it more than the haters need my silence.
My son is not a debate. He is found. He is flying. He is fighting for his own life now, on his own terms, and he is winning.
So in these last few weeks before, I am not going to spend my energy bracing for the worst. I am going to keep doing what is mine to do.
I am leaving the light on.
💚 Jenn
