Remembering Dolly: Six Lessons From the Life of America’s Grandma

Here’s a fun fact you may not know about me: I freaking adore country music. When I was really little, it was my favorite genre. And why wouldn’t it be? I grew up in a family of crazy hillbillies who migrated to Michigan and brought their rich Appalachian culture with them. Country was nearly ubiquitous in every facet of my life for the first chunk of it. Shania Twain was my idol as a toddler. I have fond memories of listening to Brooks and Dunn in my dad’s old truck and going through my grandma’s dusty Alan Jackson cassettes. And of course, we had Queen Dolly.

I never dove as deep into Dolly Parton’s discography as I should have, but a part of me has always been fascinated by her. I recall going to Dixie Stampede when my family travelled to Tennessee on vacation. I remember my first amusement park experience was Dollywood. My parents kicked themselves for not getting tickets for a day later, when Miss Dolly herself would make an appearance at the park. It’s sad that I came so close to crossing paths with her as a child, and yet I missed it by a hair.

Now, I’ll never get that opportunity again. As I’m certain you’ve heard by now, Dolly Parton passed away a few days back at the age of 80. The closest thing I’ve seen to monoculture in a post-social media world has been the enormous outpouring of love for her and what she has come to represent. I have even seen multiple pushes to make her a literal saint. To say Dolly was beloved would be the understatement of the century. She was more than just beloved. She was America’s grandma.

I’ve learned so much more about the life of this incredible woman in the past few days, and it has been inspiring me to seek out little ways to honor her memory. Now that she is no longer with us, we all need to carry on the work she began. These are just a few lessons I’ve gleaned from Dolly’s illustrious legacy.

1. Reading is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

We as a nation are experiencing a literacy crisis. There are more illiterate adults today than there were in 1870. This is a significant decline since the 1970s, when less than one percent of the population was illiterate. I can see correlations between this slow drop in literacy and the increasing animosity in our society. Reading allows you to understand different perspectives. Reading encourages critical thinking. Reading is how people learn new things. Is it a coincidence that as we’ve decentered reading as an American pastime, we’ve also seen an increase in division and conflict?

Dolly saw a need, and she had the power to do something. So she started the Imagination Library, a service that sends books to kids for free. The decision was prompted by her own father’s inability to read. In a statement on the website, she said:

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer…The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

She always had a heart for kids who grew up in similar situations to her. Dolly didn’t grow up in a gilded castle. She was once a little girl in a destitute part of Appalachia — much like my own grandmother was, many years ago. She may have gone on to become a household name, but her heart was always with families like mine. Which leads me to the next lesson Dolly taught me…

2. Stand up for the working class.

When Dolly wrote “9 to 5,” it was a statement. Like I mentioned before, she was not born into a wealthy family by any means. The nepo babies taking over the charts today will never know the struggle she had to endure to get to where she is. The woman fought tooth and acrylic nail for the respect she deserved. And all the while, she never forgot where she came from. In a recent conversation I had on Reddit, another commenter lamented the fact that there were no femme Springsteens championing the working class. Enter Dolly.

Like my own daddy, Dolly was a supporter of unions, being part of the American Federation of Musicians Local 257 and making it a point to get her band the wages they deserved. She supported migrant workers the rest of the country turned their nose at, covering Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” dedicated to the memory of 28 Mexican farmhands whose deaths were largely ignored. She even stood up for ladies who wound up in the world’s oldest profession, with the understanding that many sex workers were simply sweet girls with broken dreams and no other options. In fact, this leads to my next point that…

3. You can dress scandalously and still be a good person.

Dolly was the poster girl for not judging a book by its cover. On the surface, she had the outward appearance of the traditional “bimbo”: blonde, thin waist, big boobs, lots of makeup, and little clothing. This was not an accident. Dolly herself had said that she styled her own signature look around “the town tramp” whom everyone looked down upon. But young Dolly saw the beauty in her and wanted to be her nonetheless. That was one of her most underrated gifts. She realized beauty in places — and in people — you wouldn’t think to look.

I think a lot about the ways women are judged for owning their sexualities and bodies. I’ve experienced it myself. I recognize that my own signature look is somewhere between a drag queen, a Bratz doll, and probably the town tramp as well. But as Dolly showed us, wearing skimpy costumes and lots of sparkles doesn’t make you less of a person. This is a woman who posed for Playboy of all publications. She didn’t practice modesty the way American Christianity pushes. She had the understanding that modesty is a mindset, not a certain look. I’d guarantee Dolly is closer to the heart of God than any of these tradwife influencers with their prairie dresses that could double as a tent, and all while wearing a sequined unitard.

4. You can be a Christian and not a bigot.

Speaking of American Christianity, it’s no secret that many folks who claim the title of “Christian” in this country are not the ambassadors we want for the faith. “Christian values” has become shorthand for “defending the (relatively new) concept of the nuclear family to the detriment of anyone who doesn’t fit that box.” If you’re a man, you gotta be a big strong dude and marry a woman and make her submit to you. If you’re a woman, better give up all your dreams to a man who doesn’t know how to do his own laundry and pop out his babies for the Lord. That’s the dream we’ve been sold. But Dolly taught us there is a better way.

Dolly was a proper Christian, if a bit of an outlaw Christian. She understood the true tenets of the faith. Like me, she cut her teeth playing in churches and built up a strong foundation for her spiritual beliefs. In her prayer life, she regularly asked God “How can you use me?” and “What can I do today?” I can imagine her saying as Isaiah 6:8 says: “Here am I. Send me!” She knew she had a mission here on this planet to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a very tangible way. Unlike many others who have co-opted the name of Christ, Dolly refused to engage with the widespread bigotry that permeates the religion as it stands. She spent her life proving to the world that being a strong ally to the queer community and being a steadfast Christian is not an oxymoron. In fact, standing up for the oppressed and downtrodden is exactly what we’re supposed to do. She was a true example of the faith. In a world of Donald Christians, be a Dolly Christian.

5. You don’t have to be a literal mother to be a “Mom.”

This one hit home for me as someone who desperately wants to be a mother but is afraid that ship has sailed. Dolly also longed for motherhood, but for a variety of health reasons, her dreams were never able to come to fruition either. But she realized God had another plan for her, a plan she embraced wholeheartedly. She wasn’t supposed to be the mother of a person. She was to be the mother of a movement. She started viewing herself as a “Fairy Godmother” or “Mother Goose” of sorts, with her book program introducing her to an entirely new crop of kids. In a way, Dolly became America’s mother and grandmother.

Dolly proved that you don’t have to squeeze out a biological child to have an impact on the next generation. Going back to the spiritual side of things, I often think about how our society’s current understanding of the Bible presses people to “go forth and multiply.” There are entire “quiverfull” sects that emphasize reproducing as much as humanly possible to “raise up more soldiers for the Lord.” It’s easy to forget that the Gospel has never been about passing down your own bloodline. It’s about the blood of Christ and passing down His legacy of love. Dolly demonstrated this in action. Through her work on Earth, she has done more to further the Kingdom of God than any of those quiverfull weirdos.

6. Stay humble and remember your roots.

Dolly was a superstar. Dolly was an icon. But most importantly, Dolly was a little old Appalachian lady just like my own grandmother. She saw the world and everything it had to offer, but she never lost sight of where she came from. At the end of the day, her heart remained in those storied mountains, with the honest, hard-working folks she’d grown up around. She had a soft spot for the land that gave her life, writing these words in her 1972 song “My Tennessee Mountain Home”:

“Sittin’ on the front porch on a summer afternoon

In a straight back chair on two legs leaned against the wall

As I watch the kids a-playin’ with their June bugs on a string

And chase the glowin’ fireflies when evenin’ shadows fall

In my Tennessee mountain home

Life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh

In my Tennessee mountain home

Crickets are singing in the fields near by…”

In the 90s, Dolly promised to give $500 to every kid who went on to graduate from high school in her home county, essentially causing the drop-out rate to plummet. She has donated a good chunk of her fortune to disaster relief and other initiatives in East Tennessee. Through it all, she never forgot where she came from. I’ll leave you with this quote from The Christian Post in 2019 that I feel embodies her life and legacy:

“Every day I pray for God to lead me and to take out all the wrong things, wrong people in my life, and bring all the right things, right people, and to let me glorify Him and uplift mankind, to do something in this world to make it a little better than it was. And let me be a light and a vessel to be used.”

That’s what it’s all about, y’all. In a world of insincerity that rewards braggarts and egotism, let us all be more like Dolly. Bring a little music and sparkle to this dark world, and leave it brighter than you found it. Together, we can continue the work she started.

A Different Kind of Motherhood: Learning to Nurture Your Passions, Community, and Self

Once again, I was given a surprisingly relevant prompt for what I already had planned to write about. It’s funny how this thing knows me.

If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?

I guess the sentence I’d most want to hear from Future Jessa right now would be “It all turns out okay,” but that doesn’t narrow things down, as there are a lot of potential “its” in my situation. There’s my uncertain living situation, which I’ve written about a bit already. There’s that matter of me still not knowing what I want to do with my life as a now thirtysomething, since music therapy didn’t pan out. And of course, there’s that nagging feeling that I’m trapped in the burning house that is America, and as the walls are crumbling, who the hell knows what rights I’ll have left as a queer woman. I would love a future version of me to tell me I get some semblance of a happy ending out of all of this. I’d love a crumb of reassurance that the story I’m living through every day still has many pages of bliss left to write, and relatively little hardship. I want to know that the worst is behind me now. And when all is said and done, I want to leave behind something — or someone — to carry on my legacy.

I always thought my mark on this world would come in two forms — through the things I create, and through the people I will eventually create. I wanted to be an artist, but I also wanted to be a mother. Well, maybe not always. The idea of making a baby with most of the guys I went to school with was absolutely nauseating, even if lizard-brain still wanted to get laid. I would eventually get married and have sex (in that order, I believed, because I was a good girl), but not a damn soul was coming outta this uterus. That thing was closed for business.

Then I met and dated this guy in college who already had a daughter. I loved this dude, whom I still speak with now and then to this day, but I freaking adored this little girl. I fell into the role of stepmom-lite with a surprising amount of ease for a girl who’d previously believed she had the maternal instincts of a football. I remember going to Burger King to fetch her some nuggets and eating them together on the stairs, with her cuddled up next to me. It was the weirdest feeling, this twinge of motherly love toward a tiny person. And wouldn’t you know it, my ovaries started tingling real bad.

But I couldn’t have kids of my own. Not then. I wasn’t stable enough. We’d both end up on the streets.

Time went by, I got married twice, and still, over the course of both relationships, we could never quite achieve the amount of stability required to safely bring a child into this world. I’ve worked with children many times throughout my life, but I’ve never had the chance to raise one myself, and it breaks my heart. I’m approaching my mid-thirties, and while I know women have given birth well into their thirties and even forties, a part of me wonders if it’ll ever be my turn.

Always a caregiver, never a mom.

Maybe its just a side-effect of the barrage of pro-natalist propaganda coming to us from the government, but part of me feels like I’ve failed as a freaking biological lifeform if I can’t even reproduce. Even dumb seagulls are better at spreading their genetic material. And it’s a damn shame because I’d like to think I have some freaking good genes to pass on. Thanks, Mom.

Lately, though, I’ve been re-evaluating what motherhood even means to me. Is it really so important that I be a mother in order to matter? Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, and Debbie Harry are all famously childfree, and yet their names will still go down in history. Another classic rock queen, singer and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, once said, “I feel that my job is to mother the causes that I’m involved in.” And then it kind of hit me. I’m already the mother of something, in a way.

I studied Arabic a little in college. I’ve always been fascinated by the language, having grown up near Dearborn (which is not the scary place conservatives think it is, unless you think swanky-ass hookah bars are scary). I remember a really interesting concept where, after someone has a child, their name changes to reflect their status as a parent of that child. This name is called a kunya. In a way, its the reverse of how we in the West approach names. Theoretically, if a guy named Gray had a son, his son’s name would be Grayson, as in “Gray’s son.” (I am using a real life example, as I truly used to know a friendly uke-wielding hippie dude named Gray and his aptly named son, Grayson.) That’s basically how many of our last names evolved. But Arabic is entirely different. Let’s say, for example, I finally had my little girl and I named her Cadence. If I spoke Arabic, my new name would essentially be “Cadence’s Mother.”

But what if you never actually have children? Can you still get the lofty title of “umm.” In Arabic, that answer is a resounding yes! The word is also used metaphorically to reflect distinctive traits people may have. One may be the “mother of the cats” if they’re a cat mom, or even the “mother of the chubby face” if they’ve just got cute pinchable cheeks.

Maybe I need to look at motherhood more like that. Maybe we’re all mothering something in a strange way, even if we don’t immediately realize it.

In my last post, I mentioned the joke rap comedy group I started with my two favorite men on this planet and whoever else is unfortunate enough to be in the room with us at the time. What I didn’t mention was the massive multiplayer 12-minute monster of a megasong we were all working on. It started life as a stupid TikTok video that up until recently was my most viewed ’Tok. I was messing around with the synths and drum machines in my DAW and trying to make a Thriller/Ghostbusters-type beat from memory, with disastrous results. Then, I showed Luke and David, and they ran with it. Soon, the number of rappers on the song somehow doubled as more and more folks wanted in on the project. Before we knew it, the song had ballooned to an absolute behemoth, comprising well over 100 individual tracks as of writing. Pray for my MacBook, please.

But the subject matter of the song was what really surprised me. At first, we started making this entirely unserious song about how, because I’m the shadowy figure who makes all the beats in the background, I am the BEAT MOTHER, this benevolent but fierce goddess of sick beats, bro. It was going to be entirely unserious…until I started realizing how serious my friends were about their love for me. I started tearing up a little as a few of my collaborators recorded their parts because I started to realize just how much my friends care about and respect me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted in life. Music has always been my conduit to the outside world, ever since I was a selectively mute autistic child who could barely utter a world to her peers. I was so lonely, but I couldn’t make friends. Somehow, twenty years later, that little girl still gets overwhelmed when she truly grasps how loved she really is. I’m so lucky to have the chosen family I’ve found through music.

That’s what the whole BEAT MOTHER title came to represent, as absolutely bonkers and silly it was at first. I end the song with a much more introspective and somber tone than it opens with, having intentionally changed the ending to reflect my new realizations. In the final few lines, I say:

“I did it all, and man, I did it loud. To think I did it all to make little Jessie proud.”

Circling back to the question at the very beginning of this post, sometimes I like to imagine the opposite. Sometimes I imagine myself speaking to that scared little kid who couldn’t fit in anywhere if she tried. I’d like to tell her that it will be okay in the end, and that things will be hard, but we are stronger than anything that will come our way. We’re resilient. In a way, I feel like I’m stepping into a motherhood role with my own inner child. As Whitney sang, children are the future, and the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself. I think she was onto something with that song.

Maybe I won’t be the mother of anything more than a couple of decent songs. But I’m learning to be okay with that. Nurturing my friends’ creativities and passions and helping them make music they can be proud of is something to celebrate too.

Help me relocate with my kitty, Krubby! We’re close to our goal, which will be enough to cover a Uhaul and a nice bed for us! Even just spreading the word is appreciated!

I’m Sailing Awaaaaaaay

So, I’m going on a cruise in a few short days.

Mind you, I have never been on a cruise, and I kind of always assumed I’d never even have the chance. I vaguely remember my much-older sister saying she’d take me on a cruise when I got my high school diploma, but after graduation, it changed to after I got my bachelor’s, and after that, it was my master’s. So I just assumed that was a nice thing she told me so I’d stay in school and not run away to join a rock band or the circus.

Both options are *very* within the realm of possibility, for what it’s worth.

But last year, I was playing in a band with a truly cool frontperson who, despite us not being close anymore, is still someone I respect greatly. They told me about the cruise and how it’s great for networking because you’re basically trapped on a boat with music industry folks and fans who care enough about music to drop a cool few grand to see their favorite bands. That was enough to convince me to exercise my poor credit card and join the excitement. I bought my ticket and a flight down to Miami, where we’ll be sailing off to Mexico, a place I have not ever been to and, again, was never expecting to actually see.

But if playground rhymes taught me anything, it’s that there are REALLY HOT GUYS AT THE DOOR DOOR DOOR.

I’ll be honest, I came close to attempting to recoup what money I could and bailing on the trip many times. My friend who inspired me to buy the ticket and I had a falling out, which made me question why I was even going. Then, rising political tensions made me wonder if it was even safe to travel outside of the country, and I kept getting nightmares that I’d be detained trying to re-enter the country or something. I got as far as posting an ad stating that I’d sell my tickets in the main Facebook group for the cruise, and I almost had a buyer.

Then my dad died. Suddenly, I was standing face-to-face with my own mortality as I watched the single closest person to me fall away into the afterlife. It hit me that I may never have the opportunity to do this kind of thing ever again, and I could hear my dad whispering to just jump in. I remembered his last words of advice to me: be yourself, take care of yourself, and enjoy yourself. He wouldn’t want me to cower and hide away. He’d want me to live in the light. He’d want me to enjoy myself any way I can in this hellhole.

And so that’s why I have my big purple suitcase packed to the brim with all my outfits for the trip and I’m panicking making sure all my reservations are in place. This is certainly the most I will have ever travelled on my own, and while I have some trauma regarding travelling alone (major trigger warning for that link, by the way), I feel much more confident now. Last year, my bosses sent me multiple times to St. Louis, Missouri, to train up some new trivia hosts, and I ended up getting very familiar with the TSA and travel etiquette. So I feel a lot less nervous with that experience under my belt.

Still, it is nerve-wracking, especially since I don’t have any of my partners or friends with me this time, and it’s my first time out of the country in a really meaningful way. I took a train through the mountains of Canada in high school with my family, but that was just a day trip, and I had my parents there the entire time. I’ll know my former bandmate on the cruise, and I’ve been in communication with my cabin-mate, a cute emo dude from California who likes Pokémon too, so there’s that. But I’m trying to view the journey as an opportunity to make new friends. It’s poetic that most of the Warped Tours I attended in my younger years were attended alone, because now I’m very familiar with now to navigate shows and music festivals as a solo audience member. I plan to use my extrovert powers to make a few connections on this trip at least.

I met one of my closest friends for coffee this evening, and I showed him the meat and potatoes of this post before I shared it with anyone else. We agreed to meet because we were both world-weary and desperate for the ear of someone who “got it.” After one read-through, he goes back to the part I wrote about what my dad would have said if he were here, his last words of advice to me. He found it reassuring, in a strange way. And I think I get it now. I think that’s the best way I can honor my dad — by living so vivaciously and so fully that the darkness of the world cannot extinguish my light. That’s how he wanted me to live, and that’s how I want to inspire others to live as well.

And if that involves setting sail on a fuck ass boat with a cute emo guy, so be it.

3 Going On 30: The Loss of Childhood in the Media

I got into a fight with a guy on social media this morning.

Well, it was more “me picking on a prude on a Sabrina Carpenter post.” They make it very easy to do on Sabrina Carpenter posts because whenever there’s a post about Sabrina Carpenter, the prudes love to get on their high horses about how they would never stoop to taking off their pants to sell records.

As if anyone would pay to see *your* hairy gams, *Greg.*

Of course, I said something inane about pants being a crutch anyways and how nobody should wear pants, because I love creating awkward moments for folks who comment slut-shamey things about girls’ bodies. Then, the guy I was talking to said something that I’ve heard many, many times before. The classic line. You know the one.

Think of the children!

As if that’s a valid argument when the artist in question is a few short years from thirty and has no interest in making music for children anymore. God forbid a grown woman make songs about things that interest grown women instead of pandering to the same base she had as a 14-year-old. I’d be losing my shit if I had to essentially stay artistically 14 forever. Maybe, I argued, parents need to be parents and monitor what their kids are listening to.

But, I realized, you can’t just say “Well, put on something else for your kids!” and not have a dang clue what that alternative even is.

All this to say that children’s programming is pretty abysmal as of late. We don’t have “cool” adults like Bill Nye, Steve Irwin, or LeVar Burton teaching our kids basic subjects anymore, save for like, Ms. Rachel maybe. Nobody even knows the main players in children’s entertainment anymore. I make a living as a trivia host and a few nights ago, a question was asked about Cocomelon, one of the top three YouTube channels by subscriber count and the premier platform for videos for kids. Nobody got it right. And by the way, how did Disney’s latest movie do?

I might not be the most qualified person to write this blog post. I’m not a parent, at least not yet. But I plan to start looking into avenues into motherhood in the next few years, and I want my future kids to have entertainment that actually allows them a childhood. I love Sabrina Carpenter, but I’m not letting them listen to her until they’re able to comprehend that “House Tour” (my new favorite song of hers, by the way) is not literally about showing off your new home.

“And I promise none of this is a metaphor.”

They say to be the change you want to see in the world, and I have a feeling that when I do pop out a baby of my own, I’ll likely try my hand at creating children’s music myself. I’ve toyed with the idea already, but I feel out of my element trying to make content for kids when I don’t really have a child of my own yet. Still, I know when Cadence is here, I need to make sure she has music to enjoy without me worrying she’ll pick up impolite language. Because if she’s anything like I was when I was little, that girl is gonna have some echolalia going on.

The world is a fast-moving place and kids are growing up quicker in a lot of ways. We need to make sure the next generation is getting positive messages. It’s not just about keeping kids from seeing or hearing about sex and violence, but also about encouraging the good stuff. That’s why the recent cuts to funding for PBS are so disheartening. I’m cynical enough to believe the shift is deliberate. Kids are more useful to corporate interests when they’re essentially little adults buying products. Look at the trend of literal children buying anti-aging skincare and showing it off on TikTok. You can’t convince me Big Cosmetics isn’t partly to blame. But at the end of the day, everything rests on dear old mom and dad.

Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s questionable parenting choices.

It breaks my heart to think that kids these days don’t have the same kind of warm, wholesome childhood I had. We’ve abandoned car rides with Barney cassette tapes for iPads loaded with click bait and rage bait. And that, my friends, is no way to grow up.

Remembering Dad: A Eulogy of Sorts

It’s been a week.

I’ve been dreading this moment for my entire life, ever since I learned the concept of death. I knew that when it finally came for my father, I would be beyond devastated. I distinctly remember curling up under my parents’ bed as a toddler as if hiding from death would stall it somehow.

But last Wednesday, my mom called me and told me to say goodbye to Dad. I was dumbfounded and didn’t know what was happening, but I uttered a weak goodbye through tears. He took his last breath with me on the phone.

It’s been a week. I’m still catching myself crying here and there. It’s getting better. But it’ll never be okay. I miss my Daddy, and I’ll never stop missing him. There’s a piece of my heart that’s forever gone now.

I try to think of the good things when I feel down, which is partially why I decided to immortalize him via this blog post. He didn’t receive a proper funeral, which was his and my mom’s wish, as he was never into formalities. But apart from the Woodstock story, which I told in my last post, there are so many tales of my dad I would have wanted to tell as part of his eulogy.

Like, I’ll never forget the time we were all driving around — him, my mom, and me — and we passed by an old building that we’d passed by many times. Only the signage had changed, and it was now a taxidermy shop. Except my dad had no idea what taxidermy actually was, so he kept insisting it had become a tax place. Meanwhile, my mom and I were like “It’s taxidermy! They stuff animals there!”

(He eventually listened, but I’m pretty sure I had to point out the deer painting on the sign for him to get there!)

Another time, I get this call, and he says he’s driving up from Downriver to where my wife and I were living in Ypsilanti to bring us six pounds of cheese — in a snowstorm. I told him he didn’t have to, but he insisted. It took him an hour, and I bet he was white-knuckling the whole time, but he made it. And he gave me the biggest hug when he got there.

That’s always how he was. His love language was finding out what I liked to eat or needed in my everyday and buying it in bulk. I can’t tell you how many times I’d be going throughout my day and I’d get a call from him at Sam’s Club or Costco or BJ’s or wherever the hell he was shopping. He’d always ask me if I needed anything, and every time I visited home, he’d load up my car with toilet paper, jugs of Arnold Palmer, huge bags of popcorn, and more. He loved being a provider.

I got a good chunk of my love for music from him. He always hummed little mindless tunes to himself as he did things, a habit I still have to this day. He never went out of his way to listen to music, but he loved the stuff that I played for him. He had good taste — he did go to Woodstock, after all. And he was my biggest cheerleader when it came to my own music career. He bought me my nylon-string guitar when I went off to study classical in college. He’s part of the reason I went to school for music — I was going to go into pre-med, but he knew music was my passion. He’s the reason I went to university at all, actually. He always pushed the importance of education and hard work.

I’ll miss his speech patterns. I’ll miss how he’d say “warsh” instead of “wash,” going as far as to talk about “Warshington” or “warshing machines.” I’ll miss how he’d mix up words like the time he called my older siblings “Kay and Jelly” instead of “Jay and Kelly.” Or how he’d call my cat Krubby “Scrubby” and always ask how his grandkitten is doing. I think what I’ll miss most is when he’d call me silly nicknames. Meatballs was one. I was especially fond of Sweet Pea. That was the name my grandfather called me when I was in the womb, I believe. He died shortly before I was born. My dad made sure it lived on.

The story that stands out to me the most, though, is the story of when my wife and I first got together. I’d never been in an openly queer relationship and I wasn’t quite sure how my parents would react. I’d “soft” come-out to my mom as a teenager, but she’d initially brushed it off. I had no idea what my dad would say. So when he found out my now-wife and I were dating, he called me up all serious-like, saying “We need to talk.” So he scoops us both up, takes us to the local Coney Island, sits us down, and basically says screw what anyone else says, he loves and supports us unconditionally. That is what real fatherly love looks like. And I’m so glad I got to experience it, even if only for 32 years on this planet. Some folks never get to have a love like that in their lifetime. I know I was greatly blessed.

My greatest regret is he won’t be there for my symbolic wedding to Olivia, whom he also adored. In the last few weeks of his life, all three of us visited him, and it almost felt like getting his blessing. I never outright told him that we were polyamorous, but I feel he knew, and he just wanted me to be happy. He entrusted them with making sure I’m taken care of, and they promised him they’d give me the best life possible. He died knowing I have a strong support system.

My father was my rock, and it’s a little scary to realize I’ll never be able to run to him again. But he’s still there with me, somehow. I’ve been seeing him everywhere. The stupid William Hung cover of “Circle of Life” was playing at the bar when I went with my closest friends the night my dad’s death. At first it felt insulting, but then it felt weirdly poetic. We used to love watching American Idol together when I was little, especially the “bad” auditions. And it made me smile a little. I think he’s watching out for me. He’s got a sense of humor. I know, because I’ve got that same sense of humor. We gave each other dad joke and silly cat calendars for Christmas every year. (He’d send me the best dad jokes when he sent me my mail from home.)

I knew the song had to end eventually, as every song has to end someday. But I’m glad I got to experience the music that was my father’s life. I’m glad I had him to teach me to dance. And now that I can stand on my own two feet, it’s up to me to keep his song and spirit alive.

Here’s to the greatest dad who ever lived.

Grandkids and the GOP: How the Drive to Live Forever Fuels Conservativism

I think I cracked the code.

Like, I know why the other half of the population just doesn’t seem to get it.

It’s babies. It’s always been babies.

Of course, just look at that shit-eating grin.

Well, and death. Just follow me for a second.

I was recently reading about a fellow named Ernest Becker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 book on death. In this book, he asserts that humans are driven by their primal fear of death and no longer existing in the mortal realm. Because of this, we unknowingly take on “immortality projects” meant to carve our name into history in some fashion. For some, including myself, this looks like creating art or music or stories that will last long after we’re gone. For others, this may look like accumulating lots of wealth, then dumping it into a cool institution or organization you believe in to get something named after you. And for many, many folks, their immortality projects are their progeny.

And that’s where things get sticky — because a lot of older folks are realizing their children and grandchildren don’t want kids of their own.

And if your kids don’t have kids, your bloodline is essentially over, you’ll be forgotten, and nothing you ever did amounted to anything.

Seriously, this fear explains so much about the psyche of older conservatives. It explains the anti-gay stance, as one could traditionally only reproduce with someone of the opposite birth sex. It explains the anti-trans stance, as HRT typically borks your reproductive system (and a lot of people don’t know about options like sperm banks for preserving fertility after transition). It explains the anti-abortion stance, since you don’t want your daughter to go off and abort your grandchild. I’d argue much of the conservative worldview stems from just three little words — “I want grandkids.”

And the wild thing here is that I actually get it.

I mean, I wanted to be a grandma someday. But mostly so I could nap and watch game shows all day.

That ever-present fear that I’ll just die and eventually be forgotten without accomplishing anything great is one of my biggest fears too. I’ve actually written about it extensively on this blog. I understand where these people are coming from, even if our ways of handling that fear lead us to vastly different belief systems.

A while back, I had this conversation with one of my coworkers at the caregiving gig I picked up recently. We got on the ill-advised topic of politics, and she told me she voted for our current administration “because of her family.” And I told her I had voted against it for my family. My wife is black. My girlfriend is trans. Our future children will likely be neurodivergent. This isn’t the world I want for them. I don’t want them to live in fear.

And so I keep finding myself going back to the same question — what makes my coworker’s family more important than mine? The fact that she’s straight and white and neurotypical? And yet, we’re really not all that different. She, like me, just wants to leave a legacy. Maybe her legacy will look different than mine, but that’s the beauty of the human experience. We each get to choose what our legacy will be.

That’s why these pushes to put as many babies as possible in as many wombs as possible will inevitably fall flat. People usually have a good idea of what they want out of life, and if that’s not children, that should be the end of the story. Family planning, birth control, and issues relating to fertility are personal and private. It’s no one’s place to tell anyone they should bring kids into this world. And that includes parents pestering their own children for grandkids.

But I do get it. I hate the thought that I might someday be forgotten. That’s part of the reason I write this blog — so there’s some record I actually existed one day after I’ve left this mortal realm. I always think back to that scene in Coco, a film I absolutely adore but can only watch very seldom due to the heavy themes. Like, a whole man evaporates as the last person alive who remembers him dies. And that fucked me up.

I write this because I feel in order to defeat the rise of fascism in this country, we need to understand why people voted the way they did. We need to know how we got in this position. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending the opposition are all irredeemable monsters is not how we win people to our side. Seeing people as fully human and acknowledging their dreams and fears is.

Because at the end of the day, when you set aside all of our differences, every person just wants to carve out a permanent place in the story of humanity.

More Than Words: Five Quotes I Live By

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

If there’s one thing I can take away from being a writer my whole life, it’s the fact that words are powerful tools. We can use them to build people up, tear each other down, spread information, spread misinformation, and evoke strong emotions. Something I’ve always been fascinated by is the use of mantras or affirmations for self-improvement. Just repeating a certain phrase to yourself can make an impact on your mental health. And here’s the thing — your affirmations don’t have to be anything in particular, so long as they resonate with you.

Like a favorite quote!

As I began writing this post, I realized I have a handful of quotes I constantly repeat in my head like mantras. They’re the words that shape my personal philosophy and the way I approach life. I never really stopped to actively consider and appreciate how these words have shaped my experience as a human being. But I wanted to share a few of these quotes I carry with me.

She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.

–Zelda Fitzgerald

This first quote comes from the iconic flapper wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who absolutely should have been absolutely as famous as him in her own right. She was a Renaissance woman — a writer, painter, and dancer, who went on to die tragically in a mental hospital fire. I see a lot of myself in her story. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but had she lived today, she would have received a bipolar diagnosis like me.

Zelda was a wild child with many diverse interests, so I can’t imagine a woman like her would ever be bored. That’s kind of how I want to be. I don’t enjoy being idle, and I don’t ever want to be boring. I always want to be involved in exciting new projects and opportunities. Life’s too short to sit around and be bored. You gotta actively make a life worth living. That’s kind of what the quote means to me.

Show love with no remorse.

-Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Dosed”)

I remember the first time I heard this song and being entirely floored by how beautiful it was. It was in the car with my former drummer Jerry and another short-lived bandmate on the way to our bandiversary date. I’d heard plenty of Red Hot Chili Peppers before that day, but this was the song that really made me appreciate them on a deeper level. I loved the guitar work, the harmonies, and perhaps most importantly, the words.

I’ve always said I wanted this exact lyric tattooed on me someday. I just think it’s a simple concept. You’ve got nothing to lose by giving love freely and joyfully. We need much more love in this world, and now is not the time to be stingy with it. You’ll never regret treating people with kindness.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-Robert J. Hanlon

I hesitate to call this a quote. It’s technically a philosophical razor, which eliminates — or rather, shaves off — weak explanations for a particular phenomenon. The phenomenon at hand when it comes to Hanlon’s razor is “Why are people awful to each other?” And the explanation it offers is simple: people just don’t know any better.

Hanlon’s razor is why I still have faith in humanity, even after I’ve witnessed some of the worst of it. People very seldom intend to hurt each other. We’re all just big dum-dums that say and do the wrong things sometimes, and we really need to treat each other with more grace. That’s why I don’t believe in cancel culture — we need a grace culture. If you make an honest mistake and own up to it, that shouldn’t be held against you. No one is perfect, and we can’t hold people to impossible standards.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:21

I struggled to think of just one Bible verse to include, since so many have been influential to me growing up in the church. But this one felt really relevant with some of my recent posts about loving your enemy and fighting the rampant dehumanization of marginalized folks in our society. It’s easy to lash out against the people who are hurting me and my loved ones. But you have to remember that they’re human and they’re hurting too. Hurt people hurt people. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation. And it’s why I choose love — because you don’t know what someone else is going through.

The verse immediately before this one talks about how offering your enemy water when they’re thirsty is akin to heaping hot coals on their head. The Good Book is telling us to kill them with kindness. I saw a post recently that said the true test of a Christian is not whether they love Jesus, it’s whether they love Judas. I’ll admit it’s hard for me to show love to the people who hurt me. The human part of me wants revenge. But the divine answer remains to be love.

Where words fail, music speaks.

-Hans Christian Andersen

I’ll admit I never knew the person behind this quote was none other than the Danish purveyor of fairytales such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Thumbelina. But I’ve always related to this quote. As a child, the signs of my autism were very apparent. I would often stim by pacing or making bird sounds, and I had sensory issues surrounding things such as loud noises and upsetting smells (looking at you, ranch dressing). And like many autistic kids, I struggled to communicate with my peers. My classmates thought I was from France for the longest time because I never spoke in elementary or middle school, so they assumed I had an accent or didn’t know English or something.

But then I picked up a guitar, and everything changed. When I learned to play music and started performing, that was when I truly found my voice. Music was my way of reaching out into the world. I call music my first language for good reason. It was the bridge that connected me to other people for the first time in my life, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

What quotes do you live by? Leave your favorites in the comments!

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Chosen Family: The Life-Changing Power of Finding Your People

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Family.

That’s the first word that comes to mind after this Easter.

The day started in the fucking crapper. It was my third overnight shift as a caregiver and my chronic-whatever that’s making me not eat was really flaring up, to the point where I had to sit down every two minutes or so to keep from passing out. From the start of the day to the end of that night shift, I’d eaten maybe 400 calories, tops. I couldn’t get home from the facility fast enough. Once I walked through the door, I peeled off my scrubs and climbed into bed with my girlfriend and her other girlfriend, who were staying the night, and I slept like a damn rock.

I thought Easter was going to be pretty shitty as well, considering my state of health. And it would have been, except today made me realize I have the greatest support system on the planet.

From the moment I woke up this morning, the whole polycule doted on me. Livvy, my girlfriend, headed out into the wild to fetch me food I’d actually eat. Crass, my wife, hunted down my Sylveon kigurumi and made sure I was warm and comfortable. Meanwhile, Gabbi, my metamour, played all of the funniest bullshit she could find on YouTube for me. As my loved ones went above and beyond making sure I was healthy and happy, I came to this really beautiful realization.

We might not share a bloodline or a surname. But we’re family nonetheless.

Growing up, I was pretty close to my family. But after my grandmother’s passing when I was in high school, the glue that held my family together sort of dissolved. I haven’t had real quality time with my cousins in years, and my older siblings and I text maybe twice a year. The only blood relatives I still talk to regularly are my mom and dad, who are, in all fairness, the greatest humans to ever have the honor of being parents. But aside from them, I don’t really have a strong connection to my family, which kind of sucks, especially considering I wanted that kind of connection. There’s a reason I begged my parents to give me a little sibling for years.

Yet I’m realizing lately that family looks different for everyone, and sometimes, it’s your chosen family that’s really there when you need them.

This was a short post — more of a life update if I’m honest — but I wanted to write about how happy my little family of neurospicy queerdos made me this Easter, just by caring for me when I really needed it. I know it’s not conventional or traditional, but why stick to tradition if there are other ways that work just as well, or even better? They say it takes a village to raise a child, but really, we’re all still growing. We all need support throughout our lives. That’s what being with my partners means to me. That’s what being polyamorous means to me. That’s what being a family means to me.

I’ll leave y’all with a song by one of my favorite pop artists, Rina Sawayama, who absolutely should be as big as Chappell Roan.

Family is what you make it.

Re-Joyce: How My Grandma’s Name Became My Identity

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

Here’s a shocker: my government name is not Jessa Joyce. I explained my choice of stage/pen name in a previous blog post, but I didn’t really go in-depth about the significance of the name Joyce, which is legally my middle name. Jessa was an older girl from my high school who was way cooler than me, so I ganked her first name. But who was Joyce?

Well, readers, this was Joyce.

My grandmother was born Joyce Sturgill in 1930 in the state of Kentucky. No middle name, as she was born at the tail end of the time before middle names were common. She was by all accounts a sweet person, and from what I remember of her, she was a bit sassy as well. She loved cats. She loved her family. She was an ordinary housewife and enjoyed simply taking care of her kids and grandkids. She never wanted for more than that.

I still remember her signature Appalachian accent yelling “Jaysee Joyce” from the other room when I was messing with something I shouldn’t have been messing with. Like the one time I hid her sweatpants under the bed and she caught them vacuuming. That was fun! But she was always quick to forgive my childhood pranks. I would cuddle up in her lap and watch Wheel of Fortune with her before falling asleep. Because she lived with us for the last few years of her life, we became pretty close.

She had a great sense of humor. One thing the women in my family are renowned for is our silly, off-the-wall, sometimes irreverent humor. When me, my mom, and my grandma were in the same room, there was never a dull moment. We’d have the entire family howling. And the food-catchers! The joke was that the female members of the family grew to be, uh, well-endowed in conjunction with our messy eating habits. In other words, my grandma’s shirts were never clean!

She unfortunately passed when I was still in high school. I remember walking into the hospital room to find her lying there dead. It appeared as if she’d been lying there alone for a while — no one had checked on her. I was the one who found her, actually. That was one of the darkest moments of my life. Things weren’t the same for my family after that. We grew apart. She was the glue that was holding us all together.

My grandma was not without her flaws. She had severe anxiety her entire life and would seldom leave the house over it. Her first attempt at driving a car, she crashed into a building, so she never tried again. Her cool Oldsmobile languished in the garage. I know people talk about how trauma can be passed down through generations, and it’s been established that anxiety is hereditary. My mother has severe anxiety as well, which has manifested as not really wanting to leave the house or drive. Sometimes I wonder if my grandmother’s and mother’s mental health issues poured into my own, as I’ve had almost crippling anxiety for most of my life. I don’t fault them for this, of course — we don’t pick our genes. In fact, it gives me perspective. I’m assuming these issues go back even further, perhaps multiple generations. The fact that the strong women in my family survived this long is remarkable.

Still, I don’t want to live in fear like the women in my family who came before me. I want to go outside. I want to live in the light. My grandmother was an amazing woman, but I’m sad she never got to adventure or see the world. That’s one of the reasons I embraced her name as part of my name. I want her legacy to live on through me. I want to travel and create and thrive, and I hope she can see me as I become everything I was meant to be. I hope I bring honor to her name.

Grandma Joyce never got to know me as Jessa Joyce. Sometimes I wonder what she’d think of me today, if she’d be proud of me. She wasn’t a performer or entertainer by any means. This life would be foreign to her. But I know she’d love me no matter what I went on to do or accomplish. She was more than just the matriarch of my family. She’s a part of me.

A Mother’s Love (Fiction)

“I think you’re going to be just fine.”

Those were the words that made Liam’s eyes well up as the light of the computer bounced off his horn-rimmed glasses. His pink face turned into a puffy hot blimp as the tears streamed down in twisty little trails, leaving dark splotches on the collar of his shirt.

You see, those were exactly the words Liam needed to hear after the fight that led up to where he was now.

He’d been agonizing over what to tell his mother for months — no, years. He’d always kind of known. He never did fit in with the girls his age, and he felt drawn to this different, alternate version of himself, a version he was actually comfortable with. He’d made a clandestine ritual of throwing out his femme clothes and began seeing a doctor in secret for testosterone.

After several months, though, the changes were impossible to hide. His flute-like voice had started deepening into a warm tenor. His peach fuzz had begun turning into a proper smattering of patchy teen boy facial hair. He’d been concealing his already-small breasts with a binder. He even started smelling like your average 18-year-old guy (well, part of that was admittedly the Axe).

He had to say something. Anything.

“Mom,” he started, appearing in the doorway of the living room where his mother was seated watching Jeopardy. “I need to tell you something. I’m a boy. My name is Liam.”

“Leah—“

“Liam, Mom.”

His mother snatched the remote and made a show of muting the television. “Leah, this isn’t you. You’re my little girl.”

Liam crossed his arms. “Mom, I’ve never felt like a girl. I don’t want to be a girl. That’s not who I am.”

“Who put these ideas in your head?” she hissed indignantly.

“No one, I promise! I’ve always felt like I was different! I just have a word for it now, Mom. I’m trans.”

The remote flew across the room. “No child of mine is going to fall for that transsexual nonsense. Leah, go say your goodbyes to your internet friends, because starting tomorrow, I’m going to be monitoring everything you do online.”

Liam’s bright blue eyes went wide. “You can’t do that! I’m eighteen!”

“And you live under my roof until you graduate, Leah. I’m not entertaining any of this. You are a girl and you always will be. I named you Leah and you will die a Leah.”

Silence.

“I just wanted you to understand me,” Liam muttered, thankful the darkness of the dimmed living room concealed his tears. He turned away from his mother and bolted up the stairs to his room.

“‘Say goodbye to my internet friends,’” Liam repeated under his breath. “Like I have any.”

Desperate for advice, he booted up the search engine on his laptop and frantically searched “FTM forums.” FTM, of course, being the widely used abbreviation for “female-to-male,” or more precisely, trans dudes.

What Liam didn’t know is that “FTM” had another meaning he wasn’t aware of, one he’d not considered when he received a DM from a certain stranger.

WildHeart39: I see you’re looking for some advice?

LonelySloth2007: hi, I’m 18 and really scared

WildHeart39: Yeah, I was there too not too long ago.

LonelySloth2007: really? how did you tell your mom??

WildHeart39: It just got really obvious after a while and I had to say something.

LonelySloth2007: that’s exactly what happened to me

WildHeart39: How did she take it?

LonelySloth2007: not great lol

WildHeart39: That’s a shame. It should be a happy occasion, you know?

LonelySloth2007: exactly, and it’s like she doesn’t even know who I am anymore

WildHeart39: Were you close before?

LonelySloth2007: we were always really close but she can’t accept me like this

WildHeart39: That’s a real shame. You seem like a really sweet person.

LonelySloth2007: I needed to hear that, thank you 🙂

WildHeart39: I won’t lie, I’m a little scared myself. No one gives you a how-to guide!

LonelySloth2007: yeah, like the body changes are exciting but scary

WildHeart39: It’s almost like going through puberty again! Like what the hell are my titties doing?

LonelySloth2007: I heard all the fat gets redistributed though with all the hormones and shit lol

WildHeart39: Don’t get me started on the hormones! I feel like I’m going crazy all the time!

LonelySloth2007: is that normal?

WildHeart39: I think it is, but I think you get used to it eventually.

LonelySloth2007: how long did it take everyone to be accepting?

WildHeart39: I’ll be honest, a lot of people weren’t accepting. I come from a very religious family.

LonelySloth2007: my mom’s not religious, she’s just mean sometimes

WildHeart39: Sadly some people are just that. I always say that if religion never existed, people would find some other excuse to be a dick.

LonelySloth2007: that’s so true tho

WildHeart39: I don’t know a lot about being a parent yet, but I know that you’re supposed to love your child unconditionally, you know? I already love mine.

LonelySloth2007: you seem really kind

WildHeart39: I’m just trying to be a light, you know? The way they always taught us in Sunday school. Be a light unto the world, or whatever. At least I’m living out that part of Jesus’s message. Even if I’m a filthy sinner to most people.

LonelySloth2007: you’re not a filthy sinner!

WildHeart39: And neither are you.

LonelySloth2007: you really mean that?

WildHeart39: I know we’re just internet strangers, but I really appreciated talking to you tonight. I don’t think you’re a bad person or a sinner. I think you have a beautiful heart.

LonelySloth2007: …

WildHeart39: Did I say something wrong?

LonelySloth2007: no, just no one’s ever been this nice to me before

WildHeart39: I’m glad I could be that to you!

LonelySloth2007: I’m really scared things are gonna go wrong

WildHeart39: Listen, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this world, and to be honest, I’m worried for my little one. I hope I can give her the kind of life she deserves. And I hope if she ever comes to me with something that’s bothering her, that I can be there for her.

LonelySloth2007: you sound like a good dad

WildHeart39: *mom, but it looks like I’m going to be doing both duties anyways!

LonelySloth2007: fair enough haha

WildHeart39: Anyways, the cravings are hitting me hard tonight, so I’m gonna go DoorDash myself something. But keep your head up. I think you’re going to be just fine.

At that exact moment, a young woman logged off the first-time mom forum to order herself some cookies. She rested her hands on her swollen belly and smiled.

And somewhere on the other side of the nation, Liam smiled, too.