The petrol fumes sting my eyes as I step into the motorboat and don an orange life vest. I hand a vest to my teenage son.

“Juma, here you go.” He reaches for it.  

My husband, Raymond, grabs a vest for himself while answering for Juma, “Whatever.” Raymond repurposes his vest as a pillow and naps. I curse him under my breath. Back home, we enforce life vests when kayaking. It’s not the first time I wonder when Raymond and I stopped acting like partners.

Join a fantastic community of creative writers at Mason Jar Press’s launch of volume 4 of Jarnal. Will reads an excerpt from his memoir piece, “Confessions of a Toddler,” published in this volume.

“Once you sewed the boys matching Star Wars blankets, and you made Mandy and me matching Strawberry Shortcake dresses. In a rare picture of toddler-me, I am smiling and shy, my soft blond hair floating around my head, your sweet baby angel. But what I remember is how I loved those blue Star Wars blankets. What made you think I wanted a dress?”

"I thought this kind of love was the exaggerated stuff of storybooks. But they don’t write storybooks about boys like us." In my guest post at The Queer Love Project, I share how Joshua and I queered our wedding to be the queer, trans celebration we all deserve.

As a toddler, I was horrified to realize that I would grow up to have breasts like my mom. As mine changed through adolescence, adulthood and breastfeeding, my relationship to them got so complicated.

"My husband and I were both raised as girls in big families, which I think helps us at least know how to do all the chores. We communicate about and pick the roles, rather than assume them..."

On the outside, I was a 19-year-old girl entering my first marriage under the Mormon Church. Inside, I was struggling with gender dysphoria. How have you handled your memorabilia that no longer fits?

I wore the uncomfortable female undergarments growing up in Utah ... but when I left the church and came out as trans, I didn't expect it would be hard for me to get rid of them.

This Pushcart Prize-nominated essay shows how I finally stopped carrying my ex-husband’s baggage for him.

Sitting in the audience at a recent Elliot Page event, 35 years later, I can hear a voice scolding me to keep my knees together.

I was gutted recently when the Harry Potter author successfully obliterated more rights for people like me. She was the key to my survival when I came out to my Mormon husband and family.

Writer Will Richardson remembers a recent Halloween adventure, more frightening for his and his husband’s journey into MAGA territory than any spooky costumes at hand.

All my partners had rejected me in some way for being a man. For looking like a man, for feeling like a man, for thinking like a man, where man is a bad word.