Falling Back in Love with Being Human
Letters to Lost Souls
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A national bestseller in Canada, hailed by The New York Times as an “intimate expression of self-acceptance and forgiveness, tenderly written to fellow trans women and others.”
“Required reading.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 bestselling author of Untamed
A THEM AND AUTOSTRADDLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD
What happens when we imagine loving the people—and the parts of ourselves—that we do not believe are worthy of love?
Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she’s always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.
But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the viciousness with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and ideals she’d built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems—and whether there’s a difference—she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hypnotherapist Thom (Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars) explores hope, forgiveness, and love in these heartrending prose poems. Growing up in Vancouver as a Chinese Canadian trans girl, Thom was no stranger to what she calls the "harsher side of human nature," but faith in the power of human bonds "has always been my solace and my guide," even when "my faith was tested." Her determination to write her way out of a mid-pandemic period of personal loss gave rise to a series of love letters—to the dead, to the strength of her younger self, and even to those who've caused her harm. One missive celebrates the joy of being trans-femme, even amid a climate of fear and violence; another extends a cautious olive branch to "trans-exclusionary radical feminists," with whom she shares the desire for a safer world. Interleaved are ritual suggestions for readers to drop stones into a river to release their burdens, or make a "list of five good things that you frequently do for other people" and do "them all, at least once, for yourself." Thom's unvarnished honesty and earnestness immediately draws readers in—"This book is my act of prayer in a collapsing world," she writes. "I hope it can be yours too." This fierce and tender volume leaves a mark.
