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The New York Times | Tiny Love Stories
September 2025
A decade after Dad died, I’d domesticated my grief into an item on my to-do list: Pack backpacks; supervise homework; acknowledge his gnawing absence. “If I had a time machine,” my 7-year-old said on Father’s Day, “I’d tell Steve not to kill himself. He never would have decided to die if he knew we’d exist.” “Of course not,” I replied, a rare lie. We discuss Dad’s suicide without secrecy or shame, but I can’t yet reveal its complexity. “You said he would’ve wanted us to call him Abuelo,” my son said. “Abuelo Steve, I wish I’d gotten to meet you.”
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August 2025
None of these murderers were trans, but the false accusations still bounce around the far-right echo chamber. In 2023, when a trans man actually was responsible for a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, they seized the opportunity to support their baseless theory.
So I was far from surprised to see the MAGA-sphere pounce again this week.
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July 2025
As fertile as I’ve found this foray into existential dread, I have to put it back on the shelf. Parenting in the present vs. the past requires that separation from the theoretical. The day-to-day takes place on a more physical and practical plane, and my children demand every ounce of functionality I can muster.
Still, beyond meeting their needs on the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, it’s incumbent on me to make sure they have the space to imagine a life for themselves. A life that’s authentic and right to them—no matter the extent to which it exceeds my own imagination.
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March 2025
It’s not an exaggeration to say that President Trump is running plays straight out of Hitler’s playbook. And it’s not just the hypervigilance I inherited that makes me take note. Trans kids like E. are canaries in the coal mine. If we don’t stand up for them and stop Trump in his tracks, history makes patently clear where this path leads. You may not bear the brunt of this persecution yourself. Your children might be fine. But, as M. Gessin argues with ferocious eloquence, “The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others.”
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February 2025
We are all one millimeter away from losing our most fundamental civil rights: E. and other trans youth are the canaries in the coal mine. As the granddaughter of a Jewish refugee who fled Germany in 1931, I feel unshakable echoes of the Nazi rise to power. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem "First They Came," is cited so often it’s a cliché, but his admonition has never rung truer in my lifetime.
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June 2024
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December 2022
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Kveller
September 2022