Your Holiday Sibling

If you are not already aware, there is this website called Your Holiday Mom. The basic concept of the website is that Mothers (and if you look at the links at the bottom, Father, Siblings, and Friends) write reassuring stories and letters to LGBTQUAPI+ children and adults who may not have a safe home or environment to go to for the holidays. It's a genuinely sweet website and I highly recommend giving it a read through when you have some tissues on hand.

They've gotten their full amount of letters for the holidays, so it's too late for me to submit a letter. So, I am writing this letter here.

Oh, sorry for that noise... I forgot to pause Star Trek on Netflix.

Hey, holiday sibling. I hope things are well.

Things are okay here: my job is stressful, but everything else is pretty great. My boyfriend and I are probably going to go see The Good Dinosaur this upcoming weekend and I'm organizing everyone's gifts for this year.
Remember when we used to go see movies together? The people behind us got so mad when we kept obnoxiously laughing through Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. (The scene with Harry doing the pincers at Aragog's funeral. Ridiculous.)

I know this time of year is super hard. It sucks that the people who should love you decide that it's in their interests to erase and mock your identity. It breaks my heart as a witness, but I can't imagine what it must be like to live it.

But I'm here for you. I want you to be as you are and to live your truth to the best of your ability. You are a flower in this rainstorm, a star in this cloudy night, and a +1 up mushroom when you've got just one life left in Mario.

The world is a dark place already, but it was darker until you were in it. You are loved and you are so important. We live in tumultuous times and the fact that you are living your life as you see fit is a revolutionary act of self love and self affirmation.

It's not much, holiday sibling, but I want you to know that I stand beside you and your identity. Life is too short to not live the way we want to.

Keep being you and doing what you do. And remember, watch out for the pincers.