Dear Family, 

Insert obligatory self-deprecating joke in place of an apology for how late this letter is. To my credit, I made the commitment to myself to get it done before Christmas, and given how much of the body of this letter has been completed, I think I might actually manage to keep that. Take a gander at the date at the top of this post and see for yourself. I promise I won’t change it. 

Work

School is back in session. 

Yes, I know, that happened in August, but I posted that letter on the nineteenth, so this is still technically news. I’m back on my school year schedule, and back to the kids who I have (mostly) known for much longer. 

It’s crazy to think that the batch of first graders under my care that first year at Forest Knolls are now in third grade. Parents of the world, I am so sorry if I’ve ever scoffed at sentiments such as “they grow up so fast.” This is only my third year in this branch of this company, and already the math fails to add up. What do you mean, one plus two equals three? They were in first grade two years ago! That doesn’t give them the right to be in third grade now!

And yet somehow, at the same time, it’s already my third year here. I’ve been at Forest Knolls KAH for longer than most of my current coworkers, but I still feel so green. I’m a mess. I don’t know what I’m doing. 

I’m getting ahead of myself. We need context. But first, let me shoehorn in this Kid Quote of the Month.

“I know what you should do this weekend. You should watch My Hero Academia. There’s some inappropriate stuff in there that I shouldn’t be watching, but it’s definitely okay for you to watch.”
—Cipher, grade four, 09/25/2024

Moments like this are pure delight. They’re the reason I’ve stuck around under the crushing weight of my own insecurities. They’re the reason I refuse to acknowledge my own incompetence, instead striving to get better. 

This isn’t me fishing for compliments; I truly am just that insecure. And I think it’s warranted! I’m not good at getting and holding the attention of groups of kids. And before you claim that that’s okay—that it’s like herding cats, that no one’s really good at it and that I’m doing a great job all things considered—I’d like to turn your attention to my coworkers. 

Oh wait, you can’t see them. I guess I’ll just describe them, then: They’re better than me. They’re not perfect, and it’s not easy for them, but they are nonetheless leagues better than me. They can stay collected in moments that I would find overwhelming. They can switch between Fun Mode and Stern Mode in zero seconds flat when the situation warrants it. They’re not like me, with my weak little voice and unregulated facial expressions that are apparently impossible to take seriously. My tendency to let my emotions take over. My slow processing speed. My easily-overstimulated garbage brain. 

What, exactly, am I supposed to do about those? How do I fix myself?

When I was in high school, I was subjected to a lot of therapy buzzwords. For instance: “boundaries.” I know what the word means, and that it is not a synonym for “abstaining from physical contact with any and every individual, regardless of your relationship and communication with them.” You probably know that as well, so you can spot the issue with the following scenario:

A high school student is comforting their close personal friend as they tearfully vent about something that’s been bothering them. They are making themselves very vulnerable, and the comforter, knowing that their friend thrives on physical contact, offers them a hug. The friend wipes their tears and nods gratefully. Before any hugging can occur, the homeroom teacher scolds them with a shouted reminder: “BOUNDARIES!”

I understand and respect the logic behind having a hard and fast rule against hugging in a mental health facility—because that’s what it was, as much as it was a school—and I will continue to insist that if that is your policy, you are obligated to offer an actual explanation. “Boundaries” is not an explanation, especially when used in a manner that is blatantly incorrect. Let’s be honest: if anyone in the (real-life, regularly-recurring) example outlined above has bad boundaries, it is the adult who is listening to a private conversation from the other side of the room, waiting for someone to mention a hug so they can jump in with a single word that lost all meaning about seven thousand misuses ago. 

That’s not the only word that my special ed school thoroughly ruined for me. There’s another word in particular that my treatment team absolutely adored, and seven years has not been enough to scrub the word of that association. It’s a nice word; a word associated with kindness and inner peace, and to me, it feels like a weapon. 

Any time I pointed out that something was unfair, or that I was being mistreated, I got a variation of this calm command:

“I think you need to practice some radical acceptance.” 

It was clever. A nice way of saying “life isn’t fair.” I wasn’t asking life to be fair; I was asking them to be fair. This was my treatment team, my teachers, all the staff who were supposed to advocate for me and instead insisted that I accept the things that could not be changed. 

Things could be changed. They just couldn’t be changed by me. So instead of expecting those in power to help, I had to “accept.”

That whole thing sounded like a huge tangent from my job, but trust me, I have a plan. 

There’s a big whiteboard on my bedroom wall. I usually use it for reminders and checklists, and sometimes little doodles or motivational quotes. Roughly two years ago, in a moment of powerful self-assurance (and spite), I covered about half of it with an Ari original:

“WHAT TRUTH CAN I REFUSE TO ACCEPT TODAY?”

That quote stayed on the board for several months, reminding me that some truths are unacceptable. Life isn’t fair. Why aren’t we forcing it to be as fair as it can be?

People are starving. So I volunteer at Shepherd’s Table to prepare free meals. 

The ocean is full of plastic. So I pick up litter on my walk home from work. 

I’m bad at my job. So I do it anyway. 

I do it for Egg, the kindergartener who is vocal most afternoons but will barely talk to anyone but me in the mornings.

Doodle, whose mom thanked me for being the reliable comfort she’d been told I provide on rough days. 

Beanie, who feels comfortable enough to talk to me about his own gender identity. 

And me. Yeah, there’s a selfish element there, too. I enjoy planning activities with the kids; it gives me a way to scratch the constant itch of wanting to make some silly craft. I like chasing them around in a game of freeze tag until my throat is raw and I’m too out of breath to inform someone that their parent has arrived to pick them up. I get the warmest of fuzzies when I notice a young kid switching out their usual markers for a pencil and making an obvious attempt to mimic my light drawing strokes. 

My insecurities at work aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept them. 

Never again will I accept.

Gathering in His name

Speaking of unacceptable truths, how about those handbook updates, am I right, fellow Saints? Specifically, 38.6.23: “Individuals Who Identify as Transgender.” I find it fascinating that 38.6.1-22 are organized alphabetically from “Abortion” to “Surrogate Motherhood” before jumping all the way back to “I.” I can only assume that the section was originally titled “Transgender Individuals” until someone realized while proofreading that such a heading kinda-sorta implies that “transgender” is a valid adjective and not a contagious delusion. Shame that they didn’t proofread a second time to catch the subsequent error in alphabetization. 

Wow, I am being really grumpy in this one.

Anyway, I don’t think that it was necessary to switch the words around like that, since the text beneath made the Church’s stance on us “individuals who identify as transgender” crystal clear. Besides, if you think that phrasing is bad, get ready for “individuals who pursue surgical, medical, or social transition away from their biological sex at birth.” Those fifteen words are repeated, verbatim, three times in the one page of guiding principles that supplements this updated section of the handbook. 

You know, that guiding principles document that declares I must leave overnight activities for the night to sleep elsewhere. The one that forbids me from working with children or youth. The one that condemns trans men and trans women to choosing between A) using the restroom that “aligns with their biological sex at birth,” or B) using their preferred restroom, but only while a trusted person stands outside the door to tell everyone else, “Don’t go in there—it’s occupied by an individual that has pursued surgical, medical, or social transition away from their biological sex at birth.”¹

You can sugarcoat it with talk of “sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and Christlike love.” You can tell me that “care must be taken to respect the privacy and dignity of all individuals.” It will not change the fact that these policies are dehumanizing and cruel. 

Part of me wonders if the nice words are there not for my comfort, but for that of the cisgender members. Is it that the Church’s leadership doesn’t want to be exclusionary, or that it doesn’t want any of the “good” members to feel guilty for being exclusionary? Are they trying to keep me in the fold with their sickly-sweet reassurances, or are they using them as a smokescreen against the very fire they’ve set to my safe haven? 

I don’t know. I’m just heartbroken.

So, why do I still bother? Why have I spent so much of this Christmas season at church, singing about Jesus and the gospel?

We’ll get back to that.

Loyal readers may remember the Emmaus retreat from a couple letters ago. Well, I have since been in occasional contact with a few of the people I met there, and one of them, Binh, mentioned attending a conference called Gather. I was intrigued, but hesitant. Unlike the Emmaus retreat, which was in Maryland, Gather would be in Provo, Utah. I would need to buy plane tickets and take at least a day or two off work to attend. 

So, I did. Hannah and Emma were gracious enough to put me up from that Thursday to Sunday in September, giving me a place to stay during the two days of the conference and the ones bookending it. I didn’t have much time to hang out, but I did get to squeeze in some fun with my sisters and their respective partners, as well as friends Tommy and Lola. 

While I was at the conference, I felt the best kind of weird. 

I realized as soon as I typed that sentence that it may be confusing, so allow me to clarify: “Feeling weird” can mean “feeling unlike oneself,” or it can be “feeling as if one may be perceived as unusual to an outside observer.” In this case, I felt weird in both ways. I was weirdly confident, weirdly comfortable, weirdly surrounded by equally weird people. I even approached an older woman with a familiar surname on her lanyard to ask if she had any relatives in Maryland—while she was talking to her friends! What was I thinking? Who did I think I was? Who was this new Ari, full to the brim with such gall?!

The woman, Rita, did not mind my chutzpah. She was delightful, and we had a lovely conversation, even after she confirmed that she was not related to my church friends with the same surname. She later invited Binh and me to sit with her family during one of the presentations. 

I ran into Binh shortly after this exchange. They’re the one I knew from Emmaus. We spent practically every moment of the conference together. We would temporarily latch onto other groups and invite people to join us—because it was us; not “a group of friends and also Ari.” And I knew that, and I still know it. Those insecurities I mentioned earlier were nowhere to be found. 

Between presentations, I occupied myself wandering through the art show that had been set up in the convention center. I recognized several prints of the works of J. Kirk Richards, and even an original painting of his. There was also a cool plaque of sorts in the shape of the Salt Lake Temple with a rainbow on the edges that could only be seen when looked at from an angle. It was all incredible, but the piece that stuck out to me most was a sculpture by Hannah Olive, titled “After The Manner Which I Shall Show Thee.” 

I felt moved by the beauty of the sculpture, and especially by the body language of the figure. One hand clutches the edge of the ship, while the one holding the needle is raised high in the air in a position reminiscent of a determined blacksmith bringing a hammer down on an anvil—muscles braced, working hard. A ship-stitcher on a mission. 

The paper in front of it reads the following: “People may not understand why you are trying to build a ship. They might be angry with you for trying to build a ship. They might tell you that you’re stupid for trying and that you should just go back to Jerusalem. You may not know how to build a ship, or even know anyone else in your life who does. But the Lord can show you, personally, how you can build a life with who you are and what you have available to you. He can lead you to where you’re meant to be.”

The allusion to 1 Nephi 17 is obvious, and it made me think of the story in a few ways I had never considered before.

I’ve read First Nephi as many times as any good Latter-day Saint kid, so of course I knew that Nephi had no prior experience building ships. I knew that the Lord showed him how to accomplish that. What I never realized was how applicable that lesson could be to me. We say in church that such events documented in scripture always have a timeless “moral of the story,” and I believe that. However, those morals are not always obviously actionable. John 2 teaches me that Jesus loves us; it’s not a lesson on what to do when I run out of wine at a party. “Jesus loves you” and “God is powerful” are great lessons, even though they aren’t specific instructions. So I think I can be forgiven for assuming that the story of God teaching Nephi how to build a ship is simply another “faith comes by miracles” story. Besides, the plates of Nephi were intended as a historical record as much as scripture, and the story of how this family got from one continent to another would be a pretty big thing to leave out. 

Suddenly, it’s so much more than that. I could draw direct parallels between Nephi’s attempt to build a ship and my attempt to build a community. Nephi was no shipbuilder, no toolmaker, no ore-miner. I am no community leader, no event planner, no theological teacher. 

But with the help of the Lord, I could be. 

Here’s where I get back to the question I posed earlier: Why do I still bother? 

Because I can. 

Insert obligatory² apology for once again devoting a sizable chunk of this letter to queerness. 

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat

…and it doesn’t feel real. Even with all the lights on our house, the many musical performances at the temple visitor’s center, and Dad crying on stage during “Silent Night,” this Christmas season doesn’t feel quite as Christmassy as I’m accustomed to, because Sophie has to go and get married. 

It’s okay, though. Luke is nice and makes good puns, so I can forgive them for hijacking my favorite holiday season, just this one year. 

I probably wouldn’t have included any Christmas talk in this letter at all were it not for our ward’s youth, who decided to take the “777 Challenge” this year. Someone learned that if they pressed 777 on a Giving Machine, it would donate one of every item in the machine. For the machine at the Columbia Mall, this would cost $1,382. So these teens, with absolutely no prompting from any adults, just decided to make that happen twice. 

This has nothing to do with me. Dad hired them to rake the leaves off our enormous yard, and I donated in exchange for two plates of homemade cookies. That’s the extent of our tenuous connection to the project. I just wanted to give them a shoutout, I suppose. Merry Christmas, you delightful youth.

Oh, right. Wedding. It hasn’t happened yet, but I should probably write something about that. I could list off a bunch of wonderful things about the little sister we’re sending off—her intelligence, her determination, her cleverness, her patience, her compassion, how she’s such a good listener, how she deserves the world—but most of you already know all that. So here are a few of my favorite Sophie things that those who have not lived with her may not be aware of:

When she was about fourteen, at a craft fair in Idaho, she bought a silver rolling ring. It’s made of seven bands interlocked in a fashion to allow them to roll over each other as it slides up and down her finger. She fidgets with that ring. Constantly. One time, after I pointed out how this certain book character often pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, she said, “I wonder what my tic would be, if I was being described like a character in a book.” She said this as she was rolling her ring.

I don’t know if she still does this, but she used to sing around the house and repeat the most climactic part of a song over and over. I loved listening to her channeling Nina from In The Heights, singing the bridge about climbing to the highest place on every fire escape (restless to climb, getting every scholarship, saving every dollar, etc). Then she’d reach “WITH MY EYES ON THE HORIZON?” and start back at the beginning of that dramatic bridge. 

Insert obligatory third thing to complete the rule of three. Given time, I could come up with a million more, but it’s Christmas Eve, and it’s late. I’ve got to get to bed before Santa comes. 

I love you guys so much. Have a wonderful Christmas, all. 

Merrily yours,
the person who just spent a solid seven minutes trying to come up with a Christmas pun on their name and has only “we three kings of orient Ari” to show for it 

1. This one doesn’t actually affect me personally. There’s no non-binary restroom, so I usually default to the women’s to avoid raised eyebrows when a unisex one is unavailable. However, I felt the need to mention it, since this part is one of the most heinous violations of human dignity that the church is currently endorsing against trans people—oops, I mean “individuals who identify as transgender.”
2. Okay, I say “obligatory,” but I really do mean it. Honest. I swear I’m not doing it on purpose.