Where the Heart Draws its Lines

Two weeks ago, I got a call from my brother telling me that my mom had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. It was unclear if she was going to make it. It wasn’t a call I wanted to get, but it wasn’t out of the blue — she has cancer. The first time she got it, I was a kid. Now I’m forty years old, and it’s still just as scary. The space between childhood and adulthood is very thin.

I wonder why some people live long lives and some people don’t. My dad’s aunt, Mae Pearl, lived to be 104. Every single day, she swallowed a tablespoon of Vaseline. Is that the secret? I’m not sure. It was likely the combination of old wives’ tales and all the miles she was required to walk during her 50 years as an Avon Lady, a door-to-door cosmetic saleswoman. Mae Pearl lived a beautiful, long life.

But just as remarkable as Mae Pearl’s long life is the much shorter life of the luna moth. It’s the moth with honeydew colored wings that look like they were drawn for Disney’s Fantasia. I recently learned that they only live a few days — a lifespan so short that they don’t even have mouths. They fly with their backs pointed at the moon as they float around the night sky. Their bodies are covered in hair-like scales that resemble fur. Many would say that their sole purpose is reproduction, but I think their purpose is way bigger than that. Their transition from juvenile larvae to beautiful, intricate adults takes nearly a year. Although as adults they are only here for a short amount of time, they add so much wonder to the world.

The day after my brother texted me, I jumped on a plane to Alabama so that I could be one of my mom’s full-time caretakers. Facing her mortality up-close and personal has me asking myself, “What is the wonder I add to the world as I float across the sky of my life?” What are my versions of Mae Pearl’s Vaseline snacks or the luna moth’s dramatic wings? How do the things that make me uniquely me affect how I navigate the world?

Being here with my mom reminds me that life is fleeting. If I could have fifty more years with her, I would. It took me years to mature out of my juvenile phase, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The lessons I’ve learned have been hard won, but only in the last few years have they allowed me to have a relationship with my family — the people I love the most. I’ve learned not to regret how my life has unfolded, but my time with my mom as an adult has felt way more like a luna moth’s life than Mae Pearl’s life. Sometimes what happens in that space between birth and death feels way too short.

There may, however, be something to glean from looking back. Something that we can learn from our past about how things have kept us from ourselves, from relationships, and from a life lived to the fullest.

I grew up in small-town Alabama. Like much of the country, it’s a place where borders are as real as the dangerous consequences many people face for crossing them. These days, many believe that if you cross a border illegally, you should be punished. But what if borders are at their worst when they are meant to keep people out? What would happen if instead, borders were meant to signal a crossing into a new experience that challenges us, helps us evolve, and catapults us into a bigger understanding of the world?

Before Alabama was a state — before any of the colonies existed — in many Indigenous cultures, one could walk into the unknown and expect to be welcomed. A stranger was not an intrusion, but a relative waiting to be recognized. Many Indigenous people on Turtle Island (North America) were part of kinship networks that extended hundreds — even thousands — of miles. Before there were the same kind of rigid borders we have today, travel was freer.

But let me back up. This is a piece about what I call soft borders — the ones we draw in our minds and hearts. I’m interested in how soft borders prohibit us or welcome us. Just like geopolitical borders, soft borders can have a real effect on who we are in relationship with.

Life is fleeting, for sure. But one of the great paradoxes of humanity is that life can also be long and complex and beautiful. The space between Mae Pearl’s birth and her death was exponentially longer than the space a luna moth experiences. A life as long as Mae Pearl’s is often full of mysteries and surprises. The extent to which we embrace those surprises is often determined by how we respond to the soft borders we’ve drawn.

Does the border patrol of our heart harden the borders and keep us from experiencing the kind of free travel that Indigenous peoples practiced before colonization?

I’d love to tell you a story about how I hardened my soft borders and lost my family. Eventually, I turned everything around again, but It feels like it’s been a flash — a luna moth life. Even though it feels short, my story spans decades and starts with my coming out.

Hueytown, Alabama was an incredible place to be a kid. My brothers and I rode our bikes through the neighborhood and pretended to be X-Men in the backyard. My family loved Jesus, George Bush, and sweet tea (not necessarily in that order). Our faith and our politics were the first borders I can remember that we drew between us and the rest of the world.

We were at church multiple times a week for various nights of study or service, and I devoured every second of it. I loved the church. I loved the scriptures, the songs, the fellowship, and the camaraderie. These days, even as a non-believer, I have yet to find a community as devoted to one another as the one I experienced in the Christian church of my childhood.

But something was always amiss.

I remember on my 16th birthday, I had an emotional breakdown. Just as my mom served the birthday cake she had made, I burst into tears, saying “I don’t wanna be 16!” I had been keenly aware of my queerness, but deathly afraid of coming out. I didn’t want to evolve into my true self. It was too scary! Nevertheless, around the time I was 18, I met up with another questioning queer who lived in a neighboring community. It was electrifying, as if for the first time, all the terminals of my true self connected and the current of my life flowed freely.

I felt like that moment was the beginning of my life. Like I had transitioned out of my larval phase and into the adult phase of my life. I had become the luna moth. My wings were spreading. For the first time, I was flying. I was still terrified. I understood why the beautiful, intricate moth only lived for a brief moment. It had spent most of its life on the ground, protected in a cocoon. As beautiful and magical as it was to be an adult, it was scary to fly in through the sky of life. It was scary to cross those soft borders into new territories. It was scary to expand awareness and experience all that the world has to offer.

But what if the luna moth could live in its magic for a long time? I think that’s what people like Mae Pearl figure out. And that’s what I was beginning to learn. By being myself, it gave me permission to cross the soft borders and better understand the world. It gave me permission to allow others to do the same.

But that was antithetical to everything I had learned — or been taught — in the church. So, I continued to hide my truth. I continued to harden my borders. My queerness was a luna moth phase. Like it was wonderful for a moment, but it didn’t have a way to feed, so it was going to die too soon.

I was aware of my queerness as I bumped against the borders of those in my community — rigid religious and political borders that didn’t allow the kind of free flowing travel I wanted. Coming out revealed the very real consequences of crossing certain borders, and it was devastatingly hard.

Back in 1957, Johns Hopkins professor, Dr. Carl Richter, performed a study on rats. Renowned for their swimming ability, he placed them in glass jars. They’d swim excitedly on the surface of the water before diving to the bottom, nosing their way around the perimeter until only minutes later, they would give up and drown. Astonished, the professor tried again. Only the next time, he gave each rat a break. When they started to drown, he would remove them from the water, dry them off, and give them a moment to rest. When he placed the rats back into the water, they would swim for sixty hours. The findings of Dr. Richter’s research can be summed up in one word: hope. When we believe the circumstances of our life can change, we are compelled to try harder, to take risks, to endure.

That’s how I felt sitting in Cliff Simon’s intro to design class my last semester of college. I had studied biology for 4 years, but still felt like I hadn’t figured out how to be myself. The borders of my heart were still hard, and I wasn’t allowing anyone in. But Cliff shared a story that saved my life. He talked openly about being gay and how that gave him a life of joy and freedom. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone talk openly about their queerness. Cliff’s story was my hope. It gave me the courage to endure. It compelled me to come out.

Coming out didn’t go the way I wanted it to. I was hurt. I was afraid. I was reactionary. I was told that I was broken, brainwashed, and hell-bound. I was a whole lot of things, but mostly, I was out of there. I moved to New York City, and I estranged myself from my family. That was a conscious decision to harden my soft borders. I thought that if they couldn’t accept my queerness, then they couldn’t have any of me. And I tried to convince myself that I didn’t want any of them either. I was a thousand miles from home, and now I could finally focus on myself.

Before I go any further, I’d like to say that when I talk about hardening or softening borders, it’s not a judgement. It’s an observation. It’s not good or bad to keep them soft or make them hard. That’s a decision every person must make for themselves so that they are healthy and happy. I’m simply sharing my experience and how I navigated the world as me.

It’s also not always about what borders I draw for myself. Sometimes, the borders others draw around us are hard. I remember teaching Sunday school before I moved away from Alabama. One Sunday morning, the director of Sunday school asks me to sign a declaration of faith. The very last clause said, “I am not a homosexual and I will not participate in homosexual activities.” That was a hard border that was not very welcoming to me. So, I left the church that day and never went back.

I spent the majority of the 20 years after my 18th birthday slowly losing my family. The decision to harden my borders, to estrange myself, and to stay as far away as possible also gave me time and space to find who I really am outside of the religious and political borders of home. So, while I lost them, I found myself. I didn’t know how to do both at the same time.

I really struggled to come out of my cocoon. After I moved to New York, I started a nonprofit, VideoOut, that traveled all over the United States talking to LGBTQ+ people. What I learned is that most queer people have a series of coming outs, and not all of them have to do with their sexuality or gender. bell hooks said that queerness is not about who you sleep with. That can be a dimension of it, but it’s about being yourself even when the world expects you to be something else.

My coming out started as a rejection of the world that expected me to be conservative and religious. I came out as a progressive liberal. And as a non-Christian spiritual agnostic. Everything about me was evolving. I even came out as an ethical vegan.

Then, I came out as gay. I was assigned male at birth, but I never really felt like a man. So, I then came out as queer. Later, after talking to hundreds of queer people across the country, I came out as trans nonbinary. That’s part of the magic of keeping borders soft. As I learned about others, I also learned about myself — and that journey allowed me to step fully into my most magical self.

When I just list it as a series of coming outs, it sounds simple. But that’s not true. I had spent so many years operating within a system that required hard borders, just like the one the church offered me, that I didn’t know how to expand into my truth without requiring others to agree with me. It took me a long time to realize that living authentically was also an opportunity to soften my borders and allow others to pass through them freely without requiring anything in return. I was learning to be me, and I was also learning to hope others would do the same. There’s something beautiful in a world where everyone is a luna moth that lives as long as Mae Pearl.

I fought hard to unlearn all the things that kept me imprisoned between the hard borders of my heart. It wasn’t easy, but I learned how to soften my borders.

James Baldwin said, “We can disagree and still love each other—unless the disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Perhaps the ultimate border, the one that is inherently hard, is the one that establishes our humanity. To soften that border is to deny something universally fundamental. Other borders are negotiable, but not the one that says, “I’m human, and that is not up for debate.”

Three years ago, my mom texted me. “I have cancer.” Three words that pierced through all my borders regardless of how hard they had become. I had been estranged from my family for around 20 years at that point. We were holiday-only communicators. Our relationships were rooted in historical, familial care, but they had become superficial. My mom’s news compelled me to go home. I felt that I would regret it forever if I didn’t. So, I packed my bags and moved back to Alabama for three months.

The very first Sunday I’m back home, I joined my family for lunch. My mom always cooked a big meal and invited the entire family over. That day, there were 19 of us there. Before all the plates were served, my mom said in a Southern drawl so thick it sounded like molasses, “I want to tell y’all a story about a lesbian that gave her life to Jesus at church this morning. She’s not a lesbian anymore. Jordan — what do you think of that?”

I swallowed hard and tried to process the millions of thoughts racing through my head. I was assessing all the borders that I had hardened. Was I able to soften them enough to have this conversation? Or would the border patrol of my heart keep my family out? We didn’t have much practice talking about these things without yelling or getting offended.

During the twenty years before moving back to Alabama, I had learned about non-violent communication and intentional listening. I agreed to have the conversation but only if we could apply a few conversational parameters.  I suggested we not use the words “you” and “should.” While everyone agreed to play along, it was a bumpy road at first.

“I am not a man or a woman. I’m trans nonbinary,” I explained.

“You are a man,” mom replied.

“Wait! Was that the word ‘you’?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry. How do I say that without using the word you?” she asked.

I asked my family to couch their responses in their feelings and needs. I feel this, so I need that. Eventually, we got it. And over the course of three hours, we cried, apologized, forgave, laughed, and healed. We all agreed to soften our borders and rekindle our relationships.

The last question my mom asked that day was, “What’s the difference in gay and nonbinary?” I could barely believe it myself.

Here’s the twist. The overwhelming majority of the time, I still don’t know what I should do with my borders.

I know that at the time when I needed to figure out who I was, I hardened them. That protected me and gave me permission to seek the space and time I needed to connect with what was real inside me.

I know that when I was ready, I softened those borders, and that allowed me the compassion and empathy I needed to ask for forgiveness and forgive in the same way. I was able to rekindle relationships with my family. The thing I feared the most — being home  — is the thing that saved me.

I know that the only border I ever break completely is the border I’ve built in my heart that keeps me from living my best life. I want to break out of the cocoon of my larval stage and become the most beautiful me that’s possible. And I want to live the brightest life possible, whether that’s as short as a luna moth or as long as Aunt Mae Peral. I want my borders to be thresholds to a better world. A world that feels like home for everybody. Perhaps by normalizing soft borders, we travel freely through the world without ever meeting a stranger.

I don’t know how much longer my mom will live. But I know that I’m grateful that borders no longer keep us apart.