Book Spotlight - Falling Back in Love with Being Human
Today's spotlight is on the work of a writer whose compassion and love feels so necessarily transformative, and which always bring me such inspiration, solace, and energy to keep moving forward.
Falling Back in Love with Being Human (2023) by Kai Cheng Thom is a collection of love letters addressed to lost souls, to "everyone and everything I have ever had trouble holding in my heart", as Thom says in the book's opening. What follows is an immensely powerful, intimate, and courageous exploration into the depths of empathy, love, and shared humanity, made all the more poignant with the wisdom of Thom's perspective as a trans woman of colour who works within the realms of healing justice and revolutionary love. Each letter is a deeply loving invitation to come closer to each other in shared humanity, as Thom writes compassionate missives addressed "to the sisterhood of trans femmes" or "to the compulsive caregivers", as well as "to all the boys i've loved before who didn't love me back" or even "to the trans exclusionary radical feminist" and indeed even "to J.K. Rowling". Accompanying the end of each chapter are really lovely little interactive prompts, invitations to do little rituals of self-reflection that often involve doing something to honour something in yourself or in others (perhaps it's playing a song for your inner child, or finding a way to start a conversation with someone that you've been putting off). Much of the writing feels like, and is, many things. Letters, prayers, magic spells, poems — these are some of the words that Thom herself offers for them. They could also be described as essays or prose poems, but either way they stir a sense of deep communion upon reading them. Within that communion, it feels like there are so many windows into understanding and connection ready to be opened to allow hope inside like a gentle spring breeze.
Spending time with this book (and also with Thom's work in general, like her columns for Xtra Magazine, Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse or Dangerous Space, but also her excellent newsletter) always feels so illuminating in way that brings one's sense of the personal and political into a satisfying wholeness. I appreciate how fearlessly, yet always lovingly, Thom encourages us to navigate complex feelings and questions we have about others and ourselves, and to consider what we can learn from understanding how they are all interconnected. Within this book in particular, it is a gift to witness the space and necessary boundaries that Thom uncompromisingly holds at all times for the humanity of others, including the harmed and those who cause harm, alongside her own humanity. How is it possible to hold compassion to our worst enemies, to those who may wish and even actively enact harm, grief, and trauma upon us? What is the point of doing such a thing at all in the first place? If it is to remain rooted in the values of love, liberation, and social justice that we believe in for all, how can we practice them in such seemingly impossible moments? As Thom says in the opening, the answer lies in being able to affirm "that I could still love them, because that meant I could still love myself." Extending compassion to the darkest shadows in the hearts of others allows us to do the same with our own, and to remain loving to ourselves even in the moments when we feel unlovable — which, in a world that often pushes us to collapse in on ourselves, may be often.
Grateful for Thom's generous insights and commitment to love, and for lighting the way with the warmth of her words in books like these!