Who is She?
a question I’ve been asking a lot lately
Most of my readers know I’m queer. I’m also not a fan of the gender binary, although I am more “genderqueer” than “nonbinary.” I’m still trying to settle—I know, after 60 years? still?—on a way to be, but also rest assured in the fact that ways to be can and do change all the time.
I have feminine mannerisms and embrace them. Some friends know me as Mama Bear, a moniker I love. My spoken Japanese can get very campy, very fast, given my use of feminine speech—the one gift from my ex I didn’t bother to return. And in English, I will sometimes self-referentially use she/her pronouns.
For the past two weeks, I inhabited a nearly manic high. This is an extremely unusual way of being for me, so much so that I started asking myself, “Who is she?”
In addition to the unusual amount of sunshine—I love me some vitamin D—there’d been a surfeit of good news after the oxytocin-suffused week on the east coast in April. My agent has pitched eleven editors—light those candles, cross those fingers. I was named a fellow (not the most gender-inclusive term, but…) for the 2026 Lambda Literary LGBTQ+ Emerging Writers virtual retreat in August, and crowd-funded the full tuition. I trialed the use of King County’s express bus system to commute to Redmond and the endorphins from the exercise—mama bear is pretty sedentary of late—had me smiling for about twenty-four hours. And after Hiro (rightfully) complained that we had not done any macro floral photo shoots in 2025, this past Sunday, we boarded the ferry to visit both Heronswood Gardens in Kingston (where our friend Riz is the assistant director) and then a stop at Chimacum Woods in Port Ludlow, where our friends Bob and Beth raise rhododendrons. The weather was perfect, mid-seventies, cloudless skies, and very little humidity.
Meanwhile, Hiro has kicked the hunt for a retirement home in Japan into a higher gear. In the past three weeks, we envisioned ourselves living in different properties in Ōsaka, Nara, Kyōto, and Shiga Prefectures, but there were two places in Shiga, in a city called Ōmi-Hachiman, that prompted an email to a real estate agent. Mind you, I’m not sure we can afford to cannibalize a part of my meager retirement savings for a downpayment, nor am I certain how a trans-Pacific transaction will work, but we’re talking with my retirement savings person on Thursday to review some of those questions, which is right around the time we expect to hear back from the real estate agent—Japan’s in the middle of their Golden Week holidays right now.
Two days ago, I investigated this surge of satisfaction in my journal, wondering if I was unearthing a tendency to joy I once had, or whether my sunshine was utterly new.
I spoke about this who-is-she feeling with my therapist this morning, too, and recalled how seamlessly I transitioned from a physically awkward toddler (I had gross motor coordination problems and ankles which needed to be trained before I could learn to walk without falling) to an introverted child—I had one friend at Tappan Grammar, no friends at Saint Ann’s Parochial, and maybe four at Rockland Country Day—and on into a depression triggered both by my father’s worsening illness and death, and by realization that liking guys was not something anyone else I knew did.
I’ve been in therapy nearly constantly since then, only realizing in 2015 that the symptoms I knew and loved, listlessness, paranoia, insecurity, and anxiety, might have been chemically triggered, but there was also a pattern of situational triggers. My father, my closet, my pre-Hiro relationship confusions, working at a homophobic Microsoft in the early 2000s, and then the vague impermanence of our visa-sponsored life in British Columbia.
The more I thought, wrote, and talked about my high, the more I believed it to be a new way of being. Years of meditation trained me to be mindful of my emotions, to see happiness out of the corner of my eye (to avoid scaring it off, perhaps, by looking at it head-on).
And the Trumpian trash fire that is 2026 burns on. I still worry about making ends meet, about my husband in an increasingly xenophobic country, about the risks of being a loud SJW queer trying to get published, and, to quote that No-Rhythm-Nation video from the Widow Kirk, on, and on, and on.
Yesterday, the high ended, but it wasn’t a crash. I might have allergies all of a sudden. My eyes are scratchy, and I feel tired as a result. And yesterday marked the 46th anniversary of my father’s death, which always catches me unawares. But contentment still lingers.
And I’m going to need it. In addition to all the imposter syndrome and inadequacies that writing the next book, my second memoir, will entail, there will be the hard-to-endure wait before an editor clicks with my first book. I know there will be grim days ahead.
But Mama Bear has her friendships, old and new. Mama Bear is persistent. And as every day with Hiro and my friends reminds me, Mama Bear is loved.
Who is she? I’m always finding out.
Take the highs and hug them.
Love this post Brian, and your vulnerability so open and trusting at the mercy of your readers. Who is she? Profound! Hoping only the best for you and Hiro.