Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls

(Paperback)

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What happens when we imagine loving the people-and the parts of ourselves-that we do not believe are worthy of love A transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission- to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred. But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the viciousness with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and ideals she'd built her life around- justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith- she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems-and whether there's a difference-she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.

Reviews

Required reading for the untamed soul . . . In these tender and revolutionary poems and prompts, Kai Cheng Thom promises that there is no part of ourselves beyond saving. The collection reminded me how to love others and myself.Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

Kai Cheng Thom embodies revolutionary love. She shows us how to love others bravely, even those hostile to us, as a way to heal our own tender hearts. Her poems are vivid love letters, confrontations, invitations. This tiny collection contains all the wounds and caresses in the world.Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger

Kai Cheng Thoms new collection is a tender incantation against the failures of hope. In these letters, Thom reaches toward lost souls of all kinds: outlaws, movement martyrs, fellow trans femmes of color, and the ones this world was never made for, to whom she sends poems that read like prayers, rituals to lay down our collective hurts. What is most astonishing, however, is the way Thom refuses to turn away from those who have inflicted harm, writing: the world i dream of is big enough for both of us. I am grateful for these spells and balms, for the worlds of generosity this book dares into being.Franny Choi, author of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Author Bio

Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers for her surrealist novel, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars- A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir. She is also the author of several other books including a poetry collection, an essay collection, and two children's picture books. Kai Cheng writes the advice column "Ask Kai- Advice for the Apocalypse" for Xtra.