by letting go more and more of your idea of what your life should be like, and embracing the possibilities of what it is actually turning out to be like. ​ “Growth” fixation makes you less alive to the realities and possibilities of what's actually happening, and inclined to go into denial or futile activity in response to changes that you cannot undo ​ This is fundamentally why I am somewhere between skeptical to actively hostile towards it. Nothing is as self-limiting as a fixed idea of “growth” imagined by a younger version of you. ​ It is about living life in a way that you might run into versions of yourself you didn’t know were possible. ​ Life intensification philosophies boil down to just two questions: A: will you choose the unexpected more intense versions of yourself you meet along the road of life, and B: what new clothes will you wear if you do?

I’m a trans woman living in Brooklyn. And I have tremendous empathy for the conservative teen in Wisconsin.