"Hope To Connect With You"
The First Chapter of my Memoir, "Loving Her Reflection"
This is an excerpt from the 1st chapter of my memoir, Loving Her Reflection. The name of this chapter is “Recognition”. You can read a full introduction to my book and find more excerpts here.
It was late Fall of 2023. I was a few months into launching my N3VLYNNN blog on Substack, which I had opened the morning after being permanently suspended from social media for sharing the stories of black lesbians who had “de-transitioned”: women who bravely reclaimed their womanhood after spending years identifying as men, and undergoing various cosmetic procedures in an effort to appear male.
Although my blog started off as a reactionary effort to re-platform myself, it had become a passion and creative outlet for all that I had to express inside of me, including my mission to highlight the untold perspectives of black women who had been impacted by gender ideology. My stride remained unbroken, even as shattered as I often felt inside, due to my life circumstances.
One day, I began to map out a list of potential collaborators, including black women who I might like to interview one day. My list included a couple of detransitioned black lesbians who had publicly spoken about their experiences in Youtube videos—many of whom I have highlighted on my blog.
One of these women, Jalisa Vine, had gone through many cycles of uploading and deleting her vulnerable story about detransition. However, I noticed that she had created an Instagram account to share her music, so I visited her account to see what she was up to.
Somewhere in the comments section under one of Jalisa’s videos, I noticed a black woman had commented, cheering Jalisa on for coming forward about her story. Happy to see this mutual positivity, I checked this woman’s page and saw that she had detransitioned, too—as evidenced by her outspokenness about her own journey.
This woman looked chill. She was in her late 30’s, tall and lean like a basketball player, with a dark brown complexion. Her natural hair was braided back into intricate cornrows, and studded with simple red beads grazing the tops of her shoulders, a la early 2000s Alicia Keys. Based on her photos, it seemed like those cornrows had been her signature style for several years, apart from the occasional fro. In a close-up photo of her smiling, I noticed that one of her front teeth was charmingly crooked, embellished with a tooth gem.
She had character. I thought she was cute, and I definitely identified with her natural look, but there was no instant attraction for me. She also gave off a vibe that she liked women, but I wouldn’t confirm that until later.
Her name was Latavia.
As I browsed Latavia’s profile, I saw more things we shared in common, such as an interest in wellness. The way she wrote about her detransition experience is what intrigued me the most. At 3 years into her detransition, it seemed like she had overcome so much, and had gained a great deal of clarity and wisdom from all that she had been through.
I did not take that for granted, since detransition is only one step towards healing. Some detransitioners still carry a lot of self-hate, or they may not be critical of the ideology that offered them tools and ideas to harm themselves in the first place. Some of them hate “terfs”!
But Latavia seemed to be on her own path, somehow side-stepped from that world, and that is something I could deeply relate to.