Shae Sumdaze - I salute you

TRUESTORY -- I saw a craigslist ad in my area, "Photography or Artist wanted - w4w" and it caught my eye so I clicked in to read, my eyes given a picture first-- her picture.

"Quite the professional looking woman" was my first thought, brows up and smirky smile on my face because there was something about her that inspired me and I couldn't figure it out. Reading helped, it filled in the blanks and made me follow the impulse to message her.

As much as I wanted to be the photographer and artist she was looking for, my excitement overshot my availability and our back-and-forths fizzled out. At some point, reduced to an obscure friendship on facebook. I felt a little like a failure and then one way, I see a post of hers on my facebook feed and I read, and I can't stop reading. Little did I bloody know it would be she who motivated and inspired me, not the otherway around.

22 days ago she posted here on Prose, after I insisted it was the best place to share your writing with a community of other writers, people who can relate. It took me 22 days to get around to reading it and holysmack! was it worth the pause to go check out.

https://theprose.com/post/155326/weighted -- by Shae Sumdaze

I don't want to spoil the brilliant prose of hers, but I will explain why I put this in the LGBT portal. Shae is a transgender woman who spent most of her life as a man, knowing she was a woman no outside eyes could see because of the Y chromosome that made her body genetically and anatomically male. Relitively recently, she's taken the plunge, so to speak, to punch fear in the face and be the woman she's known she was her whole life, and discover the woman she's yet to become.

I post this in the LGBT portal because if you are in community personally, or know a family, friend, co-worker, and even if you're simply a compassionate heart who supports the fight for their rights and understanding in their struggles, I'm asking you to take a moment and read what she has to say, and encourage her to keep writing. Right here on Prose, where writing as beautifully written as hers, belongs. :-p

Thank everyone who pit-stops by this post even for a skimover!

|| Remmy Ar'emen ||