• Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    I’ve Lived A Life Less Ordinary

    Today is the day that I’ve decided to write down all the things I’ve been holding back my entire life. Now is the time for me to finally write about black forests and wolves, the monster under my bed. This is my time, blessed, reverent, I understand. I was born intersex; for the first few years of my life, doctors weren’t sure of my birth gender. My parents decided to name me Thomas, and as I grew, I was effectively raised as a girl, which would have been my choice if I had been asked. Although I attended pre-school as a girl, my father insisted on enrolling me in grade…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Photography,  Writing

    My 2022 Reunion Tour

    Ah, nostalgia. It’s the unavoidable memory of something from your past that strikes you unexpectedly and makes you feel warm inside. Usually this applies to positive experiences — but sometimes it can be painful to remember old times in your past when things weren’t so great. I was thinking about my childhood the other day and all the wonderful memories I have. I was born and raised in New York City, but grew up in a small town where everyone knew each other. I remember spending lazy summers days down by the river with my friends, fishing and swimming. We would get lost in the woods, explore abandoned houses, and…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    In Another Set Of Chances I’d Take The Ones I’ve Missed

    I used to write in riddles, and I used to write in rhymes; my body ached to write the words, the prose is what kept me alive. I write into the dark veil of the night, and in another set of chances, I’d take the ones I’ve missed. All the times in which I spoke into the silence, and whenever I do it seems I don’t speak, except to cry out and wait for an answer. I came into this world alone, marked in constellation, and when all else is gone, I will still be here. There’s a ceiling in the darkness, I am but a lifeless face that you’ll…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    I’m Going Through Changes

    Day breaks, the lost girl inside wakes, the birds sing, the wind blows through the trees, and the angels sigh. My mornings in Vermont begin early with the rising sun, my days often occupied with my own pursuits of untamed introspection as I try to unravel the mysteries of life, followed by early nightfall to hang the stars and moon upon, and until I see another day as the sun rises, I am feathered by the moonlight. The promise of another day on the horizon guarantees that the days ahead will never change for me at all. Introspection is my muse, my preoccupation, my heartbreak. I awoke on this cold…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    There’s No Way To Bargain On A Barter

    This past month, I’ve been visiting places that I likely won’t see for a while. Camera in hand, as I document and record the places I roamed for over a decade; places I might never see for quite a long time, if ever again. I believe that there is truth to the notion that one does not truly know what they have until one loses it all again. In my case, I’m giving up on a life in which I was never truly happy, to pursue my hopes and dreams in a place where nobody knows me. The worst part about leaving it all behind is letting go of the…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    A Little Ghost For The Offering

    When my parents moved me to our second house, I was instantly drawn towards a hundred year old maple tree in the back yard. As the years went by, the tree became my inspiration, my childhood joy, and the one spot I would always run to whenever I needed a good cry. I would often imagine being hugged and comforted by it’s sheltering arms, an imaginary comfort throughout all the times I felt alone. On various occasions, I would talk to the tree. Trusting it with my deepest and darkest secrets, my hopes, my dreams, my fears. A trusted confidant. The ideal listener. A faithful friend that can’t run away.…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    Belong

    Minutes of daylight, as the minutes turn into hours, is the parlance of our time. Everytime I look in the mirror, I see myself staring right back at me; a fleeting glimpse of myself going round and round on a carousel cusp of why. I will never understand why my parents moved me around a lot. I was around eight years old when my parents moved me out of my birth place of New York City, and I had to change schools for the first time; I was in third grade. After grade seven, my parents moved me to a different school where I completed eighth grade. Grades nine through…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    It Came Without Warning

    The wreckage of my past is the war that’s never won. Often times I think about all the things that were said to me so many years ago; I would always listen to the negativity, silently as if I were laying down in the wake of someone else’s incompetence or insecurities, my elders and a handful of those my parents entrusted with my care having labeled me as difficult simply because I was intelligent, and quiet. When I was a child, I was always passive, reserved, and yet completely incapable of truly standing up for myself. Telling people how I really felt at the time, expressing my emotions, and finding…

  • Cornerstone Content,  Writing

    A Typical Friday’s Child

    I was born on a Friday morning, and I recently returned to the house where I was born on a Friday, almost 30 years later, a typical Friday’s child. The house was a moment froze in time, as if nothing had changed since I walked out the front door at the tender age of 8. I still remember the dimly lit hallway leading upstairs, the flocked red wallpaper, and the salt and pepper carpeting. Nothing had changed in all these years I spent away, stepping out the front door at age 8 as a small child, raised on promises. I made my way through life, living, growing, and thriving, only…