My Journey, My Style

I want you to be mad, too!

28 Jun 2025

Journal Style!, Topic Thought.

So currently, I have very little to no food that I can digest at home. It’s because it’s the end of the month and I’m waiting for SNAP. Mine were greatly decreased last month, so I bought less. And I’m mad! I have a damn right. Because we have a republican party, trying to take away Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP.

This is a problem. If I am going hungry at 33 years old, and I cook healthy and only eat fresh foods. Can you imagine a mother of three to five kids? Imagine these children in the world’s richest country going hungry so rich people can have a tax break.

Let’s make it worse, there are already work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid. Medicare premiums increase by over $40 a year. Cutting Medicaid doesn’t mean people won’t get sick, it means less money for rural hospitals, closing state programs for the elderly and disabled. It means that Meals on Wheels will end, and those children, teens, and young adults with eating disorders won’t get their protein shakes to keep them alive. Parents are being required to work, but republicans want to cut Head Start and preschool, so how are they going to work if there isn’t a safe space for the children to be?

Are you mad, yet? Because I am.

I make 1283 a month. My rent is 283. My monthly bills are 597.95$. I pay for copays, and I’m a graduate student in seminary school, and I’m shelling out $155-250 for books every 8 to 10 weeks. I have to pay for my disability transportation, so another $100. I also have a pet rabbit, Jhonni Root-Canal, whose monthly expenses are about $75 a month. When I do my budget for the rest of the month, I’m left with $72.05 for the month. Which is $18.01 a week. So, one haircut a month. So before Republicans get all righteous and you believe we on support/entitlement programs are living a lavish life and not working, look at my budget. I’m permanently disabled, with physical disabilities as well as mental disabilities. So, what luxurious life am I living? What luxury of life do the poor lead? Why do those who can afford to rent a venue in Venice for a wedding (Jeff Bezos) need a tax break? Do you think those who voted for Trump really think he is going to keep his promises when, in the first six months, we almost entered a war? This big, beautiful bill is self-destructive for our country.

Are you mad, yet?

I think we need to think of USAID and how Trump and Musk destroyed it along with PEPFAR programs, and now those who rely on Nut paste, rice, HIV-AIDs prevention medication, and even gasoline so countries can run ambulances for pregnant women can survive. It’s estimated that over 35k children and women have died in one to two months. So if you voted for Trump, blood is on your hands. How do you feel about voting for a man who is willing to kill children and women, and keep epidemics expanding beyond the shores of Africa?

Are you mad, yet?

What about ICE? They arrested a woman in my community bringing her child to school. What’s worse is my birth mom, who voted for Trump, that child she used to tutor and help teach as a paraprofessional. She voted for a man when she had been democratic since the 1991 election. All because she was manipulated and now believes FOX News that ICE is only arresting criminals. Obama deported more than Trump. What my mother doesn’t know is that these deportees can now be sent to any country, not even their native countries.

Are you mad, yet?

Where’s the anger at? When I speak of anger, I don’t mean viciously angry or wanting to cause harm. I mean righteous anger, holy anger, passion, and desire.

Xih-Zih

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I hear you. I see you. I love you!!!

17 Jun 2025

faith, Journal Style!, Topic Thought.

Dear Friends,

I don’t want to be famous or well known for being an orator, preacher, advocate, or any of the sorts. I want to be known for my compassion, unconditional love, peace, holding your tears, and carrying them with me. I want people to know I see you, I hear you, and I love you. So many people, including myself, are hurting and feel lost. It’s Pride month, and as a community, it’s hard to celebrate because we are fighting for justice, peace, and solidarity. I think the church has gotten it wrong for all these years. They tried to pray the gay away, conversion therapy, while speaking harsh and condemning words, and calling it the Gospel of Christ.

That is not the Jesus I know, and I wish you would get to know him. Christ is the essence of peace, the essence of healing, the embodiment of what it means to sacrifice to a stranger, whose message was love above all else, and to be a friend in one’s darkest hours. I think and wonder, ‘What is life about? What does it matter? After all, there is so much darkness, and it’s overwhelming and all-consuming. Then I remember my faith, and it says I hear you, I see you, and I love you. Families are torn apart, mothers against daughters, fathers against sons, and trans and nonbinary youth are fighting for existence.

Sometimes it seems as though hope, dreams. Aspirations and goals are a figment of one’s imagination. However, let me speak words of encouragement. The fight is hard, but success is not inevitable. You will make it. You will succeed. Please don’t kill yourself on the words, actions, and false narratives of others.

Know your truth and live it; however, live it with integrity, grit, and resilience.

If no one says ‘I love you, ‘I appreciate you,’ and the likes, please know there is a creator that does, and friends, partners, and sects of people you have not met that do love you, appreciate, and believe your life is a life worth living. Death is for eternity, and life is for but a moment.

You’re the child of a king, a king who sits high and looks low. A king who calls you his beloved and sends angels to protect you.

To be transparent, I am broken too, and healing from trauma daily. I battle insecurity, self-doubt, self-hate, and feelings of unworthiness, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. It takes one person, one community, one God, and healing begins. When I first attended my church, ECV, I went for prayer and heard the words as a trans man that I am God’s beloved. God isn’t mad at me, does not hate me, but has a consuming amount of love for me. That was the journey to a family not of blood but of Christ’s spirit and human decency.

I acknowledge that not everyone will believe in God or Jesus. However, to whom you call your higher power is, I believe, he, she, or it/they believes the same thing that my God and Savior believes in me. You are special, one of a kind, priceless, a limited edition, and have a calling to this world in some capacity. Live out your calling, don’t let your colors fade, smile in the rain, rejoice in the cold weather, and be triumphant in the cool and hot sun of the summer.

You’re more than what your bank account says, greater than your living situation, and more than the level of your education and/or socioeconomic status.

Don’t let anyone define you with labels that you don’t adopt. Adopt the labels of beloved, gracious, peace, wisdom, sparks of energy, and the greatest gift to the earth for the era you were born in and the times that you live in. Fight a good fight and get into good and worthy trouble. Never losing who you are, but an ever-evolving spirit, being on the bumpy road to better. We are spiritual beings having a humanistic experience!

I see you. I hear you. I love you.

Blessings and Peace Unto You.

Xih-Zih

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Permission & YOU!

29 May 2025

Journal Style!, My Story, Topic Thought.

You have permission to live a life worth living.

You have permission to love who you love

You have permission to be transgender, non-binary, and whoever you feel as though you are.

You have permission to worship the deity of your choice

You have the right to healthcare and free education for minors and college students

You have permission to not be a statistic and survive out of poverty.

You have permission to be educated

You have to right to run for political office, making your voice heard

You have the right to respect, dignity, integrity, humility, and everything good from your fellow neighbors

You have the right to grow

You have permission to feel whatever emotions you are feeling, and they are all valid

You have permission to live with dignity as a chronically ill person, mentally ill, and physically limited, with access to services to give you a life worth living.

You have permission to be respected.

You have permission to grieve when a life is stolen, when you are hurting; your grief is valid and should be met with empathy.

You have the right to have safe housing

You have permission to raise powerful, world-changing, and history-making children

You have permission to attend a trade school vs. a university because not everyone is meant for school, but all are meant to do well.

Working at Amazon, being a truck driver, being a case manager, CNA, PCA, dumpster truck driver, working in warehouses, and these are worthy and needed jobs.

You have a right to be loved unconditionally and make the family you want to make.

You have permission to explore life and evolve with each experience you encounter, good and bad.

You are free to be gay, straight, lesbians, transgender, intersex, omnisexual, pansexual, asexual, demi sexual, bi sexual, poly, two spirited, black, white, hispanic, indian, brown skin, and free to express your self in drag; you have permission to express your identity and gender expression as fluid as it may be.

You have permission to have sex and experience sexual intimacy, however you feel is right for you

You have permission to be YOU

You have permission to walk in pride in your recovery

YOU are wonderful

YOU are amazing

You are talented

You are beautiful, handsome, and fine as wine

You are a one-of-a-kind, after you, there will never be another you.

You are loved and beloved by God/Jesus

You are spectacular

You are a work of art designed to be unique and worth trillions more than what money can buy.

You are, you don’t be ashamed

Don’t walk with your head low.

Don’t walk oppressed and suppressed

Walk in Power.

Walk in Strength

Walk in confidence

Walk in integrity

Walk with grit and resiliency

Walk in knowing not everyone will like you, but you are you, YOU love you, and are beloved by the universe

Lastly,

I give you permission to live out your God given potential, reaching self-actualization.

End.

Xih-Zih

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Gratitude! My better Angels

27 May 2025

faith, Journal Style!, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender! Oh,yeah!, My Story, Topic Thought.

In a dark world and troubling times, especially in America, focusing on the negatives, trends, self-hate, and discord is easier. This summer brings me to a year’s worth of good and bad memories. So, for this post, I want to focus on the good.

I’m grateful to the Lord for providing me medications and multiple treaters for my schizoaffective biopolar 1 type, ADHD, bulimia, anxiety, PTSD, depression, and gender dysphoria. I’m grateful to the Lord for every shot I receive for my condition. I’m grateful to be heard and seen not as an ill person but a person working towards wholeness.

I’m grateful to the Lord for saving me from a car accident 15 years ago that plagued me with physical pain, illness, such as fibromyalgia, spinal stenosis, and carpal tunnel. It could’ve been worse. I deal with pain daily, I can’t run or jump, or work out. It’s put on weight. However, I still have a life worth living, and an excellent team is keeping me healthy and working on my mobility.

I am grateful to the Lord for my university, seminary, undergraduate, and amazing high school. I say this because I have met professors who pushed me into greatness and believe I can be a scholar, I’ve had professors become friends, and I’m thriving. Sound High School is a family, and once a member, forever family. Love them with my whole heart.

I’m grateful to the Lord for experiencing homelessness, poverty, needing Medicaid and Medicare, SNAP, and public safe housing. I didn’t enjoy it initially, and the route to safe housing was a long process. With the Lord’s help, I did it! I am still only Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and SSDI/SSI. It may not be part of my future as I climb the ladder of success; however, it’s helping now and saving my life through medical insurance, preventative care, and food nutrition.

I’m genuinely grateful to the Lord for SSI/SSDI, which I started in 2014, earning $495 a year while working. Then, I increased it to $945 and was still working. Then it increased when my disability was at its worst to $1,283 a month. I’m grateful. I can pay rent, buy extra food, pay for personal health and hygiene products, including my $135 amount of vitamins a month. Also, it helps pay for my bunny son. Every month, I proudly give 10% back to the house of the Lord, which is $128, and I donate it to ECV HELPS, which gives money to the needy, poor, and those needing assistance in my community and at church.

I’m grateful to the Lord for my church. Elm City Vineyard for the love of a second family, a new mom and dad with young siblings, and receiving hugs and love every Sunday morning. I am also taught the word of God in the style of a talk, which leaves room to digest and think. What better place to serve the Lord than at ECV!

I’m grateful to the Lord for foster care, helping me survive, and not becoming another statistic. I was taught leadership, love, empathy, self-control, and confidence.

I’m thankful for my biological family, but they are not the best family and have chosen to leave me alone. They don’t know how to love me or show love. However, I still love them. With the drop of a hat, I’d be there for them. I still have family, even if I have to love from a distance.

I’m grateful for those who did me harm, my biological family, childhood church, my foster parents Caroline and Gene and their children seeking to destroy me through dehumanization and as a monthly pay check, my seminary college and universities seeking to oppress me for being trans and queer and those who raped me as a child, a mother who beat me until bleeding, adulthood rape, abuse from bosses at Starbucks, and those who hate me and don’t know the adult me. I pray for a special blessing, purpose, wealth, love, and success in all they do in life, and for them to grow into better angels.

I’m grateful to the Lord for Planned Parenthood, for the STI check-ups, HRT (this saves my life), flu shots, PREP, and pap smears every 3 years. I say thank you, and may your work multiply, and more trans lives be saved, and women, men, and nonbinary folks survive and thrive.

I’m grateful to the Lord for my recovery assistants (RAs) who help me with chores, go to appointments, and give me a life and hope back. Thank you, Miss Jessica, Mrs. H, Miss Jay, Miss Jazlyn, Broski, Joy, Beck n Call Homecare, and all the others.

I’m grateful to the Lord for my almost year experience from Griffin Health, their psych hospitals, and mental health IOP treatment. Helped me get sober and get better.

I’m grateful for my bunny son and the joy he brings to my life. Mr. Jhonni Root-Canal Zih

I’m grateful to the Lord for my amazing, super-star and strong Aunt Susan!

Lastly, I’m grateful to the Lord for my Broski Vic. He means the world to me. He edifies true friendship, displays loyalty and honesty, and lives with integrity, self-discipline, and self-confidence. Love you, Broski!!!

I’m grateful to all my readers and subscribers to my blog. Thank you for listening, reading, and commenting. Please know I speak truth to power, will always give you an honest story, and leave off every post with positivity and spirituality.

I cannot forget to mention that I am grateful for Jesus and the passionate sacrifice he made for me and those who choose to believe or not.

Blessings,

Xih-Zih

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