On Being On Tour

the beauty and profundity of it

my beloved friend Preetika Rajgariah and I at Basket Books & Art in Houston.

I’m currently on tour for Survival Takes A Wild Imagination.

It’s about 1 or 2 readings a month, easily managed. So far I’ve gone to a few cities I’d never been to before like Houston, Austin, and Santa Cruz. I’ve also read in cities I’ve had the pleasure of already visiting like Toronto, Portland, and San Diego.

I’m beginning to understand that as much as I’m a homebody, I also love traveling, it just does something to my soul, it awakens me differently, invigorating my understanding of self, stretching me in ways I like to be challenged out of my comforts of being a Capricorn/Cancer dominant. I feel shaped by everything I encounter when I’m a traveler, and I keep these memories and experiences as small totems, lighthouses on the path with me, reminders that I am in this divine pursuit of myself.

Touring makes me feel like that. Each time I’m confronted with the gaze, I realize that I want to be like my father, always principled, even if I’m just attempting to be and failing… I want to try to be principled in myself. I don’t know a lot of people who do the work that I do, who prioritize trauma and grief as I do, and especially since Who Is Wellness For? came out, I’ve changed in myself. Now the distinction between people who do trauma work theoretically versus integrating that work has become clearer. I see lots of people have the right language, but what does it mean to embody this work? Making public work has made me more principled because I don’t want to be another person who spews this work, and refuses to do it myself. So it’s a gift for my vulnerability to be received and be heard in this context. For whatever reason, I’ve found that I’m my fullest incarnation when I write especially, and when I’m reading I’m always trying to re-arrive back to the place where I wrote from.

Also, without a doubt, after every reading, I’ll always have a scattering of a few people (sometimes folks who have never heard about me before, and just came to my reading on a whim) intimately share that they’re also CSA survivors. I think about this a lot, as someone who writes so much for this young, broken version of me—what do I wish I had witnessed as a child that could have made it all easier? How can I be of service at this moment, when maybe it’s the first time someone hears what they also are? So often, it’s people who tell me they’ve never told anyone else… and I find myself heavy with other people’s secrets, but grateful, that I can be a small pocket of reprieve, of a momentary reflection of the possibility of something more.

This tour has been the best tour I’ve been on, and I think it says a lot that I got to do this tour on my own terms. My publisher didn’t offer me a book tour with Survival, and I’ve heard that since COVID this is more of a thing, authors aren’t getting the support they once did for selling their own books - now they have to do that brutal (and embarrassing) labor for themselves. I’m not much of a salesman, sadly, but I do love the act of connection. This is what I most love about being on tour, I get to meet my readers!!! I feel so honored anyone reads me!!! So I get to meet your bright faces, your vulnerability, and your open hearts. There’s a powerful release in meeting people who resonate with your work.

Believing I could do this tour on my own, and not feeling shame that I had to do it on my own, has been an exercise in trust and acceptance. It’s been about healing the wounds that tell me I’m too much, that I ask for too much… and just trusting that friends with integrity can tell you their own boundaries without making you guess or resenting you for asking… since I’ve cut more and more people out of my life that don’t have the same vision of friendship I have has allowed me to find people that are more like me. This has been an important journey in the last few years… to believe that there could be a world where my closest friends could actually hold me, like I hold others dutifully, with care.

Gratefully, everyone I asked to help was so enthusiastic and willing! My beloved former student and dear friend Jess, who works at Type Books helped me come to Toronto and read again in one of my favorite cities after 5 years; my beloved friend Preetika helped organize and connect me to Basket Books & Art in Houston, where I stayed with her and her beloved partner, Lovie, in their beautiful home - and ate some of the dopest homecooked cuisine I’ve had in recent memory. My beloved friend Tasbeeh helped me with my Austin reading, where I spoke, at a little queer-owned bookstore named Reverie Books, in and adjacent room with a stage full of maybe 20 + Texans, about the US empire crumbling and the American war machine. Wildly, folks listened intently and I wasn’t booed shot offstage! Afterward, we (Tasbeeh, I, and her wonderful partner Andres) smoked weed (well I smoked) that someone in the audience went and got from her home after I said I desperately needed a joint. The four of us sat outside in the balmy Texan night with this magical and kind human who drove to her house to get me weed and came back, and we ripped it up in an old school small glass bong. It was a beautiful, tender moment.

I also stayed with my beloved friend Claire, at her beautiful home she has with her wonderful partner Lilja, in Portland, where I had the best meals and best coffee, and spoke at Powell’s where I met one of my now students, Mei. My beloved friend meital connected me to The Greenhouse Project in Santa Cruz, where I met Dav and L, who have made this incredible community farm where they host artists and readers to come speak about queerness and ecocide. I read outside in the December frost, around a fire, to 50 - 60 people in the bright winter cold in Santa Cruz. It was heavenly, truly heavenly.

Gratefully, I stayed with so many friends on this trip, in some of the best setups. Thank you to everyone who let me stay in their homes. I stayed in some of the coolest places I could ever have fathomed, like a tree house in San Diego, and Dav’s wooden loft bed… I feel so much gratitude for these memories.

Reading at The Greenhouse Project in Santa Cruz

Everything has been a beautiful culmination of working from the heart and gravitating towards people and spaces that honor me, and that hold space for me. This is something that I’ve learned a lot from the most recent class I’m facilitating about grief. It’s been one of the most powerful containers I’ve ever been in, and through facilitating it, so much of what I’m understanding is that many of us just need space to be in our fullest selves. When we can feel held in this way, it gets easier to hold others, too — when your grief can be held, it’s easier to hold someone else’s.

In the last few years, this is what has become clearer in my own life as well. After Who Is Wellness For? I struggled with the need for validation. The violence of writing my story shook and stirred a lot of the trauma that I thought I had worked through… and resurfaced after the book came out and it took me months to identify that I was in a PTSD state, that I was struggling with depression. So right after the book came out, I was a raw nerve for months, needing so much love from people around me, and sadly finding a lack of love from my community for many different reasons. Weirdly, like with many things, this moment made me stronger… more equipped… I have been told I am like an ouroboros, I eat my shit and turn it into life force; alchemy.

I realized I didn’t want a repeat of that ever again, if I was to go to that deep place in myself, then I needed to find safety in myself. This mental and emotional work that I did prepared me for the release of Survival. To release it and speak to life and surviving during a time of genocide.

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