Book Review: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

 As a follow up to yesterday's post, here's something I've been meaning to moodle about for a while -- Laurie Frankel's book, This Is How It Always Is (New York: Flat Iron Books 2018, ISBN 9781250088550). It's a fictional account of a family coming to terms with their child/sibling's gender dysphoria, and their acceptance of the journey as it unfolds.

In learning about my own family situation, I've read several good non-fiction books that helped me to understand the importance of supporting our youngest child as they "grew into" the person they really are. This fictional account of Claude's journey to becoming Poppy helped me to recognize certain similarities in our own family's experience of seeing and welcoming a non-binary person among us. Although it is fiction, it reminded me that no one is really alone in these situations.

Books like this one are important, because they help us to move beyond our own experiences and come to an understanding that, as with so many situations, our human knowledge is imperfect. So often, we have to feel our way along, making adjustments, until we get things right, or close to it. Parenting is never as simple as we'd like to think. As Rosie, Poppy's mom, says on page 378,

Parenting always involves this balance between what you know, what you guess, what you fear, and what you imagine. You’re never certain, even (maybe especially) about the big deals, the huge, important ones with all the ramifications and repercussions. But alas, no one can make these decisions, or deal with their consequences, but you…. 

That is a scary thing. And that's our experience too... We fuddled along and made many mistakes, but kept trying our best. After necessary surgical changes our child fits and feels more comfortable in their skin, whereas before, they chafed in an ill-shaped body. Can you imagine how that would feel?

Stating the obvious, life is complicated. Being transgender will never be easy in a world that is slow to understand, but it’s easier than living in a body that doesn’t fit, with the suicidal tendencies that too often come with that. If our culture, like Thailand's, accepted a certain fluidity when it comes to gender, suicide rates would fall, trans folks wouldn't have to be afraid of being targeted, and we wouldn't have to have the Trans Day of Remembrance every November 20th. 

Fortunately, for our family, our kid is strong and has managed to withstand some very tough times. I see their joy now that their body matches who they know themself to be, and that makes it all worth it. After some years of struggle, they are beginning to live into their life more fully, to try to BE without anxiety. There will always be strange looks and people who don’t understand, but the ones who know them love them as they are. 

I dream of a day when no one looks askance at anyone else for being different.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a beautiful expression of the understanding and acceptance of a family who helps their gender-fluid child find herself. Books like this help people who don't know (or don't realize they know) gender-fluid people to gain some understanding of life beyond their own experience. That's what good fiction does -- it brings awareness of different ways of looking at the world so that we can accept each other better.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a parent, or who loves someone struggling to be who they know themself to be.