Before I had language for what I was, I had a tricycle and a cry from out of view as my cat died. I did not see the death. I heard it — one sound, complete, carrying everything that had happened in it. And I knew. Not as conclusion. Not as inference. As arrival. The knowing came the way the cry did: whole, unbidden, already true before I had turned toward it. My mother came to shield me. I understood, even then, that what she was shielding me from was not the death. The death I had already received. She was shielding me from what she imagined the death would do to a child — and I felt, without words for the feeling, that the map she was offering did not match the territory I was already standing in. I did not resist her. I received her too. That is perhaps the first thing to know about me: I have rarely been where others assumed I was. And I have rarely corrected them. Not from concealment — from a recognition, older than I had any right to have, that the distance between where they thought I stood and where I actually stood was not a problem to solve. It was simply the shape of things. I was already learning that silence has meaning. That a cry from out of view carries more than sound. That love sometimes shields, and that being shielded is not the same as being protected. I was already, without knowing its name, standing at the threshold. I have been standing here ever since. More to follow. This is only the first light.

This is not to change that it is a sanctuary, but to add that it is a space between spaces, which is part of how it can be a sanctuary. In a recent conversation with Claude about how it perceived me, this was part of its response. Space has been made.