This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
(Format for this read: Audiobook)
It’s June 2020…which means it’s PRIDE MONTH!❤🧡💛💚💙💜
While I myself am not a part of the LGBTQ+ community, there are many people that I love and adore that are.
I try to support them and the community wholeheartedly in every way I can.
I am trying to listen and hear their stories more…because in all honesty, I have not been good at this in the past.
I want to do better…which means listening better.
In 2020, I have intentionally been trying to broaden my reading picks not only to include LGBTQ+ authors, but also stories that are about LGBTQ+ issues.
This read was a fictional novel…written by a mother who was inspired to write this tale because she has a transgender child.
Here is the official summary:
“This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change…and then change the world.
This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.
Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.”
Yall…this book…WOOOOW.
Not only was it beautiful, it was gut wrenching, inspiring, eye opening, and heart warming.
To hear sweet little Claude’s joys and sorrows as he figures out that he is not made to be like his brothers…as he discovers being in a dress feels more natural than pants…as he reveals that being called “he” does not feel right at all but being called “she” does…there is confusion and frustration but also joy and triumph too.
When Claude chooses the new name of Poppy, she finally feels the freedom to just be the child she was born to be.
You will cry and you will laugh. You will be angry and you will rejoice.
Just as Poppy does.
I can not imagine how this must feel as a child….wondering how to just BE who you are….and also on a smaller scale, I can not imagine how this also must feel as a parent….wondering how best to HELP your child just be who they are.
Because this story is not just about the journey of Claude as he becomes Poppy…but it is also about the journey of the entire family as they try to walk alongside in support and love and understanding….especially his parents.
As I was reading, I was awestruck by how open and encouraging Rosie and Penn are…not just with their youngest child, but with all five of them. They are the kind of parents we all wish we were…or that we all wish we had.
They love fiercely, they let their children follow their passions, they listen to the needs of each individual child and try to serve them in the specific way each one needs….they are not perfect, and they mess up PLENTY….but they are so full of love and openness and try to pour that into their children every chance they can.
And they also love each OTHER well….which is also pretty darn fascinating.
While reading, I was struck with the realization that many transgender children do NOT have the kind of loving acceptance in their homes that Poppy had in this story. Many transgender children do not have family members willing to learn with and grow alongside and encourage them. My heart literally hurt as I imagined how the complete, damaging opposite happens for so many in this world…and how many years of trauma or denial or abuse they must endure before they can be their TRUE selves in the world….if ever. 💔
Something I was thinking about so much while reading this book and also still after is how much society impacts our gender expectations and in turn our gender identities. How we let the world tell us what a boy or a girl SHOULD act like/dress like/talk like….how we let the world tell us what activities are “just for boys” or “just for girls”. How much of ourselves we are trained from birth to repress or exaggerate or just plain forget about because that isn’t what we are “supposed” to be like. And how freaking DAMAGING and MESSED UP that is.
What kind of world would we have if we just let people discover themselves on their own terms starting at Day One of their lives? Can you imagine the amazingness to not have some pink or blue guideline trajectory already set in place?
Because what if pink or blue just doesn’t fit? What if purple seems more fitting? Or what if pink AND blue feels best? Or maybe some days you feel like pink…some days you feel like blue…and some days you feel like purple AND pink AND blue?
Who is it anyway that gets to say what is “normal” and what is “weird”? Aren’t those words just completely objective anyway? Your “normal” is gonna be quite different than my “normal”….and my “weird” is gonna be quite different than my neighbor’s “weird”. (well…I guess that depends which of my neighbors we are talking about 🤣)
I wasn’t aware at first that the author has a transgender child of her own. She wrote with such warmth, openness and knowledge that I did wonder while I was reading at her ability to speak into this family’s experience….I knew there had to be some type of personal connection.
So yall know what I did….I researched on the ol’ trusty Google.
Because yall KNOW I am alllllll about some research!
I ALWAYS gotta check people’s receipts.
And that is where I learned her connection.
Here is a little insight from an interview with BookPage.com on why she wrote this book:
“AS THE MOTHER OF A TRANSGENDER CHILD, YOU HAD A DEEP PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THIS NOVEL. WHY DID YOU FEEL COMPELLED TO WRITE IT NOW?
-Now is an exciting time to be talking about these issues because, for the first time in history, lots of transgender kids and adults are coming out to acceptance, understanding, and celebration from their loved ones and communities. Great strides have been made. Horizons have widened. More and more people around the world are starting to see gender as a broad and complex spectrum along which there are infinite wonderful possibilites.
But now is also a critical time to be talking about these issues. Legislators all over the country are proposing bills to restrict and remove transgender people’s rights and indeed safety. They’re doing it with lies. They’re doing it with cruelty. They are making the world a meaner, harder, scarier, less fair, more dangerous place for all of us, trans and otherwise.
So part of the reason to write this book right now is to spread the love, spread the understanding, spread the truth and combat the other stuff.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WISH PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD ABOUT CHILDREN LIKE POPPY?
-Actually, I wish people understood that children who aren’t like Poppy are in fact just like Poppy. All kids are average in some ways and outliers in others. All kids conform sometimes and struggle others. All kids face challenges and change unpredictably and grow in directions other than the ones their parents imagined. And all should be loved and honored and celebrated for who they are. This is how it always is.”
I just love all she said….and I suspect she is the exact kind of supportive and loving mother like Rosie is to Poppy in this story.
If I had to bet, I would put all my money on it.
I am so glad I read this book.
Reading it DID spread love and understanding for me, just as the author intended.
It also reminded me of exactly what she said….all kids should be celebrated for EXACTLY who they are.
I hope more people read this book and more books like this…and we can all begin and continue to broaden our perspectives.
There is always room in our hearts to love people more….and there is always space in our minds for more understanding.
Also…let me say if you’re reading this and you are part of the LGBTQ+ community…and you did NOT have a supportive and loving enviornment to grow up in like Poppy does in this book….I am so so so sorry…..you are worthy, you are wonderful and you are fantastic JUST AS YOU ARE….
And also, if you need a mama in your life to love on you, I got you.
Anytime. ❤