Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
Best for:
The survivors, the dreamers, the ones building forests in the middle of a desert, advocates, minorities, community needles, and anyone who understands that building a life is an act of defiance.
The Bones-
Why We Built Poeaxtry & the Prism
While I am writing this letter to my future self at 100, I am 34 years old. It is March of 2026. My hands are already permanently stained and altered by the physical work of this life. The leftover remnants of ritual oils, the dust off tumbled stones, a lingering scent of the burnt incense from a pendulum reading, a stone necklace cut to perfection wet saw shearing away at the top layers of my skin, or maybe its the epoxy stuck in my fingerprints.
Whatever it is I knew the risks when I decided to craft my items by hand. I knew this might leave a few marks on me… permanently. I am writing this to you, the me who is 100. The me 66 years in the future. I need to ensure I remember what it cost to me build Poeaxtry.
My lifeline:
It was never just a business. It was a lifeline. I remember the late nights on the longterm care facilities floor, the sheer, crushing exhaustion of working all that doing rounds entails only to turn around and use my downtime there to fight the machine.
Never ending are the endless loops of learning WordPress, the user friendly yet sometimes glitchy interface of Canva Pro, and the ever present feeling that I was screaming into a void that didn’t want to hear from an a indie queer creator. Especially, one that dare lift up other minorities.
The hardest thing I ever did was not the work itself, but learning that I was allowed to put the work down.
Creative Commons
I knew we would need it all. The community, small creative business, nature exploration, spirituality, and publishing house all had to exist. I needed to create a space where the silenced could breathe and the spoken over could hear their own words for once.
I hope that by the time you read this, the “Prism” isn’t just a new project, but a landmark of creative minority community. I hope the seeds that I started planting at eleven and got the hang of a few years ago now grew from my thoughtful watering. I did use my own sweat, tears, and sleeplessness to grow this into a creative forest. A community thick enough to protect anyone who walks into it looking for a place to belong.
My Trans Body:
Which Maps My Home
At 34, I am jut shy of eleven years into testosterone therapy. For the first time, I am fully “at home.” That isn’t a small thing; it is a violent, beautiful victory. I want you to remember the fight. By NO means just the physical changes, but the mental endurance required to exist in a world that is obsessed with your anatomy. I have lived in a state of hyper-vigilance, as an armor I wear every single day. This helps me to defend my space, time, and my right to my own words.
I hope the world is softer for you. I hope you can look at the beard we grew, the lines on our face, the sparkle in our eyes, and the scars of our evolution, and feel nothing but pride. We didn’t just survive the transition; we paved the road for those after us like those before us did for us. We were part of the ones who held the torch when it was dangerous to do so. If you are breathing easier now, it is because I did not stop fighting when the air was thin.
My Sensory Anchor:
For When the Trail Eventually Ends
I know that at 100, the trails might be harder to reach, or perhaps the map will just look different than it does in now in 2026. This is our anchor. When you close your eyes, I need you to take us here:
- The Cuyahoga Valley Rainfall: Remember the smell of the Cuyahoga Valley during the downpour your first trip to the area? Luna and you were walking through the stream, the winds with the trail, jut trying to beat the heat. The smell is a specific, sacred scent. One I personally feel like I won’t ever forget. Mingling scents from wet stone, ancient earth, moss, freshly tilled dirt, and the sharp stab, of a crisp clean bite of oxygen.
- The Weight in Your Pocket: Keep the Lake Superior slag glass near you. Feel the cold, sometimes bubble-pitted glass. Look at it shine and shimmer in rays of sun while you move it ever so slightly. Remember how it felt to pull it from the Pictured Rock National Lakeshore’s exposed layers of Earth? You took it all the way home to central Ohio. You planned to clean and polish some while leaving others raw to recognize the natural beauty of something that was once industrial waste.
- The Ohio Winter: Recall the “deadly sweet” frost of an Ohio winter hiking the gorges and cliffs of Hocking Hills State Park. The way it stings your nose, though your electric heated jacket is pulled tightly. You carry trekking poles in hand and spikes on your shoes to maneuver the frozen Forrest floor underfoot. Somehow world goes quiet still, besides the crunching sound of your steps reverberating inside sandstone ravines.
- The Waterfall: I know you have to remember the sensory shock of crisp cool water hitting our glasses while hiking near a waterfall, on warmer days. The constant, rhythmic dripping, on my lenses in my view coupled with the welcomed escape from the day’s heat was always a welcome surprise.
- The Soul Dog: Luna whose eyes were always full of an unfaltering love for me and the trails we grew familiar with over many years spent explaining them together. I know you have to remember the way Luna, our sweet, perfect soul dog, moved through the foliage beside us, always leading our way. These moments with Luna especially hopefully sealed themselves firm like concrete in our memory. Right along with her tail that never stopped wagging especially after she got wind we were going for another hike.
I hope you still have that jar of stones on your bedside table. Reach out. Let the weight of them remind you that we were a creature of the earth.
The Shark and the Reef:
Can We Finally Stop?
I have been living by the philosophy of the shark. The instinct that if I stop moving, I stop existing. Every poem, every spell, every piece of jewelry, every reading have always been part of the constant motion required to keep the water flowing over my gills.
But I am tired.
My heart hurts with the weight of missing Mom, and the creative work. The ritual, the deep dives, the creative burnout from a constant churn of content. Is the only way I learned to process that grief.
But I have to ask you:
Did we ever find our “shiver”?
Did we find a reef, a place where the currents are calm enough that we can just be?
Oh, how I hope you found out that you didn’t have to be a predator to be a survivor or to be worthy of the ocean blue. I hope you learned how to float.
The Questions for the Century
I am leaving you these questions because I need to know that the fire didn’t go out:
- What accomplishments are you most proud of? Not the metrics, but the moments where you knew you changed a life even if it was yours…
- Is the community still standing? Is the Prism still refracting the light for those who need to see themselves?
- What is the dog at your feet like? I hope they have the same soul as Luna and Bubba before her, like in the movie “A Dog’s Purpose.” I hope you’ve spent your life surrounded by that kind of unearned, steady love and loyalty.
I hope the jar of stones on your bedside table still smells of pine needles and wet dirt whenever you close your eyes and travel back to the woods.
Tell me…
I’m curious, what is one “building” phase you are currently in that you want your future self to remember?
Or, if you’re older, what is a memory from your 30s that still anchors you today?
Let’s talk in the comments below.
We are not just the sum of our survival; we are the architects of our own soft, enduring peace.
A Legacy of Persistence
A master community builder, poet, and a transgender man who carved out a life from the bedrock of grief and ambition. I am doing the work now so that you can have the peace in the future.
If you are reading this, know that I fought for every day we have had. I fought for the right to write this, for the right to define my own identity, and for the right to be both the shark and the one at rest.
Before you leave…
If this reached you, share it with your friends in private messages or on your social media feeds. We share our stories so that the next person knows they aren’t only in the thick of it. Let’s make the world a little louder, a little softer, and a lot more honest.
Internal Links:
Shark Week. Legislative Outlook.
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