For many of us the journey started with simply not liking our body and how it looked, and the goal was to get our outward appearance more in line with what we thought we should look like. For some people, that goal was “I need to gain mass and size” and for others it was “I need to really lean out and both build more muscle but also show more muscle”. The boards all were united in being unhappy with our individual appearance, and wanting to change it, and being willing to make significant alterations to our daily lives to get there.

The fact is that when we are true to ourselves, and when we stay within what makes us uniquely ourselves, we can find our audience. It may take a good bit of patience because finding our audience can take time, especially if we are starting from zero. That is not to say that we may not have a stroke of luck, but we cannot bet on luck, only ourselves and who we really are.

This is where love becomes something that is painful and where sadly as adults it may take us years to really figure out if we made the right choice. Even following the end of an abusive relationship, where we have been harmed over and over, we may question why we were not enough, or if we had worked a little harder, maybe they would have loved us more. But in the end, when it comes to romantic love, the hardest part is losing the person we loved. Whether we genuinely lose them, or whether we lose our connection to them, loss is loss, and it hurts like hell.

One of the communities I interact with most regularly and find a huge sense of belonging and acceptance in are the people who love Disney. Oddly, Disney was not something I have maintained a relationship with my entire life, and in my high school years through most of college I missed out on a ton of movies that I am now going back and rediscovering. However, something I have noticed in these movies is the importance of community, and that the happy ending usually stems from sort of a reconciliation of someone with their community. This is often seen with their family or their friends including the new friends they make along their journey. We, the audience often get to watch the primary character of these movies struggle to feel a sense of purpose and belonging and through the plot devices of the movie we see them face the fact that they are who they are, and lean into that, because that becomes the only answer. We then watch them triumphant in their storyline and see that those who cared about them love them just the way they are and never asked nor wanted them to be different, or if they had at one point wanted that, they suddenly come around seeing the error of their ways.

Walking into the park, there was an energy, and the fact that it was already decorated for Halloween was an even more magical experience. Other than crying at the sight of the Millennium Falcon lit up at night, I vividly recall the feeling and the ambience of the Haunted Mansion that first night. There was a giddy feeling for me around it, seeing it decorated for Halloween and then coupling that with it having the holiday overlay in the theme of Nightmare Before Christmas (for the uninitiated). I have heard of people developing an instant bond with people, but I think for me I developed an instant bond with this piece of land and this specific attraction. The area the Haunted Mansion sits in, New Orleans Square is one of my favorite areas in all of Disneyland and I have spent a chunk of time there just enjoying the scenery and energy.

I have been very fortunate to find a sense of community in multiple places and multiple fandoms. However, it was not always easy because there is always that strong pull to avoid the things that other people shit on. Anything I love unironically I can point to a subsection of the population who thinks it is dumb, a waste of time, immature or any other number of things. Disney, Star Wars, lifting weights, fantasy books, or any number of my music choices all get hate from someone somewhere. But for many of us, we feel shame in the fact that someone out there does not get it, or maybe that we feel such a sense of joy from this thing that we feel we should hide it.

I got my first tattoo when I was a freshman in undergrad. It was small and easily hidden, but it was not something that was common in my family. Hell, this was also back when tattoos were not nearly as common (because I am old). Looking back, I had always had an interest in tattoos. One of my favorite GI Joe characters had a tattoo and I was always that kid who probably had their gaze linger juuuuuuust a little too long when I saw someone with a tattoo. I slowly got more tattoos, not as many as I wanted because there were always objections to what I wanted to put on my body or the price and for the longest time, there was also a need for my tattoos to be hidden for work.

For almost all of us there is going to be some amount of baggage in our lives. This baggage is really how we adapt to changes we face due to external stimuli and how we handle similar stimuli in the future. We encounter things that impact us in differing ways as soon as we enter the world. We start feeling some amount of stress with having a sudden change in the way we interact with our surroundings. Initially our only way to get our needs met is to cry. As we grow older, we learn other ways to communicate, our needs and to seek out the comfort, safety, and security we need to be happy and healthy. However, that does not always mean that those needs are adequately addressed, sometimes due to circumstances, available resources, or any number of additional factors.

I don’t know how I would best describe the show to someone who was uninitiated. Maybe it is a show about fatherhood and father figures. But it is also a show about redemption, growth, accountability, and the power to change and grow that all humans possess.

I will continue to point to the “health and wellness” industry as a root of that, because they promise things that they cannot deliver, and because there is little to no regulation of them and their claims, they face no repercussions for swindling people and doing a number on their self-worth.