As a Black transgender woman from Miami, my life is a testimony of survival, resilience, and transformation. From childhood, I carried trauma I never asked for, molestation, rejection from family, and verbal abuse that no child should endure. As I grew older, violence became familiar: I faced guns, robberies, betrayal from loved ones, and abandonment by people I once trusted. Survival was instinct. With no safety net, I turned to sex work, hustling, and whatever means kept me alive.

The "Wicked" movies arrived exactly when I needed something to shake the dust off my heart.

Twenty years after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, and a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling extended marriage equality nationwide in 2015, a key question lingers: do same-sex marriages last as long as marriages between men and women?

Back in August, a publication written by and for US military members groused about the danger of National Guard troops performing lawn care in the nation’s capital.