A safe place?

Finding a safe and inclusive place to live in this world has eluded me. I couldn’t find it in rural Pennsylvania. Perhaps a “safe place” for some, I felt anything but safe growing up there. I was excluded from birthday parties, labeled undateable, teased about my hair, and called racial slurs. It was often the smaller slights that hurt the most because they were said by those closest to me, with what they considered good intentions.

While I spent a lot of time playing outside as a kid, my true love of nature was cultivated in my