Who the Heck is This?

I write a lot of things. Some call it prolific. I call it the limitation of time in a single day. For every idea or meditation I manage to record, ten more slip through my fingers. I just don’t have the hours to capture them the way I hear them, not while driving rideshare.

I do keep notes on my phone, and sometimes, in emergencies, scribbles on scraps of paper tucked into my bag. Though, let’s be honest — I haven’t carried a pen in ten years. Who does? I know some of you still do, and there’s no judgment here. We all make mistakes.

I take deep dives in my poetry, essays, and prose. And for those of you who’ve been reading with me from the beginning, it feels like time I gave you more than the words — a glimpse at the one writing them. So here’s the nitty gritty.

I am Eiri Waters, also known as Dust, poet of light, and most importantly, a Child of the Living God. All other names feel flimsy next to the truth that I belong to Him. Still, the basics: I am 45, an openly transgender woman who transitioned long before it was seen as “acceptable” — 22 years ago, in a small New Hampshire town that specialized in disguising cruelty as kindness, and friends as foes.

I dropped out of high school at sixteen, though truthfully I skipped most of sophomore year at fifteen. I did get my GED a month later. I grew up in a place that wasn’t kind, among people who taught me more about how not to be than how to live. I grew up thinking a fist was love and God a tool for control. I was repressed, stressed, lonely, broken, and blind to the cycles that bound me.

I grew up angry. I grew up brittle. I grew up hard in the way glass is hard — until struck just right. I grew into the image of a man I despised. And then everything changed one October morning in Lenox, Massachusetts.

A car accident. A death. A life taken. And with it, mine turned.

There was a dusting of snow that morning. I was late, as usual, after staying up too late playing EverQuest. Dressed in my suit, checking pockets for wallet and keys, coat off the peg by the door. The black Ford Ranger roared reluctantly awake, its windshield frosting. I cupped my hands to breathe warmth into them, five painful minutes before the glass cleared enough to drive.

I backed out, ice cracking under the tires. Called my mother on a Nokia cell phone, tossed it on the dashboard, and drove on. Then — intersection. A runaway car sliding through a stop sign, unable to see, unable to stop. I was doing fifty-five. There was no time for braking. Just impact. Just collapse.

And hands. Hands pressing my shoulders back into the seat, sparing me though I wore no belt. Invisible Hands. His Hands.

That impact was the hammer against the chisel. It shattered what I had built and exposed what I had buried. From that wreck came the courage I needed to admit aloud what I had only whispered within: I could not live in the body and gender I had been forced into. It was both the beginning of the end — and the beginning of true life.

Transition cost me dearly. It ended friendships. It stripped me of my place in the church. It scattered those who were never truly standing with me. But it refined those who remained, and it taught me the cost of love.

The rupture from people who professed faith opened me to true union with the Father. Their rejection became the greatest gift to my ministry, because it forced me to knock on doors I would never have approached.

And through all of it, I have learned.

I have learned how short life is as a measure of time.

I have learned we are not what we wear, whether clothes or skin.

I have learned blindness is a choice.

I have seen wonders I cannot utter.

I have learned that no matter the depth of our vision or intelligence, it will always be small compared to His.

I have learned outward manifestations mean nothing without inner truth.

I have learned that we must embrace ourselves before anyone else can come close enough to love us.

So this is a piece of me. My formation. My life.

I am a gym rat, a nature enthusiast, a hiker, a runner, a poet, a reader, and above all, His.

This is where my voice comes from. This is my point of view.