Nat Vikitsreth, LCSW, DT, CEIM aka Crocodile Lightning (she/her) is a decolonized, licensed clinical and somatic psychotherapist, an international burlesque artist, transgender community organizer, and host of the Come Back to Care Podcast. The future seems bleak.  Our history is actively being erased. Our existence criminalized. Our arts and healing co-opted. (And that’s just Tuesday.) “Where do we go from here?” may be running through your mind on repeat. This bleakness is real, and so this is my love letter to our despair and grief. But it’s also an invitation: an invitation for you and me to hope and heal together so we can stay in the struggle for liberation together a while longer.  Because the antidote to cynicism, heartbreak, and apathy may lie in “where we’ve been.” Generations of LGBTQIA2S+ organizers have shown us that living and living fully is the best revenge against oppression from white supremacist, colonial, capitalist patriarchy.  The threats against our rights and liberation are real, and so I wholeheartedly honor what you’re doing to cope and survive. Yet, you and I both know that staying alive isn’t the same as living, let alone living fully. So, how do we live fully when we rarely feel safe?  In short, by tapping into our inner resources to step in and out of survival mode. We don’t have to be stuck in survival mode 100% of the time. It’s possible to both-and surviving and living so we can bring our whole fabulous selves to advocating for social change within our communities. Simply put, when we fight for liberation, what we do to get to bed in one piece is as important as what we do to get out of bed the next morning.  Photography: Genito photo | Headpiece: MZMR | Traditional Thai dancing fingers: Crocodile lightning | Chinese opera robe: Crocodile lightning And what gets me out of bed every morning are the inner resources I have to draw on. Some of these resources are coping strategies, like when I numb out my rage at all the anti-trans legislation by eating a bowl of ramen or watching five more reels of hamsters eating broccoli. And some of these resources are ancestral, specifically the love and support of my grandmother.  Since my mom and dad always worked day and night, my siblings and I grew up with our grandma in our family home in Bangkok, Thailand. I loved my grandma but I didn’t like her. I didn’t like a lot of people, to be honest…because I didn’t like myself. I was too deep in my head trying to figure out why my gender didn’t match my biological sex as a child. I felt so alone and angry trying to navigate my identity, my existence, and my purpose as a young adult. I was so busy not believing in myself that I believed no one believed in me. I had to hide my femininity until I told my parents in high school that I was transgender.But in the safety …