Monthiversaries are for new relationships and new babies. This bookstore is both. Happy monthiversary from this baby bookstore to all of you, with whom we are now in a new relationship!
On the way into work today, I pondered the last month. Every thought was accompanied by waves of gratitude. If you took me in for a brain scan right now I expect my frontal lobes would be glowing kaleidoscopically. And it's been like this for a while.
I began this project feeling grateful to the longtime friends who were so determined to help me succeed and support my family that they gave me masses of money. (In a society where you can't thrive without it, money is love made tangible.) Now I'm pretty much floored with gratitude every day, when new people walk in the front door.
Y'all are so dang kind. You've said things to me like 'I'm so glad you're here,' and 'Oh, this is so welcoming,' and 'Thank you for creating this here.' You bring your kids, your siblings, your friends, your partners, your secondhand books. You share us on your socials. You pick out books, yes, that too. You lift us up, you wrap us in community.
Especially all our queer folk. It's such a privilege to be creating this space. The gratitude many of you have expressed when you visited tells us that this place needs to exist, and grow. (We shouldn't have to be grateful just for not being actively excluded, loves!) And being with you over Pride weekend, at Dyke March and during Martha Shelley's reading on Saturday evening, was just the best thing. The best thing.
So thank you, all and some, for a memorably lovely first month. Stick with us and we'll make more.
--Nena
Currently reading: The Stars in Their Eyes by Kristy Gardner
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