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More than 28,000 of you read The Ghosts Who Raised Me.
I wrote it in silence, and then the world answered back.
If the poem landed in your chest — if you saw your childhood, your ghosts, your hunger for love in it — I want to say thank you.
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But there’s a truth I’ve never said publicly:
Abandonment shaped the way I learned desire.
Silence shaped my boundaries.
And sex work — yes, sex work — shaped my understanding of intimacy.
People don’t talk about stripping as emotional labor.
As politics.
As performance born from childhood training.
As a form of survival that teaches you exactly what attention costs — and what it pays.
So my next essay is the one behind the poem:
“The Politics of Abandonment, Desire & Selling Intimacy” (Paid)
A story about how being raised by ghosts taught me to read rooms, manage fantasy, negotiate boundaries, and find agency on a stage built on wanting and being wanted.
It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever written.
It drops tomorrow for paid subscribers.
👉 Subscribe below if you want to read the essay that explains the poem.

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