caden's crochet story

I have been a crocheter for longer than most of my earliest memories. I assume my mother and grandmother taught me together, as they shared many of the duties of raising me. I grew to my entire 5 feet tall while entrenched in american poverty and with a very difficult family history. I have tried nearly every type of job at least once, from retail to warehouse to office to freelance. If the body truly is keeping score, mine has long surpassed my lifetime budget for stress.

I feel at home when crocheting, bringing my complicated family with me into my adult life and honoring the women who raised me in my own ways. Of course some men were present as well, but their influence typically comes to me when I’m painting. Crochet is the meditation side of the art therapy coin for me, so I find I need a variety of mediums to be my best self. Paintings are more of a literal expression of tiny pieces of myself, where colors have direct translations as well as texture, brush strokes, shapes, and techniques. I was always better at expressing myself through scribbles than through words, so I face the difficult feelings head first.

I was in public school at a time when higher education was being pushed HARD as the only way out of a life of poverty. I have lots of opinions regarding student loans, but that is a later demon to tackle. I went through quite an ordeal to get myself a computer science degree - I also have far too many thoughts on the state of technology. I graduated as the first in my entire family history to receive a bachelor's degree, and they were all very impressed. They were somewhat less impressed when I asked to be referred to as who I actually am rather than their memories of me as a toddler.

The onset of the global pandemic in 2020 violently dropped me back to my core being, as it did for many people living lives they never wanted. I had the time to reconnect to the artist I was raised to be, and I tried many online formats of sharing my work and the joy I was finding. But something was refusing to click for me. I couldn’t connect to my brand because it was named after myself. It was named after the perfectly behaved kid that was squished into the box of girlhood from the beginning. In fact, that name was chosen for me five years before I was even a possibility. Naturally, I had to escape everyone I’ve loved just enough to rebuild myself from the ground up, so I shipped my tiny family to Kansas for a fresh try at a career. And to change my name to something that fits my new box that I'd built for myself. In Lawrence, I have found an artistic community that I fully adore. I love the resilience of my midwest queer extended family. I admire the activism that is so much scarier and crucial here than it was in Massachusetts, where everyone’s at least a little gay. I am more inspired and certain than ever in who I’ve grown into, and so much of it came from moving to an unfamiliar environment and finding that I still could not live within the gender binary.

Why dinos? Dinosaurs have been an interest of mine since the very moment I heard of the concept, which was pretty early since Jurassic Park was released the year I was born. With waves of conservatism in the not-so-united states have come the demonizing of people who live happily outside of the binary genders prescribed by our government. It has happened before, and we see it again now in our modern landscape. This connects people like myself to the dinosaurs, in that they exist both in factual history and a new version in modern times. Dinosaurs may have gone extinct once, but their genetic story lives on in modern birds. Interesting genders are not a new concept, we just see different varieties with the availability of modern science. The more my creations spread, the more of us will be reminded that trans lives touch every single one of us. It can be our little secret ;)

The cycle of life will repeat relentlessly until life ceases completely. Transgenderism is inevitable. So are scientists with questionable ideas.

TLDR; im gay and dinos is cute

here is me as a baby:

Apparently someone was a mariners fan. Today I couldn't tell you what sport that even is.