View the Project:

I am sharing the project on Pinterest.

Background:

I am creating my “Diary of How I Forgot to Hug Space” as a 365-day audio series so that I can think out loud about some of the bigger questions around who I am as a human – especially outside of what I produce in capitalism and who I’ve been made to be through trauma, violence, and difficult things I’ve experienced. I started the project on June 7, 2026.

The title refers to the idea of “taking up space” and the idea that through my well-meaning desire to avoid taking up “too much space,” I stopped speaking my mind and expressing who I am authentically out of fear of other people not liking or agreeing with exactly what I had to say. The idea of hugging space gestures to a different possibility in which I take up space when I need to and it is appropriate and also release it for other people when I don’t need to.

As a transfeminine person, as a disabled person, and as a mad and neurodivergent person, I’m often told how to be and not to be, from people outside my communities and sometimes also from people within them. This project is a quest to reclaim my authenticity by learning to speak freely in a public way where I don’t edit and censor myself so much to be palatable to others. I am expressing the first draft of my thoughts here, and if they don’t match your perspectives exactly, that is just fine. In a few months or even days, my perspectives may have changed too.

I decided to add a daily sketch to accompany the audio series because I stopped drawing regularly about a decade ago and have been afraid to get back into it since it will take a long time of “not being good” before I feel confident again. In this way, this multi-media project is a big FU to perfectionism; it argues instead that expression is just as valid when it is unvarnished as when it is carefully composed.