The reason for the title

To the left is a page I drew last year. It was meant to be for a young adult book to be published by Scholastic, and it was supposed to be in the form of a letter you would write to yourself as a young person.

It was rejected because it was not specifically written like a letter (such as, I suppose, "Dear Little Roberta, how are you...") which I thought seemed to be a bit of a technicality, but people are entitled to their editorial policies...

But writing and drawing this did make me think about just "why it is we ARE here". I don't recall ever really agonizing over this as a young person, because I was spending so much of my time drawing pictures and writing stories in my own unique manner. And that pretty much seemed to answer the question for me. I am so saddened to hear about the LGBT young people who are driven to suicide by cruel and ignorant people. These were all truly individuals who needed to grow up to be who they were meant to be, to give their unique gifts to a world that obviously needed them.