Dakota is light-years ahead of me, wielding all the language I did not have at her age. She has pansexual, demigirl, non-binary. She has cisgender, the word I didn’t have until my forties, naming a concept I could not properly think until my life was half over. Dakota has the language necessary to think herself into being at an age when I had nothing. I hope this means she will have more love than I ever did.
