Write Where You Belong

By showing up for my dream of being a published author, I never would have thought I gave someone else permission to do the same.

2009. I’m in Jacksonville, Florida and in the early stages of a manic journalism career. That year, I decided to swing the pendulum away from the daily horror stories of the news business and I landed amongst the frivolity of National Novel Writing Month. It became a space where I could write the hopeful, courageous, romantic and comedic stories I needed in my own world. And I wouldn’t have to do it alone.

Briefly leading our group of ambitious authors was a young lady who arrived with her father. Our gang of misfit writers continued meeting throughout the year to pop open our laptops and create new worlds and realities from the tables of local lunch spots. And more than a decade after I left Jacksonville for Atlanta, the group has grown from about 20 of us to almost 350 members.

I loosely stayed in touch with some of the Jacksonville writers through Facebook. Some got married and had kids. I don’t think there are any published authors among them, but our shared love for storytelling was still worth it.

The story that is fascinating me now is the one our former leader is living. The young lady has since transitioned to a young man, named Elliot (he/they). Under the current political climate and after surviving an attack, he no longer felt safe as a transgender person in the United States. And like many Americans have already done, he fled the country. Elliot is now seeking asylum in The Netherlands.

For months, I was eager to reconnect and share his story on the radio, and he graciously accepted. His full story will air on my radio station for the start of Pride Month 2026. But in this blog, I want to share a part of his journey that I was stunned to learn I played a part in.

The Northeast Florida NaNoWriMo group writing their novels at a local Panera Bread.

Through storytelling and art, Elliot explored who he was and it reflected his true self back to him. He even joked about writing a story about a mirror. Back in our NaNoWriMo days, Elliot said he wrote stories about identity, being loved for who you are, and blossoming in your truth. Even his Dungeons and Dragons characters were about discovering who they were and living their fullest lives.  

Elliot’s stories were also about breaking out of other people’s expectations. What I didn’t know back in 2009 was the strict Christian rules he was raised under that limited his freedom. So, I asked, how was he able to lead our writing group under such heavy restrictions?

Our writing group was the first time he told his family this is something he would participate in, whether they approved or not. His father encouraged this creative endeavor and, according to Elliot, he held me in “extremely high esteem.” It’s because, at the time, I worked for a conservative news/talk radio station (It was my first, full-time reporting job. I wasn’t there to agree with Rush Limbaugh; I was there to provide updates on the local news.)

“When my father found out that you were part of the group, he kind of backed off and was like, ‘Oh, okay. Well, it can't be that bad, because I know this person and they're a good person,’” Elliot told me.

I’m left stunned when I add up how just my presence – as a nonbiased employee of a right-leaning radio station – granted Elliot the freedom and the space to express himself. With all the self-esteem issues I was dealing with at the time, I couldn’t have imagined that by showing up to an informal writing group, I was actually helping someone. 

I’m honored. I have friends in the LGBTQ+ community who have supported me, and if this is one of many ways I could share my support, I'm grateful. But the credit belongs to Elliot. It was his pursuit of art and his persistence to live as his true self that set him free. It’s a fight not everyone is willing to put up. And this belated lesson has taught me that showing up isn’t just important for me, it could mean a lot to someone else, too.