LoveMe is a series featuring LGBTQ thought leaders reading personal letters to their younger selves.

Alok Vaid-Menon is a trans, femme, South Asian writer, performance artist, and community organizer based in NYC. They (Vaid-Menon prefers "they" to a gendered pronoun) have been organizing in solidarity with racial-, economic-, and gender-justice movements across the world for the past seven years. Vaid-Menon is also a part of performance-art duo Darkmatter. Watch as Alok writes a letter to their younger self about the struggles, defiance, and beauty of growing up trans.