I want to highlight my long but important journey to being diagnosed with ADHD and how I am continuing to grow my flowers. The diagnosis was not the rain; instead, it was the sunlight needed to illuminate how and where I could grow. 

A layoff, death in the family, a violent assault—in 1999, the hits just kept coming for Antoine Craigwell, then a young adult trying to make his way in New York City.

And so, one November day, he inched toward the edge of a Manhattan subway platform and prepared to take matters into his own hands: He would jump in front of the oncoming No. 1 train and end it all.He steeled his nerves—then he thought of his family, including his adopted mother, who’d buried his sister just months before. Craigwell backed off.

Ian L. Haddock, 35, Executive Director of The Normal Anamoly Initiative, vividly recalls the strange dichotomy of his late mother, Valerie Walker, hurling anti-gay slurs at him. But as hurtful as her colorful language could be, she was steadfast in her determination to keep him away from the illegal drug activities and prison sentences that consumed the lives of his two older brothers in Texas City, TX.

An effeminate Black queer child raised in a trap house with his mother and brothers, Haddock says he played football for a while to prove his masculinity. But he ultimately immersed himself in the Black church experience as one of two options given to Black boys in the football-centered Texas town as alternatives to the less desirable and dangerous elements chosen by many Black men in his orbit for survival.

"I knew I was different," Haddock says. "Showing up as any part of myself as a young kid was very difficult because I was really smart. But I was bullied for being a geek. I was bullied for being poor and dirty, and I was bullied for being feminine."

The bullying wasn't isolated to Haddock's experience with other students at LaMarque High School, where he attended. It was also a constant presence inside his home.

"My brothers tried to beat it out of me," he says. "My mother tried to ridicule it out of me. When I was younger, I was very much in fear of my brothers. My brothers would fight my mama. They didn't care. It was a very abusive situation."

Spring is known as the season for love for good reason. Everything around us is thawing out and firing up, including our moods thanks to a springtime burst of dopamine scientists say often sets the stage for romance. But for every couple that begins a five-alarm love affair in the spring, experts say there are many more that find themselves in dry dock.

Call it libido gap, a dead bedroom, or the more clinical term “sexual desire discrepancy.” By any name, the shortfall between how much physical intimacy two partners want is one of the biggest sources of tension in relationships.

“It’s a lot more common than most people will discuss,” says Machel Hunt, an Atlanta psychosexual therapist and one of two experts who spoke to The Reckoning about getting back that lovin’ feelin’.

The cause of a libido gap can be physical, such as hormone imbalances or other conditions that lower desire. Other times the cause is mental, including stress and a history of subtle sexual trauma experts say can be particularly common among gay men.

For many, Christmas represents the promise of peace and goodwill, but behind the decorations and family traditions is a dark underpinning triggered by the holiday season. This sadness, often referred to as holiday depression, can be incredibly challenging for LGBTQ+ people who experience rejection from their given family based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity. So while most Americans are preparing to execute their holiday traditions, others are preparing to wage an internal war under the societal expectation of holiday cheer.

For Chancey Daniel, 31, a Marietta, GA native and doctoral student now residing in Montgomery, AL, the month of December is a painful reminder of the loss of his mother to multiple myeloma and his diagnosis of stage four throat and lung cancer the following year after her passing.

“It [depression] comes around November because Thanksgiving and Christmas are never the same,” Daniel says, referring to the season his mother fell gravely ill after battling cancer three times before ultimately succumbing to the disease in February 2017.

Black gay relationship counselor and psychosexual therapist Machel Hunt tells The Reckoning that he is “on a mission to have every Black gay man in Atlanta in therapy.”