Good evening. So today, first and foremost, I'm a Packer parent. Packer means so much to me. My daughter Georgia Becker graduated two years ago and my son Cassius will be an incoming freshman next fall. So I just want to say a quick hello and thank you acknowledging some people who sat through many issues and have come up with many solutions over the years. We're going to miss you, Amy, Jose. Sheila Bogan, where would I be without you? My deep thanks to the Board of Trustees, all faculty, proud family members, and mostly our graduates.

Graduating class of 2019, I'm so proud of you. I'm actually speaking to you, but I'm going to be facing this way. I'm so proud of you, it took everything you have to get you to this point. I'm proud of you for breaking free to the other side. It's not easy. And in breakthrough, we face the possibility of breaking bones and flesh. Breakthroughs can hurt. Transitioning, changing, going from one place to another can be daunting. And I'm not just saying that. I have some perspective of what it takes to graduate from Packer Collegiate. When my daughter was going through this we were on an emotional roller coaster. The story ends well, I promise you. But for a time it was rough. Change can be rough. Transitioning can be rough.

Today I want to talk to you about change. Not changing schools, or cities, not changing course loads and teachers. I don't even know where you're going or if you're going, if you decided to take a gap year or if you decided on something entirely different. That's not my business at hand today. Today, I want to talk about making change, being change, embracing change. What I don't want to talk to you, ironically, I figured in that beautiful song, I don't want to tell you that today is the first day of the rest of your life. Life is happening all around you. And when you're ready, you will touch it all. Let's talk about touching all aspects of life and being open to change. I'm a writer so I'm going to need to tell you a few stories about babies, and of adults, of family, of activism and legacy and some of the phenomenal people who have come before us.

I want to tell you everything I know, everything I've learned in the last 50 years in about 15 minutes. My life has been deeply influenced by my ancestors. My grandmother was a civil rights activist in the South. She fought school boards and hospitals during the segregated south and she won those court cases. She earned a Ph.D. and a Masters and went on to teach as a tenured professor in the south because she knew how important education was.

My mother studied at the University of Strasbourg, and Harvard, Wesleyan and then later one she went to open a school in Harlem called the Patterson School because she knew education was not equal for everyone, and it needed to be. My Aunt Lurma, by the time she was 16, had marched dozens of times, peacefully, and she was jailed by the age of 16, sixteen times for marching peacefully. She later on had a life with Gil Scott-Heron, the revolutionary singer who wrote The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Gil Scott-Heron helped to raise me and my Aunt Lurma and he decided that freedom was the message that they would bring to businesses, to media, to culture. Freedom.

I come from a long line of people who did things differently. So you would think that change would be easy for me. I've always been told that women, in particular are powerful, tenacious and important but we pull from limitless places. That beneath moments of failure there are endless reserves of strength. I probably don't need to tell you that I was raised by southern black women.

Which just months ago, or years ago, I was feeling none of that power. I was feeling pretty pessimistic about the future. Most nights I wasn't sleeping; tossing and turning about what I knew tomorrow would bring. Tomorrow was daunting, but I had this life that was sort of out of control, and I had birthed a lot of children. I had opened some companies, I had barely slept. I was ragged. Under pressure. I'm sure many of us can understand pressure. 

And then came Penelope, my third child. Penelope was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Penelope represented the kind of change that's scary. Within the first year, Penelope was a grumpy, angry baby. Nightmares, nail biting, uncontrollable crying. Protests for the simplest things: changing diapers, brushing hair, getting dressed. Even more than protests, Penelope had become a bully on the playground, at home pushing siblings, pushing friends. By age two, most days are filled with fights.

I'm a seasoned mother of five, so temper tantrums don't daunt me, I can tune that out really easily. But this was something deeper. Penelope is a dark child. So I tried everything I could do: more sleep, more hugs, longer naps. And I thought maybe if I took dairy out of the diet, things would get better. Maybe it's a dairy allergy.

Cutting the hair helped, blue jeans helped, but they weren't enough. They weren't getting more than enough change. One day, after round 1000 of fights and screams, I simply asked Penelope, "What's wrong? Why are you so angry?". 

And Penelope, it was the first time I stopped fixing, and opened up a conversation, right? Penelope confided in me, "Mama, everyone thinks I'm a girl, and I'm not." I thought my child was talking about feminism. I thought Penelope, at three, was noticing the ways in which this world favors, sometimes, men over women. And I thought Penelope was choosing tough boy over weak girl. So I said. "However you feel inside, I support you." Penelope said, "No mama, I don't feel like a boy, I am a boy."

I don't know if any of you have this conversation before, where you're trying to explain who you are to someone, and they're not getting it. It's a tough place to be on either side. Penelope's words shocked me. I knew that what Penelope was talking about was something much more than I could comprehend at that moment. I was having this moment where my toddler knew more than I did. Penelope was three, but that was around the time when my mother started teaching me about bold women, Shirley Chisholm. Billie Jean King, Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou—women that changed the world for the better.

Penelope is different, he likes math and science. He likes karate, and basketball, high tops. Getting straight A's. He likes a full name, Penelope. These things aren't particular to one gender but they are what he likes. And he’s told me so. Of course, I tried to make Penelope into the Penelope I thought Penelope should be. Brilliant, beautiful, witty, all decked out in hand me downs, vintage dresses. And the more I tried to change Penelope, the sadder Penelope became. A part of my insisting was based in fear. I know that this world can be unkind to those who are different, those who don't follow the rules. And I've also seen this America be divided on race and love for centuries. And I thought that this same America would be divided on my Penelope, a transgender boy.

Remember a few moments back when I said was shaped by my ancestors? In that moment my child was shaping me, markedly changing me. Over the past eight years, I've had to wrap my head around Penelope as "he", I've had to simply let him be boy, let him explore new territory. Territory that was not allowed to him as girl. We know that we're not supposed to treat and raise and interact with people with bias. But the bias is there. We speak certain ways to boys and sweetly to girls. Butterflies on girl diapers. Superheroes on boy diapers. I'm not sure if you remember your diapers, but they are gendered, I promise.

More background on me. I was born in the 70's, I grew up in New York City and my dad was from Harlem. And he raised us to be very confident in who we are. So if we wanted to wear blue jeans under our Sunday dresses, and my mom would disapprove, he'd say, "Nope, let them be. Doesn't matter what they look like, they're happy." If we didn't want to brush our hair, he would say, "Fantastic idea. Let's grow the biggest Afro by Easter. It's an Afro contest. Whoever wins has the biggest, most unbrushed Afro by Easter." He would say, "You're not born to be pretty, you're born to be reimagine, to change, to push forward, yourself, perhaps the world."

So here I am today at 50, asked to reimagine in the most critical way yet. Reimagine space for my child whose space might not necessarily be there. When I ask you graduates, to think about how you can reimagine. As an adult, half the time, I think I have the answer. I've done it so many times. As a graduate, you've taken hundreds, if not thousands of tests. You've taken that subway route so many times. Maybe there's a teacher that doesn't vibe with you, you know that experience. Arduous tasks, difficult tasks, are not surprising. "Mama, I don't want to be you, I want to be Papa." At some point in our lives we will experience something we are not prepared for.

Now, years later, I understand Penelope to be transgender. And I no longer want to change him, I want to change me. I want to change the bias, the way in which I interact with people, right? I want to change my friends group, something as simple as that. All of my friends on Facebook look just like me: cisgendered, black, female, educated. I had to switch that up. The businesses I work with, the schools that I invest in are LGBT accepting, trans accepting. As adults, as young adults, you will need to flip it upside down because that's the kind of work that this world needs. That's the kind of change I'm talking about. I tell you this story because the story of trans people seems to be playing out very similarly to the story of women, people of color and marginalized people all over the world.

Now is the exact time to stop dictating other peoples' stories. Now is the time to stop insisting people be who they're not. Most importantly, now is the time to allow yourselves time to define yourselves on the inside out. And students, you have a unique opportunity to expand your vision and change life. Packer has asked that you. I'm asking that of you. Budding revolutionaries and trailblazers, young people who perhaps don't fit into the status quo. Reimagine yourself, in your deepest, widest sense in the journey of the modern day world revolutionary. 

Culturally what we must cultivate is one of depth, not surface deep. Although, we all look splendid tonight, I'm talking about something that has nothing to do with presentation, it is of definite purpose of training the mind, to observe, and absorb and expand.

It needs to be our mission, each of us, each of you, to steadily undo all the stereotypes that we've learned about ourselves and of others, what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to act. Let's dismantle every single notion of an ideal girl, boy, man, woman, student, parent, human. We have to mantra what we want with the mantra for change we believe in. So all day, every day, I'm like, "Penelope. Boy. Penelope. Boy.” Regenerating my brain and now I'm like: “Award-winning author. Award-winning author.” We have to mantra what we want, reimagine anything, a reputation, an identity, a gender, Breaking out of any confine takes special effort. It's hard, not impossible. Flexibility, mental dexterity is what it takes.

I'm going to explain. Not everyone in my house feels the same way I do on gender. So, I have this thing called The Lab and we lab our good ideas, everyone can speak their truth, putting ideas on the table. As a scientist, one of my sons says, "Penelope, I respect you, I will always use the right pronouns, scientifically speaking, anatomically speaking, you're a female." Penelope says, "It's not science. I am trans, I am male. This is how God made me.” The scientist says, "That's not proven. You've lost me on that." So we have two people, I share this very intimate conversation, because we have two people in my family on opposite ends of the conversation. And the goal is not to agree. The goal is to discuss, debate, with decorum. Not everyone in the world, or in this garden, agrees with what I'm saying. But if we can lab out big ideas, new concepts would be no big deal. We are more than one thing. We are infinite and non binary. It's simple, the trees are not tall or short, the ocean isn't deep or shallow, birds aren't sleek or fluffy.

Nothing in this life is one of two things. Don't limit yourself to be one of two things. As a woman, I have been pulled in the directions by the circus, by love, by loss, by ideas, and it's made me the woman I am today standing here. But that tug has been so strong sometimes its detached me from my spirit. So this is what I do: I start to reimagine myself and recently I have been re imagining myself as King. Not king over anyone — but king of myself. My children say, "No, mommy, you're Queen. Girls are Queens." And I say, "No, I'm King. Sit with that for 10 more years." 

And then I reimagine myself as a starfish, stretching out in the sand and touching every aspect of life, not worrying again is this what Mommy should do? Is this was a fifty-year-old does? A starfish, if my limbs are severed from trauma, they will grow back again, and again, and again. We must reimagine ourselves, all of us, each of you. We can be more than what our gender says, more than what society tells us. If you write yourself off as purely one thing, you will underestimate your infinite potential. Miscalculating ourselves by far.

The life I want for you is not to be merely stuck in or caught up under. This life must be traversed and experienced and in the end, it must make you whole. So I push you, class of 2019, today to reimagine yourself in ways no one has ever suggested. A new school, a new home, sure. A new language, a new community, a new identity, a new cause. Rethink is change. Reinvent. Reimagine yourself as only you are called to do for yourself, and of course for our shared future. We could change what we need, transform the world, and I promise you, we will follow you. Congratulations and I love you.