EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

Improbable Foundations

July 10, 2026—Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California

Tomorrow will mark six years since Amelia and I met on Twitter. Entire civilizations have been built on less improbable foundations, although most of them probably had better moderation policies. What began as a simple #WritersLift became something I had spent most of my life believing existed only for other people.

There are people who know the facts of your life, and there are people who understand it.

By forty, I was tired of being the most manageable version of myself.

Telling the truth did not repair the past, but it ended my obligation to protect everyone else from it. Realizing that your history is not a public-relations problem is arguably one of the quietest forms of freedom. Other people may be unsettled by what happened to you, but their discomfort does not make the truth excessive.

I spent years believing I needed someone to save me. What I needed was someone who would not disappear while I was finally allowed to save myself.

People like to celebrate dramatic rescues because they make for good stories. They are less interested in the person who answers the message, remembers the date, arrives when she said she would, and does it again the next day. There are no medals for consistency, although there should be. Some of the most consequential acts in a human life are so ordinary that no one thinks to photograph them. They pass us by, and in the moment, feel almost ordinary. It's not until afterward that the realization finally hits us.

I have photographed eclipses, entered burning buildings, buried people I loved, celebrated impossible victories, and watched California balance astonishing beauty against astonishing cruelty. None of those things taught me as much about life as the people who stayed.

Spectacle announces itself. Loyalty rarely does.

I remain unbound in certain ways—seen, but not always retained, present, but sometimes treated as temporary. I notice the people who remember. Memory is not merely recall. It is proof that you occupied real space in someone else's life.

The internet has given humanity many regrettable things, including the belief that every passing thought deserves an audience. It also gave me Amelia and Maddie. I suppose even terrible inventions occasionally produce miracles.