Jeffrey Marsh - How to Be You: Stop Trying to Be Someone Else and Start Living Your Life

Praise for How to Be You

This is a book for anyone who feels out of place. Jeffrey will help you trust that your feelings are legitimate, and the life you want is just around the corner. Find peace with yourself, and let Jeffrey teach you how.

Sarah Lohman, author of Eight Flavors and Four Pounds Flour

The luminous Jeffrey Marsh gifts us all with How to Be You. Expanding from their sparks of online affirmations into an enlightening how-to manual for self-discovery and delight, Jeffrey guides us through the creative, ever-evolving process of understanding and accepting ourselves. Ultimately, they remind us the best person we can become is our self.

Amy Deneson, writer and activist, GLSEN

Jeffrey Marsh has created an inspiring guide to help us all discover and honor our best selves. Through a combination of beautiful personal stories and interactive activities, infused with inimitable style and thoughtful insights, Jeffreys book encourages us all to just be, and live our lives with dignity.

Daryl Roth, Tony Awardwinning theater producer of Kinky Boots and The Normal Heart

for Rick , who has always seen the value in me and helped me see it in myself

for Danny , who has added his beautiful art and soul to this book and my life

for Mom and Dad for supporting me in telling my whole story

and, of course, for the love of my life, Jeff , who has always seen and honored the real me, even when I wasnt sure who that was

This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider . Yes, you can sit with us at lunch.

T his book comes straight from the heart. And it aims for the heart too. If I could offer a teeny bit of advice, its not to shoot for understanding anything in here, but to shoot for seeing what resonates with what you already understand. I beg you to look for your own truth. What connects with your own life and with the world as you see it? What zaps you right in the heart? I have endeavored to make so much of this book about your experience. I trust you deeply and I want you to trust your own truth of what were going to talk about too. So youll notice that each chapter has some kind of fun, challenging, enlightening, and delightful exercise or experience of the topic at hand (You can visit bit.ly/29eCXu2 to view a printable packet that features all of the exercises from this eBook.). We are creating this book together and it is meant to be the manual on how to be you that you didnt get while growing up. Its never too late to learn how to live a full happy life as you, and nows the best time to start.

One more suggestion before we get started. Repeat this book. Your understanding of the things in these pages will deepen and grow as you grow, so Ive made it easy to repeat and reread it every five years or every year or every week. In this book, you will create astounding expressions of who you are, and build your own windows into how the world works. Who wouldnt want to do that again and again? Why not keep refining your idea of how to be you? So grab your pencil and crayons and enjoy yourself. Before we get into the heavy, joyful stuff, a little bit about me...

FARMLAND FANTASTIC

I grew up poor. By the time I realized the barn could be my theater, our farm was in decline. When I was old enough to help with chores, my familys farm was reduced to raising just a few animals and planting two crops: corn and soybeans. Mom had a rural farm joke she liked to tell people she just met: Did you hear that our bathroom caught on fire? Thank God the fire never reached the house! Like any good joke, its an exaggeration, but it reveals how far down a dirt road we actually lived. I spent the first few years of my life without a street address and without any idea that there were other people like me (just an occasional mention of the gay plague on TV).

There was one place where I did feel totally like myself when I was growing up. Before I found community theater, I had a place where I didnt have to worry about being punished and I could express myself as myself. There was a stage. Footlights. A velvet curtain, a packed crowd. All I needed to do was rearrange a few bales of hay and it would be real. The old barn could be my private dress-up theater. Expressing myself on the farm was always a bit complicated, but when I discovered the raised platform inside our abandoned barn, I could see a safe, private space to explore being a fab ten-year-old. It was a stage for self-expression. I started playing there almost exclusively. To be in that safe space was addictive, all that twirling, dancing, and even singing, feeling secure and whole. There was an old trunk I took from our attic to store odds and ends of skirts and gloves I found in thrift stores or got from friends. The shows were always glittery musical extravaganzas, hours on end of playtime dancing and romancing. While my older brother and his friends went hunting or played football, I brought Vegas to the barnyard.