One of the many things that I learned from traditional witchcraft author Lee Morgan is how good it is to explore yourself through visualisation. When we're working meditatively in a deliberate way, how we picture ourselves is very much part of what happens. We can choose who, or what to be without making any kind of commitment. Visualising yourself as other than you are can be a great way to develop empathy. It can also be incredibly liberating.
I've never been especially comfortable with the body I have. I've experimented with all kinds of ideas about shape, gender and species. On the whole I think I'd like me better with pointed furry ears. I think I'd like the kinds of legs that fauns and satyrs have. There are days when I'm fairly certain I would make a very good dragon.
One of the things I can do with all of this is put it into stories. There are plenty of us who, for all kinds of reasons, need the escapism of imagining ourselves as something else entirely. My most formative encounter in this regard was reading Clive Barker's Imajica as a teen. In that novel there is a character whose gender expression changes in response to who they are with. How they seem is exactly how you want them to seem - which really would be the ultimate in people pleasing and I have issues on that score. Only one character sees this person as their whole self, and that for me was a defining moment in forming my ideas about love and romance.
I write nonbinary characters because it is one way of having that space for myself. What I'm most drawn to are the kinds of fantastical nonbinary characters who can be all genders or no gender at all, and whose physical realities transcend what regular human bodies do. I'm working on one at the moment but it might be a bit of a spoiler to say which book that's in!
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