Friday 9 October 2026
Two things happened today, one by email and one on a screen, and I am writing them down tonight because I am not sure I will be able to tomorrow.
The email first. Professor McLean replied. The follow-up went yesterday; the answer came back within a day, and it was yes. Use the book. Use the name. She said she appreciated the acknowledgement, and she wished me luck. She also apologised for the silence, and the reason is worth recording: her inbox had been flooded with emails written by AI, and mine had been flagged as one of them. It is hard to tell what is real anymore, she said. I have thought about that sentence all day. A fifteen-year-old writes carefully to a professor and the carefulness is what makes it look fake. I do not have an answer to that. I have decided to keep writing carefully.
So the project is called Co-Authored. Not “the draft name”, not “pending”. The acknowledgement that will go on the site is already written. The last line of it says she is not involved, because she isn’t, and that is fine. She gave the idea its name and then let it go. That is, when you think about it, the most co-authored thing she could have done.
The second thing. This afternoon, with Papa next to me, I had a call with the person who wrote to me last week from the UK — the one who said the gap was real. I have written about her reply. I had not expected the call to be hard.
It was hard. Not the content; the content was practical and generous and I have a page of notes. It was that I was looking at the face of someone who, fifteen years ago, did the work that made me legally my parents’ son, and who had done it again for each of my sisters, and who was now asking me what I needed. I had prepared questions. For the first minute I could not ask them.
I am recording that because this blog is supposed to be honest and because I think it is the point. I set out in June to build something for people like me, and I have spent four months doing it as a project: a map, a list, a timeline, a won’t-do list. Today the project looked back at me through a laptop and turned out to be a person who remembered my name. The co-authors are real.
Four yeses. A name.
Now the hard word begins.
— D.
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