"It's Chyckxn!" The Unculinary Way I Made Life Palatable

A Memoir

When you are born with a congenital facial difference, you spend a lot of your life kicking over boxes and burning a few, too, all in the hope of proving yourself worthy of societal acceptance. The internal struggle of wanting to be “just like everyone” else is further complicated by not understanding why society makes that desire so unnecessarily complicated.

At birth, genetic tests revealed that Christina did not have the common gene responsible for Treacher Collins Syndrome, and science labeled her a fresh mutation. Thirty five years later, science discovered two additional genes also associate with Treacher Collins Syndrome; Christina learned she does not have one of those genes either.

"Its Chyckxn!" provides a raw, candidly detailed journey of a young woman’s heart wrenching struggle with the 50% chance of potentially passing on a congenital facial difference to her children. The question that halts her decision every time is not what society’s judgments will be—she has contended with that for a long time. It is the question: “Will my children resent me when they realize I made a conscious decision to pass on my unknown gene for Treacher Collins Syndrome?” In her quest for the answer, she revisits her childhood photo’s and diaries only to emerge from the substantial journey with a greater acceptance of her own uniqueness.