Like countless others in Silicon Valley, I wanted to change the world, when what I really needed was to change myself.

What Truth Remains is a true story about what happens at the end of the fairy tale. It’s about breaking out of the external cage of gender conformity, only to discover an invisible one within.

It’s a journey that carried me from De Anza Six in Cupertino to the deserts of Arizona, to the jungles of Costa Rica and Peru, to the ancestral lands of Taiwan, and finally, back to Silicon Valley, transformed.

Along the way, I sat with mushrooms, peyote, iboga, and huachuma. I confronted everything I thought I was, everything I was still running away from. Piece by piece, I stripped away the stories written in my genes and my family about gender, about success, about who I was allowed to be and who I was destined to be.

Until only the truth remains.

It’s a story of stepping off the path my ancestors carved in bone and finding a new one, barefoot, in the dark.

But more than anything, it’s a human story.

And it might be yours too.

TESTIMONIALS

  • "Rock on. I don’t have to tell you how courageous you are. But I will anyway. You show strength most people just don’t have."

    — Neal Foard

  • "I’m invested now, looking forward to the next one. Not an easy thing to write at all, you are being very vulnerable here."

    — C. Boissière

  • "Helen, your story is long overdue. Thank you so much for sharing. Your vulnerability projects courage and strength. Thank you for being who you are."

    — Dr. Aram Harijan

  • "Stripping away programming - I need that."

    — A. Alotta

  • “I’m certain it has an impact on everyone, either in making them more compassionate to others with gender changes… or helping those who would like a little courage to be the true version of themselves.”

    A. Andrikopoulos