What if the meaning of your life was not something found in self-help books, but in your body, your wounds and your desire to exist in a world that sometimes does not understand you?
With this premise, author Javier Kiniro launches his new book: The reason I’m still here, an emotional and deeply queer guide on how to find (or at least get closer to) that intimate space that gives meaning to who we are and what we do. A kind of compass written in the first person, but designed for everyone.
And yes, we say “queer” with intention. Because this book is not a generic personal development guide, nor is it intended to be neutral. It is written from the marginal, the emotional, the political. And that’s why it connects so strongly.
Who is Javier Kiniro?
If you have been aware of the LGTBIQ+ scene in recent years, the name Javier Kiniro probably sounds familiar to you.
But Kiniro is much more than his resume. She is also a warm voice who has built her own editorial space with her books, columns in Rainbow Magazine and other projects in which she mixes identity, body, aesthetics and care from an intersectional and deeply human perspective.
After titles like Destiny: Yourself or the gratitude notebook EXISTO, Kiniro goes one step further and proposes something radical: rethinking purpose from a queer perspective. No filters. Without formulas. No glitter required.
An Ikigai that does not fit into molds
The word “Ikigai” comes from Japanese and is usually translated as “the reason for living” or “that which makes life worth living.” In mainstream networks and books it has become synonymous with purpose, vocation, even emotional productivity.
But The reason I’m still here dismantles that sugarcoated idea. Here, Ikigai is not a table with circles for you to mark what you love, what you do well, what you can get paid for and what the world needs. It is something deeper, more moving, more yours.
Because how do you find your purpose when you’ve grown up in a body that the world has labeled “wrong”? How to move forward when each space forces you to correct yourself? How do you know what you want if your desire has historically been denied?
This book does not give closed answers, but it does give many powerful questions. Questions that open cracks. Questions that invite you to look inward. Questions that are not uncomfortable because they are poorly asked, but because they hit right where something needs to be heard.
A guide in three dimensions: body, desire, community
The book’s journey is divided into seven chapters plus a final manifesto. And although each part can be read independently, together they make up an emotional and political journey toward what Kiniro calls “shared fire.”
Individualistic enlightenment is not sought here. Here the meaning is found in the small, in the everyday, in the body you inhabit and in the networks that support you.
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The body is spoken of as a compass: not as a prison, but as an archive of memory and desire.
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The obsession with productivity is questioned: who decides what is useful?
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Vulnerability and the right not to know are honored: because Ikigai also hides in doubt.
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And the collective, the emotional, what burns between us is celebrated even if the world does not see it.
In addition, each chapter includes practices and exercises—not self-demanding—to reconnect with your own rhythm, your truth, your joy.
A queer self-help book?
Yes and no. The reason I’m still here is supported by personal development resources, but not so that you follow other people’s rules. More so that you learn to ask yourself questions.
There are no promises of happiness. There are no recipes. There is accompaniment.
There is listening. There is tenderness. There is simple language.
And above all, there is a look: that of someone who has been there, searching for meaning in the midst of chaos.
What if the purpose was political?
In one of the most powerful moments of the book, Kiniro launches an uncomfortable idea:
“Your Ikigai can also be simply staying here. Breathing. Resisting. Being you in a world that doesn’t always know what to do with you.”
This sentence sums up the heart of the book well. Not every purpose has to shine. Sometimes it is enough to not turn off. With existing. With holding. By reaching out. With dancing when no one is looking.
And that, for many LGTBIQ+ people, is already a form of revolution.
A critical look is also necessary
Not everyone connects with the concept of Ikigai, especially if it is associated with wellness marketing or neoliberal formulas of individual purpose. Some voices within the community might question whether, in times of crisis, talking about personal development is not a luxury that not everyone can afford.
To what extent is finding your purpose a priority when you’re trying to simply survive?
The book does not avoid these tensions, although it may not completely resolve them. But it does name them, and that is already valuable. In the end, The reason I’m still here does not attempt to impose a saving narrative, but rather to propose an open conversation. And that is where its strength lies.
Who is this book for?
If you identify with the LGTBIQ+ community, if you have ever felt like you don’t fit in, if you are in a moment of change, of crisis, of unanswered questions… this book can be a refuge. An outstretched hand. A kind of whisper that says: “you are not alone.”
And if you dedicate yourself to emotional accompaniment, teaching, activism or creation, it will probably also strike a chord with you.
The reason I’m still here is not an easy book. It is an honest book. One that looks at you without demanding that you have all the answers. Just that you are willing to feel.
How to get it
Now available in digital format through Amazon KDP, the book is accompanied by a beautiful cover with a symbolic illustration: a figure walking towards an anatomical heart, in warm and enveloping tones. A visual nod to that journey into the interior that each page proposes.
All titles by Javier Kiniro HERE
And if you dare to read it, Javier Kiniro has left his door open to continue talking, inside you will find how.
