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if i could've said goodbye

  • Writer: yannick-robin eike mirko
    yannick-robin eike mirko
  • Feb 10, 2023
  • 2 min read


It’s 3:19 in the morning on December 30th, 2018. Today I turn 21. A lot has happened since we last spoke. I will advise you to take note before I begin that this letter is not an apology or an invitation back into my life, seeing as these last four years now have been some of the most incredible and amazing lessons and moments in my life, and I want to continue to learn about myself in an atmosphere that fosters growth like I have been. The community I surround myself with supports and loves me for exactly the person that I am, and I'm not willing to change that.


I’m sure by now you’ve heard about most things that have happened through other people, and continue to shape me as a negative person in your mind, more than likely adding on what you imagine i’ve been turning out to be as a person without you. I want you to know that I’ve grown to accept that, as hard as that is, given in some ways I have also done the same. But I've also grown to realize how incredibly wrong that is for either party to do. I do not (nor do I ever want to) know if what you said the last few times we spoke years ago about me not being your child anymore and that I was a hated, selfish, greedy person was true for you, but it immediately became my reality once the words came out of your mouth - leading to what was going to be some of the worst nightmares of my entire life - literally and figuratively.


In a lot of ways, life lets you choose your own adventures, and in others, it chooses for you, when you think you’re given a choice. My life chose for me not to have a paternal figure in it, and I’m choosing to keep it that way, although it at first was something I wished would’ve never happened. I am changing and developing into myself and I’m proud of the person that I am, and hope you do not resent me for anything that has happened in the past - regardless of who’s fault anything was. The thought of being resented continues to wake me up at night and I honestly would much rather sleep. I have done a lot in these four years and expect nothing less of myself in the coming ones. Moving on gave me the power to decide where I was going to put my energy, and it isn’t being thrown away on resentment any longer. I hope that in some future, if you haven’t already, you can choose the adventure of moving on and adjust to having lost someone who has and could have loved you the most.


I wish you the best in this coming year - look not in the rear view mirror, but forwards towards whatever is next for you. Cherish the ones in your life without dwelling on the ones who aren’t.




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yannick-robin eike mirko [who communicates in Spanish, English, + ASL] is a Manhattan-based Biawaisa/Yamoká-hu/Maorocoti multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, writer, doula and disability justice activist with a rare disease. His work sits at the intersection of movement, access, queer and indigenous survival, death care, and institutional accountability, using the body as archive, protest, and living evidence.

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Her relationship with dance and movement has never been linear or purely technical. From Off-Broadway to online, their work has been shaped by access, interruption, advocacy, and forced stillness. Movement and progress, for yannick-robin, is not simply choreography or activism; it is testimony, how a marginalized body speaks when institutions fail to listen. 
 

In 2021, yannick-robin participated in Drawing Breath, a visual and embodied project by Risa Puno that centered marginalized voices during COVID, with yannick-robin representing disabled people. The work focused on breath, endurance, and visibility at a time when disabled lives were being openly treated as expendable. This project cemented their understanding of movement as political: presence itself became resistance.
 

In 2022, disability justice became inseparable from his professional life. He was the first physically disabled actor/musician [acoustic and electric guitar, accordion, glockenspiel, xylophone, tambourine] to play a physically disabled role written through an ableist lens and publicly fought the theatre and writers for accountability. This work was documented in his blog and a documentary, a social media movement, and ultimately led to his inclusion in the University of Minnesota’s Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, archiving his contributions to disability, gender, and labor justice in theatre (the most recent edition/collection of years awaiting entering the public access archive due to funding and completion of editing. Help fund the preservation of non-cis history here).
 

That same year, he worked on Mr. Holland’s Opus at Ogunquit Playhouse as an actor/musician [bugle, trumpet, drum kit], a fully captioned production where his lived experience as a non-cis deaf and physically disabled artist directly informed their performance rhythm, physical storytelling, and musicality. Also in 2022, she performed in the inaugural Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival on Theatre Row under the direction of L Morgan Lee, delivering work as an actor involving monologuing about wheelchair use, access failure, and systemic injustice, using their body not as metaphor, but as evidence. 
 

In 2024 after a year and some change prioritizing deathcare work, they returned to theatre at New York Stage and Film (NYSAF), contributing to the work of disabled choreographer Jerron Herman as an actor/dancer. They also released their multi-genre EP passing that year, which catalogs their multi-instrumental writing and use of music for processing as they fall deeper into grief, hearing loss and deafness, and a world of being misunderstood for not being cis.

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In 2025, yannick-robin worked on the developmental process for Jay Alan Zimmerman’s upcoming show Songs for Hands on a Thursday, following Jerron Herman’s recommendation. The project included a residency at New York Theatre Barn’s Choreography Lab and a music workshop premiere, where yannick-robin served as both choreographer and dancer. The piece centered a Deaf father’s death and a CODA grappling with silence; yannick-robin’s role was to integrate sign language into choreography and bridge gaps between sound, access, and movement for d/Deaf performers.
 

Alongside his performance work, yannick-robin has been active in nonprofit and advocacy spaces since 2020. She worked for Imara Jones of TransLash Media, one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023, where they were nominated for a Webby Award as an associate and digital producer for The TransLash Podcast, contributed to The Anti-Trans Hate Machine series, and wrote obituaries for TGNC siblings lost to violence. He has written for TalkDeath on racial disparities and discrimination in death care and other deathcare and injustice related topics and now offers obituary writing, death doulaship, and bereavement counseling for TGNC decedents and their families, people with rare diseases, and disabled communities.


for commissions, death care, speaking engagements and more, press the contact button.
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yannick-robin eike mirko is represented by Arise Artists Agency

© 2026 yannick-robin eike mirko

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