"In my case, although I felt safest in QTPOC spaces, alcohol was often present and problematic for me. It gave me a short-lived and false sense of joy in social atmospheres, and it amplified my symptoms of clinical depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.
If you're going to a virtual or in-person event, ask yourself:
-What do I want from this space, and what will I bring to it?
-What do I believe is the intention of this event, and does that align with what I need today/tonight?
-What opportunities will I have to check-in with myself throughout this event, if needed?
Always be thinking about your needs. It'll help you enter and leave a space feeling prepared and in control."
"Even in conversations that are literally about adoption, birthmothers are often missing. 'How beautiful,' some people say, 'Those adoptive parents gave that child a loving family.'
Hello! Birthmothers exist. And they love those children, too. As birthmothers, we undergo the trauma of losing a child. Instead of receiving the grief support we need, however, we are individually silenced and culturally erased. I profoundly respect birthmothers' right to keep their experiences private. In my case, though, the line between "secrets that protect" and "secrets that oppress" became impossible to parse."
"The separation between our minds and bodies is a tool of Capitalism. There's not much profit to be made if I like myself the way I am, so Capitalism splits us from ourselves and then sells us things to repair the damage. I often think of that song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, "The Origin of Love," about Aristophanes' theory that we've been split from our soulmates and wander the earth trying to reunite with them. But I think of the two halves as my own mind and my own body, being wedged apart by marketing and media that tell me I can be whole if I pay for "necessities" like makeup, razors, tweezers, straightening irons, food supplements, diet pills and toxic chemicals with which to beat my body into submission.
We're sold this dualist tug-of-war that keeps us from knowing the feeling of our boundaries. We can't always predict what our boundaries are or will be, but we can know the feeling of hitting one so we can regulate our nervous systems and speak our needs. Recognizing my healing in the form of reconnecting with my body so I can act from my gut is an anti-Capitalist act of self-love. And that is a daily revolution that I'm committed to for the rest of my life."
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