Desire, oooh like fire...come on, baby, light my fire I used to lip sync for my life with these lyrics when I was a boy. I had no idea what En Vogue was referring to when they sang “Desire,” but that never stopped me from getting into the song. You could say the En Vogue record was my introduction to the concept of desire. I felt desire for the first time years … [Read more...]
How Rage is Radical
There’s so much in this world to be enraged about. Everyday there’s another video, another story, another harmful policy, another tweet, another lived experience, another injustice ... What are we supposed to do with all of it? Where are we supposed to put it? How do we breathe with all of it in our chest? This constant state of rage can leave folk feeling powerless, … [Read more...]
Maybe There Are No Good Cops?
This article was originally published on TheRoot.com and is republished with permission. In the wake of the police-shooting deaths of Terence Crutcher, Tyre King, Keith Lamont Scott and (insert the name of the next victim here), there will undoubtedly be quickly assembled news panels with ex-cops and former police officials regurgitating the same stale arguments. As they … [Read more...]
7 Things History Class Should Have Taught Every US American About Indigenous History
The history of people indigenous to the North American continent is often glossed over in education. We are badgered with the legend of Native benevolence to the pilgrims who landed on the east coast on Thanksgiving. If Indigenous history is covered, students are likely to hear a tragic but vague narrative of massacre, disease, and death, a narrative devoid of the … [Read more...]
How Harm Reduction Helps Me Heal: Moving Beyond Traditional Ideas of Recovery
writer's note: i write in lower case, it's my small rebellion. trigger warning: this article discusses cutting, mental health, and drug use. september is national recovery month, and as a harm reductionist for life and active drug user, that has me thinking a lot about my own relationship to recovery. traditional definitions of recovery still solely focus on complete … [Read more...]
3 Myths That Trivialize OCD
We’ve all heard it. “I’m feeling so OCD today!” “They’re a neat freak; they’re so OCD.” These sort of phrases and figures of speech are so prevalent that when I came out to a friend as a person living with OCD, he refused to accept the reality of my disorder, stating matter-of-fact that “everyone says they have OCD nowadays”. Because of the popularity of … [Read more...]
An Updated Birth Announcement, 22 Years Later For My Transgender Kid
In August of 1992, when I was five months pregnant, I went in for my sonogram and asked to be told the gender of my baby. The technician looked at the image and said, "It's a girl!" [Image description: The photograph shows a sonogram image of a baby at five months' gestation. The image is blurry, in black and white, and in a triangular shape against a black background … [Read more...]
7 Things I Wish People Knew About Being A Fat Woman
This article by Virgie Tovar originally appeared on SHESAID and has been republished with permission. You do you, just make sure you do it without making other people feel crappy about their bodies. I used to spend a lot of time wondering if people were polite to my face and rude behind my back, probably because I’ve caught people doing that before. To my face … [Read more...]
You’re Doing Better Than You Think: How Celebrating “Small” Victories Radically Impacted My Self Love
Content Warning: This article contains references to mental illness symptoms, side effects, and treatments. I want to share a story with everybody today. It happened a few weeks ago, and it involves a good friend helping me out when I was struggling with a mental health ‘bad spell’, as I like to call them. All of my friend’s help and advice was invaluable to me, but one … [Read more...]
Facing Fat Discrimination While Seeking Healthcare
I have always been proactive about my health. Even when I was more disconnected from my body in the past, I still worked hard to address issues as they arose. I have dealt with a variety of issues over the years, and often had to take my health into my own hands. I have read and known about fat discrimination in the health industry, but really thought I had been fairly lucky, … [Read more...]
Why Music Might Be Your Best Friend While Managing Depression
I get sad a lot these days, and I’m sure you do too. Whether it’s due to mental illness, or stress from work, or seeing something that just rubs you the wrong way, we all go through the motions of sadness from time to time. Sometimes it’s easier for us to snap out of our sadness, maybe by watching a funny YouTube video or talking to a friend who knows how to cheer you up. Other … [Read more...]
This Cartoon Shows Us How Ridiculous Our Ideas About Consent Really Are
This article first appeared on Everyday Feminism and is reprinted by permission. Our friends at Everyday Feminism used this awesome cartoon to illustrate the core issues with how we treat sexual consent in our society. What if we treated all consent this way? This cartoon shows us how absurd it would be. Understanding sexual consent is an essential part of radical self … [Read more...]
Sociopaths, Borderlines, and Psychotics: 3 Mental Illnesses We Must Stop Hating On
This article was originally published on EverydayFeminsim.com and is republished with permission. (Content warning: discussion of trauma, violence, suicide) When I was nineteen years old, I enrolled in a class called Abnormal Psychology. It was a survey course on mental illness, and it was the first step in my path to becoming a social worker and psychotherapist. At the … [Read more...]
Perfection is Hazardous and Scars are Inevitable So I Might As Well Learn to Love Them
Even though I know no body is perfect — unblemished — it’s very difficult for me to come to terms with acquiring a new scar. The moment I start to feel the physical pain, I also begin berating myself for being careless — or wishing I could go back in time to not do the thing that will leave a permanent mark. In addition to being aesthetically unpalatable to me as a … [Read more...]
