Thanks to My Literary Lineage, I Got to 41, Despite Access Intimacy Abuse

Back then, it never occurred to me that I could face worse experiences closer to Toronto, as I genuinely believed that as long as I continued my anti-oppressive practice of social work, I would be able to maintain my hard-earned career, given that I had managed to get clinical, teaching, and writing experience within 4 years of graduation, which was extremely rare among my peers."

If I have a writerly superpower, it’s that I was my grandmother’s grandchild. I want to honor her in everything I make...I don’t think we talk enough about grandmothers."

He ran game on you!"

Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that comes from someone else understanding your access needs enough that they can anticipate them or respond to them gracefully."

The thing about being working class or poor and/or disabled and/or parenting and/or Black, Indigenous or brown femme is that people are going to ask you to do stuff for them."

Now is not the time to pretend that all is right where we are in left or radical spaces either, because it is not. I have experienced more trauma and abusive behavior from fellow activists and organizers, people who shared experiences of marginalization, people who worked together with me on campaigns and actions, than I have from people outside so-called movement spaces. I understand that’s not the same for everyone, but I know that trauma from movement people is a thing, and as an autistic person, I’m naturally wired to be good at pattern recognition.”

why some people be mad at me sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine."

I must become a menace to my enemies."

...when we are silent we are still afraid so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive."

Commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by offering us a different set of values to live by. In large and small ways, we make choices based on a belief that honesty, openness, and personal integrity need to be expressed in public and private decisions...Living by a love ethic we learn to value loyalty and a commitment to sustained bonds over material advancement."

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Throughout history, marginalized, troublesome, or undesirable people were not believed or taken seriously. We elicit discomfort and disrupt people's binary ideas of normalcy. Our warnings have been silenced in order to uphold the status quo."

What does it mean to give or withhold love, what power do we grant it, how does it change us, & in what discomforting ways might it manifest?”

Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,
think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you.
Your ancestors are always in your corner, along with your people.
When we enter this world we are born hungry,
our spirits long for us to live out our traditions
that have been passed down for generations.
Prayer, ceremony, dance, language—our ways of being.
Never forget you were put on this earth for a reason—
honor your ancestors.
Be a good relative."

Caring for each other is a form of radical survival that we don't always take into account.”

In Ojibwe and Cree culture, “leadership” didn’t mean power; it meant caring!”

Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse is to sit here and do nothing.”

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond."

when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love"

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better"

What if they shared meals cooked for each other twice a week, went on walks together, strategized about protecting their bodies from the stressors in their lives, cried enraged about what's been awful, unfair, practice listening to their bodies deepest hungers as a guide. Tenderly chopped and cooked and seasoned what made them feel most at home in themselves? What if their story was not one of defective organs, unruly appetites and laziness? What if it was a story of homecoming?"

Pleasure Activism is a framework for that, but within that framework I like to remind folks that it’s not just about obtaining this joy and this pleasure for yourself. It’s about realizing how transformative joy and pleasure is, and then working hard to make sure that other people get access to it, particularly folks who are marginalized and oppressed."

Transformative justice and community accountability are terms that describe ways to address violence without relying upon police or prisons. These approaches often work to prevent violence, to intervene when harm is occurring, to hold people accountable, and to transform individuals and society to build safer communities. These strategies are some of the only options that marginalized communities have to address harm."

Disabled people are less than in a world where disabled people, especially Black and brown people, are told to just be so grateful that normies/ableds let us live, let us even be on stage, let us be in the anthology or retreat, let us be included...Disability justice means we innovate crip ecologies, diverge from those perilous confines, and center collective care and care work (both terms embedded in disabled community—specifically Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities), with queer, non-binary, and transgender communities at the helm. Being disabled is culture, community, adjective, and is a richly stunning, difficult, and lavish language that many people water down or oversimplify as one person’s obstacle to heal from or fix."

Debility as a triangulation
of the ability/disability binary...While some bodies may not be recognized as or identify as disabled, they may well be debilitated, in part by being foreclosed access to legibility
and resources as disabled.”

I remember how the pressure and weight of culture and family buried my queerness and how, after a while, it became absence and void. Madness occupied a similar sensation. I did not think I could professionally disclose without risking a bombardment of stereotypes, without being reduced in all the toxic ways that nondisabled supremacy and sanism reduce the Mad. Anyone who has had to swallow parts of themselves knows how this causes bodymind wreckage, how it causes loss, and how it distances us from ourselves. I also remember how disclosure and naming my Mad queer bodymind felt like breakage of another kind: a joyous explosion, a liberation of feelings."

There is power...in reclaiming things that were once used to hurt or demean you.”

Her love was simply bigger than the personal. It was bigger than the love individuals have for each other...She loved the idea of people rising up against injustice and political terror...This impersonal love, this political love was...a deeper love, a more democratic love, the ethical love."

Both parties in a relationship have to maintain the conditions where there can be love between them. If they are not caring for each other & mutually meeting each other's needs or if one is boundary stepping including abusing the conditions for love to flow just aren't there."

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.”

Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are, with what you have. Just...start.”

Stop trying to die. Serve your time here. Do your time.”

I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people.”

The thing that destroys a person is not the knowing but the knowing and not doing."

Love is not about rescue, I understand now - it's about allowing. In the Ojibway world, love is the process of you leading me back to who I am...That's the most courageous thing you can do when you love somebody.”

Despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual."

What would the monument to our survival look like?"

every day is a new mourning

another fight we live to dance between tears beating on our faces

i am tired of strength

i am tired of strength”

If we don’t cultivate internal accountability, nothing really changes. If I act like I care about equal rights for everyone, but internally I believe I hold a superior position to one group of people, that internal superiority will find a way to surface. I see this often with men who rush to use the language of feminism, but still operate in harmfully patriarchal ways behind the scenes—until they get caught."

It means having the courage to imagine, make mistakes, trust, listen, learn, think, and rethink; to resist punditry, pedestals, and perfection; to reject cynicism and embrace critical analysis; to plot; to hold on; to care and commune; to show up; to love.”

If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”