Chen Chen, from "weep ode #99"
Sunday Evening by JoeLius DuBois Porter
If you are trans and received piss poor care from Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles, please DM me.
Im looking to collect accounts from fellow trans people who experienced denial of care or dehumanization whilst receiving treatment at PP—it does not have to be related to gender affirming treatment. Any testimony about poor treatment or misgendering is important.
A lot of people (rightly) support PP for their important work in reproductive justice but that doesn’t mean they are above reproach or that it excuses them from being shitty to marginalized people who come to them for care.
If you feel comfortable speaking to me, im looking to write and publish an article highlighting the perils of navigating the healthcare system as a trans person, specifically around reproductive healthcare and how entities like PP do little to improve their bedside manner/treat us with basic dignity and profit socially and financially because they gave us trans people a little healthcare as a treat. I want to stress that our conversations will remain confidential
We deserve better. We deserve to survive.
Mai Masri - Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001)
“As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings, and the honest exploration of them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”
— From the essay ‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury’ in Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
Louise Glück, from “Marathon”, Poems 1962 - 2012
This dude said any time you put expectations on your life you reduce the compassion and appreciation you’ll have for the experiences you live and though this is something I already knew on an intuitive level, to hear someone else say it has me burrowing into its truth like a sinkhole
Moss PNGs.
(1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.)
“Ask permission. Before cutting the branch of a tree or removing a flower, tell the spirit of the tree or plant what you are going to do, so that they can withdraw their energy from that place and not feel the cut so strong. When you go to nature and want to take a stone that was in the river, ask the river keeper if he allows you to take one of his sacred stones. If you have to climb a mountain or make a pilgrimage through the jungle, ask permission from the spirits and guardians of the place. It is very important that you communicate even if you do not feel, do not listen or do not see. Enter with respect to each place, since Nature listens to you, sees you and feels you. Every movement you make in the microcosm generates a great impact on the macrocosm. When you approach an animal, give thanks for the medicine it has for you. Honor life in its many forms and be aware that each being is fulfilling its purpose, nothing was created to fill spaces, everything and everyone is here remembering our mission, remembering who we are and awakening from the sacred dream to return home.”
— Getting To The Root