Good wholesome: including plenty of hopeful, encouraging materials into your blogging, not trying to shock your followers into awareness, having place for lightheartedness and fun, having conversations based on good faith with those who are genuinely interested in what you have to say, practicing transformative justice, cheering each other up just because you can, working from the assumption that over-reactions come from pent-up pain and making room for someone’s pain to be expressed creates space for healing, perceiving anger as parts of your emotional repair system instead of as a ‘toxic’ thing to feel bad about, appreciating small victories, creating space for vulnerability.
Bad wholesome: spreading the idea that ‘wholesome’ means ‘no sex, no drugs, no adult topics’, pushing conservative social values under the guise of care.
sex, drugs, and adult topics are my self-care,
Honestly, same.
And not just in an “I drink too much and have one night stands to forget trauma” kind of way. I do some of those things and I recognize that that is coping mechanism, something I do to survive and I am happy that my survival instincts are all there. I’d probably be dead without those escapes.
But sex, drugs and ‘adult’ topics are also an important part of my self-care when I’m moving from coping into healing and when I’m building long term mental health.
Good sex with other trans people is an act of intimacy and validation, a celebration of our deviant bodies, a reminder that we deserve pleasure and love. Good sex is also a place where I experience the traumas within my body and allow them to heal. Where I recognize similar scars within my partners. Where I experience putting up boundaries and having those boundaries respected.
Good drugs, particularily those that open rather than numb the mind and the senses, provide me with therapeutic experiences, a greater comfort in new experiences and in my own vulnerability, fantastic new perspectives on life and a deeper appreciation for the good things in my life and in myself. The effects of that stay with me long after I am sober.
Growing weed is some of the best self care I ever did. It forces me to spend a few moments interacting with nature every day, caring for something, seeing if it is doing okay or needs some help. And it’s so satisfying to watch something grow and to get excited about enjoying it later. And the sweet smell is a little something I appreciate every day. To anyone who can do so without too much risk, I’d just recommend growing weed as self-care.
And then there’s things like crime! Confirming through physical actions that the systems around us are not all-powerful, that I can disobey and win, it fantastic. And
anger! Being able to be with my anger, being able to share it, being
able to channel it into actions, is a thing that is lifesaving. All the self-care in the world probably wouldn’t stop be from collapsing if I wasn’t also actively fighting the innjustices around me.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. Yay for sex, drugs and ‘adult’ things.
QueerAnarchism 