@QueerSatanic thanks so much, I’ll definitely try the app. 😊

@QueerSatanic thank you! is there a way to add alt text? I’m relatively new to this platform.

@CriminalCabbage I can only speak for myself and, tangentially, others who have echoed this sentiment to me but, I feel as though I have left and loss pieces of myself over the course of my life. and often, I have found new pieces, and in a sense, I am always whole, of course. but in another, sometimes it is easy to feel as though I am not, and that those aches and griefs and losses are just something that I have to find a way to survive, because there are other things worth doing that for, but one does not cancel the other out. and when I feel that way, and when others feel that way, the very last thing I want to hear from anyone is that I am failing if I am not on a mystical magical healing journey, you know? I suppose the heart of what I am saying is that it’s okay if you didn’t “get better” or “stronger” because of it, it’s okay if you couldn’t spin it in some faux-enlightened way, it’s okay if you’ll never be the same and it’s just shit with no purpose, it’s just a painful shattering thing, it’s okay…. to not be okay. some people aren’t, and some people may not ever be able to reach a place again where they aren’t struggling. and they deserve care, compassion, and community, even if they aren’t “healing”. I want to challenge the idea that people are only deserving of help, care, love, support, if they are “healing” or looking to, if it’s a rushed enough process that it doesn’t begin to “inconvenience” us, if they are the model survivor, the model fighter, the model… proverbial phoenix(?) I’ve unfortunately encountered these ideas and their consequences a lot; those who demand healing, and positivity, and quickly tire of the reality of protracted struggle, or permanent damage, and remove support from those who aren’t “healing” on their approved timeline.

@CriminalCabbage I do understand where you’re coming from, and in the context of disability or neurodivergence or mental illness I completely agree, but with regard to various types of traumatic events, complex grief, etc., many survivors report being shattered, and feeling a hole in their being; losses so great that the hole won’t ever be filled for them. I don’t say this to discourage people, but to say that even if those things have occurred in our lives, even if we will never shake that feeling of being shattered, on some level, missing a piece of us, that we can still find joy, and still deserve collective care, that that we don’t owe anyone our healing if, in a given situation, some gnarly scar tissue that aches when it rains is our best case scenario. too often society demands that people get over things, that they heal and find some positive “reason” for the thing that happened to them, and my intention here was to reject that. I believe that the fact that people can continue to find joy and meaning in their lives, and that some wounds we will always carry, are not at odds with one another, that both things are true, and we do not owe anyone “health”, or “healing”.