by Tiffany | Nov 4, 2019 | Calls for Participants, Collaborations, Health, Writing, Zines
This new project, which will become a zine or a collective document of some sort, is inspired by a community member who wanted to create a “map” of all the women and non-binary folks who have managed to live a life they want despite not having family support, and despite dealing with the fear and uncertainty that can come with acute illness and chronic pain.
This project reflects our collaborative desire to make this “map” possible – to bring together stories that will show some of the many ways forward through the compounded hardships of unsupportive family and what we might call “body problems” – illness and pain, but also the problems that can be invited into someone’s life by having a body that is deemed unacceptable in our ableist, fatphobic, transantagonistic, white supremacist culture.
We are looking at these factors together because there is often an expectation of family support in many of our cultures. When we fall on hard times, we are often advised turn to family. When we get sick, family is often expected to be there for us. Although we recognize that family is not always there, there’s still this dominant narrative that they will be, or at least that they should be. And when they aren’t, it can leave us feeling isolated, vulnerable, questioning our own value and our place in the world. Experiences of rejection, dismissal, or an absence of support can stay with us for a long time.
We are looking for stories from trans and cis women, non-binary folks, intersex folks, and trans men who have experienced an unsupportive family of origin paired with body problems, and who have continued to live a badass life despite these compounding factors.
(Although cis men also experience these compounding factors, and their experiences are valid and worth listening to, in this project we are also interested in the particular ways in which misogyny and sexism, which are experienced by anyone who is not a cis man, intersect with these experiences. If you are a cis man and want to share your story of experiencing these compounding hardships of unsupportive family and body problems, please reach out to me – I am happy to create a supplementary zine, or a section within this project! But the initial project is focused on non-men because this is an important part of the original context.)
These stories will be collected and turned into a small zine or collective document, and we hope that this resource will offer some hope for folks in this position, including the community member who inspired this project!
When we then also experience body problems, particularly body problems that impact our ability to find employment, to engage in cherished hobbies or activities, or to access social spaces and support, the lack of family support can become even more difficult to deal with. This is particularly true in contexts where the social support net is being eroded – where welfare, assisted living, disability pensions, income support, housing support, and other supports are difficult to access or not adequate to support our lives.
And yet, we know that people get through these hardships.
We know that there are disabled folks with no family support who are living rich and precious lives.
We know that there are so many people who have experienced these hardships and gone on to be successful on their own terms.
We want to collect those stories.
We want to pull those threads of hope together, and weave a safety net of stories for people who don’t yet see the way through to a life that feels possible.
You are welcome to write whatever feels right for you, and we welcome poetry, essays, art, creative non-fiction, or whatever format works for you. The length of the piece can be flexible, but ideally not more than 750-ish words.
If you would like help with the writing, get in touch with me and we can arrange an interview and I can help write up your story.
We hope to make this project available in early 2020, so please send in your contributions by mid-December.
If you would like some prompts to guide your writing, consider:
- What does your culture tell you about how families should treat each other?
- What had you hoped to receive in terms of support from your family?
- What do you think that families should offer to each other?
- What does this say about what you value in family relationships? (Care, support, being there for each other, etc.)
- How did you learn to value this, and how have you held onto this value despite hard times?
- Is there anyone in your life, past or present, who knows that you value this kind of supportive relationship?
- Have you been able to find this kind of support in other relationships?
- What have you held onto as you get through the times of feeling unsupported by family?
- How have you navigated the body problems that have been present in your life?
- Is there anyone in your life who has supported you in getting through these body problems?
- What do you cherish about your life now?
- What has made it possible for you to get to a life that you want to live?
- Is there anything that you would want other people who are dealing with unsupportive families and body problems to know?
by Tiffany | Oct 21, 2019 | Calls for Participants, Grief, Politics, Zines
The other day I responded to a post about politics and said:
I feel like the last couple years have really pushed me away from the faith I had in electoral politics, and there are times when I feel so much grief for losing that thread of hope. Most of the time I am thankful, because letting go of that opens up space to do other things and to imagine other ways of making change, but sometimes it does feel like a loss, and it is a feeling of grief.
Hmm.
Maybe there needs to be a little collective narrative projects for newly disillusioned folks to talk about this grief, which really doesn’t have a lot of space for expression.
Well, here is that little collective narrative project!
Over the next few weeks (until November 8), I’ll be collecting stories about our feelings about politics in 2019.
Submit your piece of poetry, art, or non-fiction by emailing me at sostarselfcare@gmail.com. Submissions will ideally not be more than 1000 words, but, as with all of these projects, I’m flexible.
If you are struggling with how to express your feelings or what to write, there are a few options. You can get in touch with me and we can have a chat that will hopefully help you clarify what you want to express, or you can use the following narrative questions to guide your writing:
- When you think about the current state of electoral politics, what are the feelings that are evoked?
- Are these feelings the same, similar, or not at all similar to feelings that you used to have about electoral politics?
- If your feelings have changed, do you remember a specific experience or story that contributed to this change?
- What do you miss about your earlier feelings, if there has been a change?
- Do you have a sense of grief or disillusionment?
- What are you grieving?
- What feels like it is lost or more distant?
- Do you have a sense of what you wish or hope that electoral politics could be like?
- What does this hope say about what you value?
- Where does this hope come from – are there particular political histories or thinkers who have inspired and nurtured this hope?
- What do you hold onto when difficult feelings about politics arise for you? What, or who, keeps you going?
- What are the actions that you are taking in your life that align with your hopes and values?
- Have you ever had a moment of realizing the elected officials or the institutions of power were not responding in alignment with your values, and taking some kind of action? This action may be as small as reaching out to an LGBTQIA2+ friend when legislation threatens our safety, or it may be something like reading the 291 Calls to Justice in the MMIWG Final Report, or getting involved in community organizing and protests. People are never passive recipients of harm and trauma, and I would like to include stories of response in this zine!
My hope is that, regardless of the outcome of the Canadian federal election that is happening today, this zine will bring together stories of how we are continuing to do work in our communities, how we are continuing to hold onto our values despite our feelings of disillusionment and grief over the state of politics. I hope that it will bring our voices together, and give us a sense of how we can move forward together, organizing together, supporting each other, doing the work of responding to the problems in our lives regardless of the politicians who hold so much power (and the corporations who hold even more).
I’m looking forward to your contribution!
(Although this zine is inspired by the Canadian federal election, contributions are welcome from anyone. These feelings about politics span so many spaces.)
by Tiffany | Aug 25, 2019 | Downloadable resources, Health, Writing, Zines
The Small Self-Care Toolkit was my first effort at creating a zine, and today, years later, I finished a significant update to the content and also renamed it.
So, here you go – the 28-page Small Toolkit for Taking Care (now with a stronger focus on the role of community and relationship in our actions of care).
What are actions of care?
I used to write a lot about self-care, and I defined self-care as any choice you make that honours your needs. I talked about sustainable self-care as the result of consistently bringing awareness, compassion, and intention to your choices.
I don’t really talk about self-care as much anymore, because I think that community care, collaboration, and connection are so critical to challenging the kind of individualism that places all of the responsibility for our well-being on us as individuals, and can end up being victim-blaming and hurtful.
I still think that honouring our needs is important. And I still think that it’s easier to make these actions sustainable when we bring awareness, compassion, and intention to our choices. But now I think that it is important to name and recognize how these actions of care happen within social contexts, and how we are not just looking after ourselves when we take these actions – we are also looking after our communities. And how we can also care for ourselves by caring for each other.
Download the free 28-page PDF here.
And if you appreciate these resources, consider backing my Patreon!
by Tiffany | Apr 11, 2019 | Downloadable resources, Identity, Intersectionality, Letters of Support for the Trans Community, Zines
The Letters of Support for the Trans Community project has been running since October, and now we have the first volume of the zine complete! This volume includes letters from across Canada and Australia. The project is ongoing, so if you’d like to submit a letter either in physical or digital form, please let me know.
Download the Letters of Support for the Trans Community Vol. 1.
This link is freely shareable – there is no cost to download the PDF.
If you would like a physical copy of the zine, they are available for purchase directly from me, or from Shelf Life Books in Calgary, Alberta.
If you are a trans person wanting a letter of support, the zine, along with a physical card, will be mailed out to you at no charge. Just get in touch with me!
If you would like to support this project, consider backing my Patreon! You can also make a one-time donation by getting in touch with me.
by Tiffany | Dec 2, 2018 | Calls for Participants, Zines
Image description: A rusty lock and chain on a wooden door. Text reads “Restraint: A zine about small, silent, and subversive methods of responding to injustice. Send submissions or questions to sostarselfcare@gmail.com. Submission deadline January 31, 2019.”
1. a measure or condition that keeps someone or something under control or within limits.
How do we experience restraint?
How do we resist injustice?
How do we break free, break open, break stigma, break barriers?
Many of us are resisting injustice from a place of external or internal restraint. Either being controlled or controlling ourselves, or both.
We may not “come out” because it wouldn’t be safe, or because it isn’t the way we want to move through our world, or because it would jeopardize our relationships or our work.
We may not “speak up” to bullying, abuse, or injustice because it would put our career in danger, or it would put people we love in harm’s way, or because other people have power over us and we can’t afford to antagonize them, or because we have other ways of resisting those injustices.
(Disabled folks who can’t speak up to injustices committed by their carers because of the power differential, racialized folks who can’t speak up to injustices in the office because they’ll be labelled “angry”, trans folks who can’t speak up to injustices in the medical community because it would put their access to transition support in jeopardy – there are so many of these situations!)
But despite these restraints, people are never passive recipients of trauma or injustice. As David Denborough says in the Charter of Storytelling Rights, “Everyone has the right for their responses to trauma to be acknowledged. No one is a passive recipient of trauma. People always respond. People always protest injustice.”
There are many ways to resist, challenge, and respond to injustice.
This zine celebrates and recognizes the small, silent, and subversive responses to injustice.
It is inspired by the April Possibilities bi+ community discussion of “the closet”, and by the March Self-Care Salon discussion about being a professional on the margins, as well as other conversations and experiences of restraint (both restraint that is painful and externally imposed, and restraint that is joyful and internally chosen).
Do you have a story of restraint?
Send your submissions of art, comics, short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or essay to sostarselfcare@gmail.com before January 31, 2019. You can also send your questions.
(Depending on the number, size, and content of submissions, some may be edited. Nothing will be put into the final zine altered without the author’s consent.)
The holiday season means that a lot of folks are operating under imposed restraints – “don’t talk about politics” / “don’t bring your other partner” / “don’t talk about your sexuality” / “don’t make a fuss”.
This zine got slipped over to the backburner while I was working on my masters degree, but it’s the season for small, silent, and subversive methods of resisting injustice, so let’s do this!!!
I want to hear your stories.
They don’t have to be related to the holiday season (this zine won’t be complete this month either way).
If you want help telling your story, I can interview you!
I find myself very conscious of Unspeakable Things right now – the things that we are not allowed to talk about because other people have imposed restrictions on our speech. Seemed like a good time to share this again and invite your participation. <3
by Tiffany | Sep 17, 2018 | Calls for Participants, Identity, Intersectionality, Possibilities Calgary, Zines
Image description: A rainbow bubble against a black background. Possibilities Youth: Creating a bubble of community. six-week, trans-inclusive facilitated group for bi/pan/ace/2s youth. Contact Tiffany Sostar sostarselfcare@gmail.com. Noon-2 pm, Nov 10 – Dec 15, 2018.
On November 10, Possibilities Youth will officially launch. There will be fanfare. There will be snacks. There will be awkward silences and also possibly some references to Steven Universe.
Does that sound amazing? If so, register!
This group is open to registered attendees only, and is limited to 10 participants. There is no cost* to attend. We will be meeting on Saturdays from noon-2 in the East Village.
We will be meeting once a week for six weeks, and during the course of those six weeks we will talk about a whole bunch of things! (And we will eat quite a few snacks.)
Some of the topics we’ll touch on, and the kinds of questions we might ask are:
Self-Care
- What does self-care mean to you?
- What is your relationship with self-care?
- Do mainstream ideas about self-care feel right for you?
- How did you develop your own unique self-care skills, values, and ideas?
- What insider knowledges have you developed that might help other bi/pan/ace/2s youth strengthen their self-care skills?
Community
- Who is in your community? (‘Real’ and fictional communities both count!)
- Who do you support?
- Who supports you?
- How have you learned to offer and receive support?
- How have you responded to hard times in your community; times when you felt less supported, or when you felt alone or isolated, or when you saw other members of your community struggling?
- What would you want other bi/pan/ace/2s youth to know about community?
Sexuality and Gender
- What is important to you about your experience of sexuality and gender?
- What do you wish other people knew about people like you?
- What have you learned about your orientation and gender, and which parts of that teaching do you agree with or disagree with?
- How have you resisted negative narratives about bi/pan/ace/2s youth?
There will also be opportunities for you to decide what you want to talk about, and to guide the conversation.
You might have noticed a theme of sharing knowledge in these questions, and that’s because one outcome of this group will be a Possibilities Youth Zine that collects and shares the skills and insider knowledges of the group with other queer youth – including a companion group in Adelaide, Australia, who will be responding to some of our work!
Contributions to the zine will be anonymous, unless you request otherwise. The zine will also only include those stories and insights that participants choose to include: the group discussions themselves will remain confidential, as will attendance in the group.
If you’re interested in participating, fill out the registration form!
* There are costs associated with running this group, and if you’re an adult or ally who wants to support this new initiative, I would love to have you join my Patreon or donate to support this work!
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