Rest For Resistance

In "Honor, the Scorned," Xelestial's soul is in constant turmoil with the encounters of love she has in her life, as well as her insistence and demand to be seen under her terms. We enter a transient space of time and magic in this performance ritual with Xelestiál's body, heart, and soul.

Because we encompass gender defiant ideologies and reject the mainstream, we who visibly navigate queerness, who practice transfeminism, miss out on the queer capitalist extravaganza that everyone else benefits from.

Pride can look like resting with our ancestors, resting with the ones who paved the road of the movement blocks that guide our liberation.

I’ve finally allowed myself to be honest with myself. And as a result, I’m able to be honest with my partner.

They’ll talk Native issues so it seems like they care / But LGBTQ2S issues are Native issues because we’ve always been here

Family meant loving what was not there. But then we grow up. And we learn that to draw close is to survive. And to draw close is maybe even something desirable.

Does adoption count as something chosen? What part? For whom?

Be vulnerable / Speaking your truth / Even when it shaves your soul / Naked / Leaves your heart in tears / Sheds your fear in pieces

I proceeded to tell them what happened. I didn’t have much in the way of details—believing that’s what they wanted to hear—but what I did share left them in a state of slack-jawed shock. They asked me to imagine for a moment if I had done to her what she had done to me, where I might be at that very moment.

I know few get the opportunity to heal. That’s the motivation that drives me to do healing justice work. But in offering community support, I often forget that I’m part of the community too, that I deserve access to heal from trauma. And those “I don’t deserve _____s” are all giving voice to my survivor’s guilt.

Past experiences of broken confidence held me back, and I had even less confidence that I would be able to find a queer competent, POC identified behavioral health professional with sexual assault experience who was worth investing time, money, and trust in.

Communication is super, super important. Yet no one really taught me how to communicate about sex. I’ve begun to ask myself why I am so afraid to be seen.

A video featuring Eve Xelestiál Moreno-Luz. “My perception as a self identified femme brings forth waves of validation to the divine I know myself to be.”

I stopped being at the mercy of other healers when I began to heal myself.

There are things I want to do all the time, like … I have ambitions, I do, really … want to be there for people, but…

Even if there is tension among your bio family, you are still loved and honored for who you are in the other spaces you create for yourself. No one can take that from you.

Christmas started bullying me; during sleepless nights it showed a carousel of pictures of my childhood: the primary love I thought I had but deeply marked me, carers who gave me unhealthy bonding, yet carers who I deeply miss.

Still no matter how much I try to resist it / I wax nostalgic for a person who never existed

Often, I wonder if I love women because I’m tired of being hurt by men. In effect, I have the same question many queer survivors have: am I queer because I was abused?

I’m not doing it on purpose, I promise. But when I’m in the bathroom alone I look at myself in the mirror and I go to a dark place within my own body, somewhere that I haven’t yet exorcised and burnt incense in.

fuck you! / and now you want me to speak like a martyr? / well I am still alive and much smarter

As we dream of ways to change our world by embodying a more radical self-care and community care, let’s make sure that we don’t leave members of our community or those who could be part of our community behind.

this water offers resolve. / —Touches every part of my body / & does not flinch (Poem also available en español)

You there, you are Sacred & I am Sacred too. / Every one & Every being provides a purpose. / No purpose too small, for even our Beetle Brothers & Sisters bring us a Message.

Once I began to receive my benefits, I began to distance myself from an idea that productivity defines whether I am deserving of respect.

Wanting to take space as a fat brown genderqueer femme is all fun and games until the folks who domineer the space take notice.

I don't know what God meant to do by putting something so un-straight on top of a head so un-straight, but there are reasons they say this is unmanageable / Not because it is impossible to love, or to care for, but because it is impossible to subdue. 

I’d like to think of this as a chance to force people to confront the differences between sex and romance. They don't always coexist.

This May, Rest for Resistance is featuring writers who have a chronic mental health condition. Support our contributors on patreon.com/qtpoc, or donate directly through our website.

I think of the story she told me of stealing fruit from her grandfather’s shrine to Ogun. I want to reach past her and my Christian grandparents, pluck that fruit, and make an offering of it.

Until a violent person takes accountability and creates change in their patterns of behavior, the best thing to do is limit the harm being caused.

Every day that passes, I have come to know who I am a little bit more, and I like who I am. I have a life and a future out there in the free world, and resting for resistance keeps me sane so that I can avoid any issues that might keep me here any longer.

The role models I had access to were white, affluent and held a lot of disdain for women with lives different than theirs. But back then they had an image, and their way to be trans was what I had.

You refuse to engage with your abuser. Their presence reopens old wounds. You try to heal but it hurts. You like a worm on a bamboo stick hooked on the teeth of lies. Pain pushes you to find silence somewhere.

When abusers deny us our reality, it’s gaslighting. When we enact that denial on ourselves, it’s equal parts survival skill and self-harm. Yet we have the ability to change how we treat ourselves, even if we can't change how others treat us.

Intersectional spaces are invaluable for creating a truly humanistic view of people whose voices and stories are often marginalized, distorted, or entirely erased.

When our experiences and identities are erased from history, from our lineages, from our traditional systems of community, we can only see ourselves through the negative lenses that remain.

every villain is often a caricature of marginalised identities, and every hero is a glorified image of the world that wants to destroy me and those I love.

a photo-prayer to document and archive the resilience, faith and self love I vowed to maintain. This is me in my magic, my resistance and in my legacy.

Those feelings didn’t come from some magic place that could be addressed by a back-to-school special and a hug. They came from racism, queerphobia and white supremacy.

The “to do” list implies that each 24 hours is an uphill battle.The “done list” says that I’m conquering the day one step at a time.

Thoughts of suicide come when we run out of options. The more we’re oppressed, the less power we have, which means thoughts of ending our lives might come up a lot. Here are resources and strategies to help you keep fighting for your life without compromising your agency.

The health of our societies depends on the community's ability to hold its members accountable in a way that makes space for each other's individual, predisposed fallibility and capacity for personal growth.

We are divine. The barrier between us and divinity can be destroyed by the realization that our queerness is exactly what makes us worthy.

When we heal, we are able to be more to each other and ourselves. And not in that way where it eventually makes us good productive workers. We become more invested in ourselves, and we have more of ourselves to utilize in the ways that bring joy for everyone, including us.

I wish I had told my friend to seek out generosity, forgiveness, and understanding in unlikely places. To find people who made him feel safe. To find spaces that loved him as hard as he loved the Movement.

In order to harm ourselves less and care more, we need to look at our relationship with the world around us. The problem isn’t how we’re hurting ourselves, but that we’re hurting ourselves at all.

Becoming sober has allowed me to discover who I really am and has allowed me to fall in love with myself. I still battle with thoughts of drinking because I live at home with my dad, but I know that putting my life in jeopardy and hurting my loved ones is not a risk I'm willing to take.

Ask them what they can offer you besides coping skills, and remember that you’re worth it.

We all deserve community, and many of us find that on social media. So how can we practice self-care online while navigating the bullshit?

Though my relationship with a man hides my queerness in a sort of closet, I'm a black queer woman, and I want to support others more at risk in the queer community. Here are five ways I help.

Our denial of our needs (and to be clear, needs, not wants) does not create a more just world. Food, shelter, safety and caring relationships are necessary to all.

We require physical rest, emotional connections, daydreaming, food, laughter, purpose. And all of these things prevent us from fitting neatly into a machine model.

Self-care is so simple it can also be simple to forget. If you need time to put down work and check out from life, then take it. Know that you are restoring your energy for the challenges of life. 

I felt something stir up inside me when I was around my Native brothers and sisters. What awoke inside was how much I’ve been running away from myself.