on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Harm & Reciprocity/on Hope/on Queerness/the Pandemic

I want to love Pride month

Posted on
the end of a rainbow emerging from storm clouds over fields

cw: references to specific & community violence

I came out as queer about six years ago. Time is fuzzy, quarantine life has messed with my internal timeline, but I think it was about six years ago. It was probably more like seven, but I was allll the way out about five months before I got married to my trans spouse and then later in our relationship I had many Gender Realizations and now I’ve been on a low dose of testosterone for several years and am living a genderqueer life, which is a thing I’m trying to cling to in order to remind myself that it’s not all terrible and bad.

Pride month was such a revelation for me when I was newly out — a whole month for us to celebrate each other, to show up as ourselves no matter what, to rejoice in what makes us US.

But the rainbow-washing of brands and empty political promises and actual existential threats (it’s a trip when your worst fears become actualized fears) makes Pride month SO DIFFICULT as a queer person, at least for me.

I like rainbow-themed merch as much as anyone else that likes rainbow-themed merch, and I certainly have bought more unicorn-themed items than I expected to so far in my lifetime, but I don’t need a rainbow with my french fries and I don’t need color blocked fake ally shit in all the marketing emails I get. It’s gross. It makes me want to be invisible. Don’t notice me, please, I really don’t want you to throw rainbows around while screaming about how much you love us, when we all know that in July you’ll clean up the confetti and forget about it until next year’s Pride Month Content Creation planning meeting (the one where you might accidentally remember that there’s also an important June 19th holiday for people that aren’t you).

I would rather live in a world where people aren’t regularly being mass murdered with guns, and where politicians shut the fuck up and do their fucking jobs. I would rather have inclusive healthcare for trans kids and adults, and for none of us to worry what the next political knife at our throats will be. I want us all to have enough to eat, and stable housing. I want the police — all of them — to quit their jobs and find something to do that helps and sustains the communities they live in. I want accountability. I want change. I want rainbows that remind us to smile and recall how much we love each other, not rainbows that are held up in defiance against everyone that hates us.

Don’t recognize us unless you actually do, please.

featured image is a photo by Igor Lypnytskyi on Unsplash

on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Decolonizing/on Generational Trauma/on Harm & Reciprocity/on Rage

the sound of angry people

Posted on
closeup of two people holding hands, palm outward, washed in blue light against a red background

cw: gun violence, child death

I have only my anger for you today — I have no comfort to offer, no hope except to pray that the crumbling of the system comes soon.

Did I use a Memorial day quote tweet to say this? Yes, yes I did. How dare we celebrate freedom when it’s paid for with the blood of our children, the blood of black and brown and indigenous people, the blood of those we kill or allow to be killed in our many foreign wars. HOW DARE WE.

No thoughts
No prayers
Can bring back what’s no longer there
The silenced
Are damned
The body count is on your hands

from thoughts & prayers performed by grandson

Take your anger and let it fuel your work for change:

if this account deletes their Twitter (I won’t blame them if they do), here’s the link they reference: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/301-abolitionist-starter-kit

They are lying to us, they know what they are doing. There is chaos and injustice and there is also us. Don’t give up. Don’t give in.

Anger is exhausting. Rage burns in us and sometimes we burn too. Rest where you can.

featured image is a photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Queerness

queer people deserve deathcare

Posted on
in a crowd at a peaceful protest gathering, a person in a white face mask and dark hair with glasses holds a sign that reads 'GOD IS NON-BINARY'

cw: queer death

This song has been on repeat since I first heard it: The Queer Gospel, performed by Erin McKeown.

Love us as we are

See us and we’re holy

In this shall we shall ever be

Wholly ourselves

Your love will take us far

Praise us and we’ll show you

From heaven to the glory holes

Glorious and free

from The Queer Gospel performed by Erin McKeown
[song link on Spotify above]

There seems to be a noticeable overlap between LGBTQIA2S+ people and sex work, although that might be confirmation bias based on my friend connections, my chosen family, and my social media feeds. I don’t think we can talk about freedom and love and care — especially in death — unless we are also talking about queer sex workers.

I believe that we deserve dignity as we die, although not all of us will get the gift of that dignity. I’m not speaking right now of the people that denigrate, hate, and diminish the humanity and personhood of others; they are not the people I want to work with, they are not the people that I love, and they are not the people I will sit with in their dying moments unless the universe takes me to that place (and in that case, I will assume that my gods and ancestors wanted me to do that thing at that time).

I believe that existing as a queer person means existing as a queer person in death as well.

I believe that treating someone’s body without regard to their wishes after death is sinful — a transgression against someone else’s body, someone else’s choice.

And I believe that the queer community sees death more often and without the same kind of leading-up period that people in their eighties, nineties, hundreds will usually get. There’s almost always a point in your life when you suddenly realize that you’re mortal and that you want to be sure that you’ve codified your wishes somewhere, even if it’s just to comfort and care for the ones you leave behind. As queer people, we are saturated in death almost constantly. We lose our siblings at an alarming rate. We are always grieving someone else, angry at another loss, raging at the injustice that the most vulnerable of us are always facing.

There is a strange combination of factors that have converged into my personal understanding of death.

I’m a queer person with queer chosen family, although I came out as queer about six or seven years ago. I have children who are queer. I’m in my forties, which has been a time of greater reflection and a completely different perspective on life than my thirties. I am chronically ill and immunocompromised. I love and serve and worship several deities that have something to do with the liminal walk between this life and whatever death is. I practice ancestor veneration, which in itself is an experience with death and what lies beyond it. I am training to do clergy work in my community, which is mostly made up of marginalized people: queer people, pagan people, black people, latinx people, people living in varying levels of devastating poverty. People without access to healthcare. People that don’t have enough to eat. People who have escaped by the skin of their teeth from evangelicalism. People that experience IPV and can’t escape it. People whose families of origin hate who they are.

My hope is that my life can be dedicated not just to awareness and comfort around the subject of death, but that I can be a part of support structures for the dying. To help their loved ones process grief. To help each of us to prepare for death even while we are young.

I don’t have anything to sell you. What I have is my hope and my open hands. I am working through doing legal paperwork to make sure that my dying experience is the one I want to have. I am in the middle of paperwork to legally change my name, and it’s more than a little terrifying — and I am privileged enough to be able to afford to do it. I am living in a world where we aren’t safe, and yet we exist. There is fierce hope and a drumbeat of justice demanding to be realized, even as we mourn.

I’m here:

Find me on Mastodon, on Facebook Messenger, on Keybase, by text (734-386-0537), by email (nixkelley at proton dot me), by commenting here. Reach out when you want to. You are loved.

featured image is a photo by Raphael Renter on Unsplash