Every year, I try to write up something about all of the things I did throughout the year. It’s always been a great way for me to reflect and sit with the fact that I do actually do a ton of stuff, even when I don’t feel like that’s true. While that post goes on my other site, I wanted to try something new here and highlight my favorite things of 2021.
Music
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m constantly singing, humming, dancing, etc. It’s part of why I’ve done burlesque. Here’s a list of songs I listened to a lot this year:
Other Favorites
Shops
The options are frigging endless when it comes to shops. These are just a few of my favorites. You can check out others here.
- A Rainbow in Your Cloud
- A Room of One's Own
- A Tribe Called Queer
- Abprallen
- Activist Studio
- Afrosexology
- Art Altered
- Automic Gold
- Bianca Designs Co
- Black Realm Clothing
- Boy Pilot Goods
- Charis Books and More
- Charming Vibes Co
- c piko art
- Cult Party
- Culture Flock
- Darcie Rae Design Co
- Demian Dineyazhi
- Deep Space Queer
- Die With Your Boots On
- Dissident Clothing
- Doodle People
- Dooks and Spoons
- Fat Girl Media
- Flavnt
- Flula By Angeline
- Hinterland Empire
- Hockey Babbler
- I Heart Guts
- Lacey Olson Design
- Live Minimal Planners
- Lovestruck Prints
- Loyalty Bookstores
- Mahogany Mommies
- Meg Emiko Art
- Meg Potoma Studios LLC
- Munea Wadud
- Nalgona Positive Shop
- Nerdy Keppie
- No Wrong Body
- Oh You're So Tough
- Pawsitive Pins
- Peculiar Pennants
- Pin Pen Merger
- Punky Pins
- Queerly Designs
- Radical Buttons
- Radtastical
- Rebirth Garments
- R Nicole Studio
- Sad Millennial Designs
- Sarah Epperson Shop
- Science Plus Coffee
- Shop Borgne
- Shop Guts And Glitter
- Smitten Kitten
- Tea and Empathy Cards
- The Art Of Felix Deon
- The Phluid Project
- Two Minds Press
- willburrows
Podcasts
This is a list of podcasts I actively listen to. There are so many more out there to check out.
- And That’s Why We Drink
- Apocrypals
- Be Antiracist
- Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet
- Disability Visibility Project
- Faculty of Horror
- Fictional
- History is Gay
- Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw
- Jumbie: Haunting tales from colonized lands
- LeVar Burton Reads
- Making Gay History
- Mirths and Monsters Podcast
- My Brother My Brother and Me
- Myths and Legends Podcast
- Nothing Rhymes With Murder
- Snap Judgment: Spooked
- The Q Files Pod
- This Podcast is Haunted
- This Podcast Will Kill You
Books I've Read
I will admit that I don't always have as much time - or the attention span - for reading as I'd like. Since this is the first year I'm doing this, these are books I've read in the last few years that I've adored.
- A Disability History of the United States by Kim E Nielsen
- Alif The Unseen by Wilson G. Willow
- Building Open Relationships: Your hands-on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond! by Dr. Liz Powell
- Conquer Me: Girl-to-Girl Wisdom About Fulfilling Your Submissive Desires by Kacie Cunningham
- Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability by Robert McRuer
- Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf
- How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankel
- Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships by Meg-John Barker
- Sex-Interrupted: Igniting Intimacy While Living With Illness or Disability by Iris Zink NP and Jenny Palter (featuring yours truly as an appendix writer)
- Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder
- The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- The President is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery At Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth by Matthew Algeo
Books on My To-Read List
- Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai
- Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
- The Care We Dream of, edited by Zena Sharman
- The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
- We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba
- What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna
Articles
Like the above, these are works that impacted me this year.
- A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment by the Native Governance Center
- Being Alive: How Sondheim Made Space for Queer and Trans People by Elly Belle
- Beyond territorial acknowledgments by âpihtawikosisân
- Black, Trans, and Alive by Glori Tuitt
- Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh
- Community Service: Inside the Native Tribe Transforming Justice by Abaki Beck
- Cultivating Openness When Things Fall Apart by bell hooks and Pema Chodron
- Disability Justice Is an Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons by TL Lewis
- Disrupting Cis/Heteronormativity and Interrogating Whiteness: The Advancement of Counseling Through Critical Sex Education by Carla Rosinski (pdf)
- Healing Personal Trauma is Not the Same As Healing Cultural Trauma by Tony Chavira
- Here’s What I Learned By Choosing to Step Away from Productivity For a Whole Day by Kaelyn
- How Do We Hold Each Other Accountable When We Mess Up? by Bianca I Laureano
- Human First: Black Women Athletes Aren’t Your Performance Mules by Njera Perkins
- “Hunger was never absent”: How Residential School Diets Shaped Current Patterns of Diabetes Among Indigenous Peoples in Canada by Ian Mosby and Tracey Galloway
- It’s Intersex Day of Remembrance and All I Want Is Softness by Hans
- January 2021 Working Definition of Ableism from TL Lewis
- Language Wars: Callouts Obscure Vital Truths About Disabilities by s.e. smith and Anna Hamilton
- Living While Black and the Criminalization of Blackness by P.R. Lockhart
- Love Letters to Trans People: Part 1 by Xoai Pham
- Love Sick: It’s Time to Uncouple Care Work from Romantic Love by Oliver Haug
- Mourning the Loss of Indigenous Queer Identities by Astrud Bowman
- Move Your Body: Access-Centered Movement Is Changing Dance from the Inside Out by India Harville
- My Body Is Revived, My Body Is A Lighthouse by Sarah SC Dillon
- On R. Kelly and the Question of Justice by Danijanae
- Rebel’s Dilemma by bell hooks
- Recognizing When We Get It Wrong and Forgiving Ourselves Afterward by A.X. Ruiz
- Seeding Food Sovereignty: Black and Indigenous Farming Leaders Share Their Strategies by Naima Penniman
- The Activists: How ACT UP — the coalition that fought against AIDS stigma and won medications that slowed the plague — forever changed patients’ rights, protests and American political organizing as it’s practiced today. by David France
- The Trans Body as a Work of Art by Lawrence Gullo
- This is My Body, and I Decide Its Meaning by A'liya Spinner
- Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love by bell hooks
- Voices and Visions by bell hooks
- “We Do This ‘Til We Free Us” Makes Abolition Accessible Without Claiming It’s Easy by Abeni Jones
- We Don’t Owe Anyone Our Trauma Stories by Melody Li
- We’re All Problematic…. But Here’s How to Work Through the Issues We Perpetuate by Lin Kaatz Chary
- When the Spirit Moves You by bell hooks
- White Supremacy, Colonialism and Fatphobia are Inherently Tied to Each Other by Hess Love
- Why Discovering Your Trans Identity As A Disabled Person Can Be So Confusing by Antiableist
- Writing Myself into the Erotic by Shelly Jay Shore
Videos
- Building Accountable Communities from Kiyomi Fujikawa, Shannon Perez-Darby, and Mariame Kaba
- Disabled, Not Disposable from Rooted in Rights and Tinu
- Mia Mingus on Disability Justice
- #Next20: Disability + Race from Verizon
- Sex Ed for People with Disabilities playlist from the National Council on Independent Living and Meriah Nichols
- Social Model vs Medical Model of Disability: What's the Difference? from Ahmed Khalifa
- The 13th
- We Need To Talk About Anti-Asian Hate by The Try Guys
- What is Privilege? The Coin Analogy from the University of Toronto
Things I Accomplished
- Towards the beginning of 2021, my friend Iris Zink released a book called Sex-Interrupted: Igniting Intimacy While Living With Illness or Disability. I wrote some of the appendices around LGBTQ+ folks.
- In March, I got to edit one of Governor Evers’ proclamations. They didn’t keep all of my edits. That said, I pushed back on unnecessarily gendered language. Then, in June, Evers issued an Executive Order to require gender-neutral language.
- I met Fiona the hippo!
- In April, SheVibe turned me into a sex ed superhero. Like, you can literally get trading cards of me and a ton of my friends.
- Monica Lewinsky said I was super smart on Twitter. Oh, and Mara Wilson followed me? I don't know what my life is.
- I got diagnosed officially with ADHD and started on meds.
- In June, I met my most of partner's extended family. We hiked, kayaked, and explored the Adirondacks.
- Over the spring and summer, I began to play Dungeons and Dragons with friends as a part of an initiative from the Global Healthy Living Foundation. The Dungeons and Diagnoses podcast was a ridiculous amount of fun.
- Even though top surgery was eventful, I'm so glad that I did it.
- I recorded more ukulele covers of songs.
- Starting in 2020, I became a part of OMERACT and even a journal article publication:
- I got interviewed and featured for some things:
- And I wrote things:
- In August, I moved to Ohio to live with my partner, and in October we bought a house!
- I got my unit to acknowledge and call out white supremacy on a state agency website.
- In late November, I left the above job in public health. As much as I loved it, there was a lot of stress involved due to issues outside of my team. I needed something that would give me more joy, fewer frazzled days, and lead to a little calmer life.
- I recently started with a company called Included Health, where I work as a Care Coordinator for other LGBTQ+ folks.
Feel free to share your favorites in the comments!