Today is the Day Without Immigrants and, as such, it’s time to hear from an amazing immigrant – my friend, Niko. Originally from Trinidad & Tobago, Niko is an undocumented immigrant. We talk mostly about myths regarding undocumented people, politics, and empathy. We also touch on the difficulties of living with chronic illnesses.

Take a listen on SoundCloud, iTunes, or your favorite podcast app.

Niko and I talk a lot about empathy. Below are some great resources for empathy work:

• Brené Brown on Empathy
• Brené Brown on Boundaries, Empathy, and Compassion
• Tea & Empathy with Kate McCombs
• Information on Kate’s Tea & Empathy Workshop (includes definitions of empathy and what empathy is NOT)

Please remember that I’m looking for volunteers for transcriptions.

As a note: our chats are now Thursdays at 8 pm Eastern (New York City) Time | 7 pm Central (Chicago) | 6 pm Mountain (Denver) | 5 pm Pacific (Los Angeles) | 4 pm Alaska | 3 pm Hawaii. A new time will be coming soon earlier in the day for those who cannot make it during the above times.

 

Today, I talk to Kira Lynne – a life coach, registered professional counsellor, and psychotherapist in Canada. She deals with chronic illnesses herself and this is part of what pushes her in her work to help others.

Follow us on iTunes or SoundCloud for the most recent episodes, or make sure to find us via your favorite podcast app like Radio Public.

Some links discussed in the show:

Reid Mihalko’s Say What’s Not Being Said: Reid’s Formula for Difficult Conversations

Kira’s website

Kira’s book: Aches, Pains, and Love : A Guide to Dating and Relationships for Those with Chronic Pain and Illness

If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area, come join us for Tea & Empathy at 6 pm on Dec 14!

Please make sure to help fund us via iFundWomen.

And it’s all about election fun…

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294265127

***Please note that I am still looking for someone to help with transcription. I cannot currently afford to pay anyone, but would love to provide volunteer hours to anyone 18+ who may need it.***

While I was originally planning on sharing an interview with the amazing Tambre Leighn this week, I needed to talk election. Trigger warnings in this episode include: sexual assault, physical attacks, racism, ableism, misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, politics, abuse and neglect in childhood. Not all of these are discussed in detail, but they are at least mentioned.

Want to get involved with the resistance to Lord Cheeto Voldemort?
• This is the best site – it has self-care things but also ways to get involved: http://www.holyfucktheelection.com/
• The DJT Resistance: https://www.thedjtr.com/
• ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/
• Volunteer with GLAAD: http://www.glaad.org/getinvolved/volunteer
• Volunteer with The Trevor Project: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/volunteer
• Volunteer with NARAL: http://actnow.prochoiceamerica.org/signup/volunteer/
• Volunteer with RAINN: https://www.rainn.org/get-involved
• Volunteer for a Crisis Text Line: http://www.crisistextline.org/join-our-efforts/volunteer/
• Here’s How You Can Become an Abortion-Clinic Escort: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/how-to-become-an-abortion-clinic-escort.html
• CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations): https://www.cair.com/cair-chapters.html
• NAACP: http://www.naacp.org/find-local-unit/
• Anti-Defamation League: http://www.adl.org/regions/
• Earth Justice: http://earthjustice.org/action
• Planned Parenthood: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/
• Learn more about recent hate crimes: http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/news/a23574/shaun-king-twitter-hate-crimes/
• Educate others on ableist slurs: http://anagnori.tumblr.com/post/71020734063/alternatives-to-saying-stupid
• Donate to our Patreon: Patreon.com/chronicsex

Transcript (Thanks to AutumnAWise!)

[0:00] Hello, and welcome to Chronic Sex! The podcast about self-love, relationships, sex and sexuality are affected by chronic illness and disability.

[0:14] Given the subject matter, this podcast is not suitable for those under the age of eighteen (18), and unless you have headphones on right now, you probably shouldn’t be listening to us at work.

0:27] My name is Kirsten Schultz, and I’m your host. While it’s good to have you with us today, I have to say that there’s been a little addendum to the schedule. Last episode I said this podcast was going to be me talking to my pal, Tambre Leighn, who is an amazing, amazing life coach. Who works with survivors of Cancer and their loved ones. And I’m hoping to bring that to you next week, but as I was sitting last night, on my couch. It occurred to me that I haven’t addressed recent events.

[1: 03] And I spent the next several hours writing out by hand things I would like to say today, and I think it’s important.  While our subject matter is mostly self-love, and sex, and more touchy-feely stuff, there’s no telling how so many of us will be affected by the election, by the next four years, and God forbid 8 years, and it’s important to talk about.

[1:39] Before I go any further, 1. Since I did write out all those pages, you may hear some paper shuffling. It’s like 9:00 in the morning, and I haven’t had anything except my medicine which I just took, So I’m probably not going to edit this like a normal podcast episode. I think it’s important for you guys to hear a little bit more of the reality, which is, I mean frankly, why I’m doing this episode. Um, and second, there’s gonna be some trigger warnings, so I wanna say them now, so that you are prepared and can pause this, or maybe come back to this at a time when you are in a safer place and can protect yourself, and do some more self-care and self-love. Those trigger warnings include politics, obviously, sexual assault, physical attacks, racism, ableism, misogyny, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, probably will touch on some anti-Semitism, mostly if you’ve been paying attention to the news, that’s what I’m going to be talking about today.

[2:57] On November 8^th, 2016, hate was voted into the White House. White-supremacy has been given the okay, leaving those of us who are undesirable: cripples, women, non-binary and transgender people,  people of color, the LGBT community, non-Christians, or Christians who aren’t of the right sect, sex educators, and others, wondering what in the hell is going to happen on January 21^st, 2017, and for the next four (4) years.

[3:31] We’re afraid, and rightfully so. Literal Nazis are currently being appointed to some of the highest political offices in our country. Hate crimes are being perpetrated specifically in the name of our president elect from sexual assault and beatings, to property damage and harassment. This is not okay. We are not okay.

[4:01] It continues to become clear that the United States is not the safe place my fellow white people thought it was. At least, not for most of the nation.

[4:12] Ironically with this vote, we have chosen to keep white privilege over actual equality, though. We’ve chosen men over women, and our non-binary friends, able-bodied over disabled, rich over poor, cishet, God, I can’t say that word, you know what I mean, Cis-het? Cish-et? Over the LGBTQIA+ community, Christians, but again the right kinds, over anyone else, and ignorance over knowledge.

[4:47] Even more frighteningly, few people in the single-party controlled congress to come seem willing to stand up to this hateful rhetoric. So many are on board, if only to tear down progress that has happened over the last eight (8) years.

[5:03] Most of us in the sex educator business are liberal, if you’ve followed Chronic Sex at all anywhere, you’ll probably notice that I am too.

[5:13] We stand together, concerned for what this means for sexual and emotional health. We have Skype dates where we talk about this.

[5:24] All this certainly stands to negatively affect most other people that we reach and help everyday.

[5:34] I’m gonna talk a little bit about myself right now, and again some trigger warnings: specifically abuse and neglect in childhood.

[5:47] I spent two (2) weeks grieving. The week of the election was horrible.

[5:53] Right after, I went to New York, and that helped me kind of get some of my, I won’t call it hope-because I hate that word. It gave me some of my fight back… to see signs everywhere that say ‘Love Trumps Hate” and “She Got More Votes” and “We’re a Safe Place” or “We Love You.”

[6:16] And now I’m in Wisconsin, granted Madison is, um, kind of a liberal safe haven in this horrible state, but still, it’s nothing like New York.

[6:36] Part of why I’ve been grieving, though, and part of why I’ve been grieving throughout this whole election process…for those unfamiliar, my mother is essentially Lord Cheeto Voldemort in female form.

[6:50] I was raised in abuse and neglect with medical treatment withheld from me, which has wound up being the cause of a lot of my pain: physical, mental, and emotional.

[7:01] And I’ve had this pain for, god, 23 of my 28 years. Uh..last week marked the 23^rd birthday of some of my bigger diagnoses.

[7:19] I quickly learned as a child about the term gaslighting. From experience, not as a definition. It’s when an abuser tells you a memory is false, or tries to manipulate your recollection of an event.

[7:34] It is not unlike the denial of tweets or things said, but can be much worse than that, too.

[7:44] It took me years of living away and having others verify or identify the abuse for me to realize the magnitude of it. It’s taken years of therapy and studying on my own to be “okay” with this.

[8:03] As of today, it’s taken two years, six months, and 19 days or 934 days total of me being no contact with my mother for me to get as healed as I am today.

[8:18] Yesterday, I had a scary moment.

[8:24] We were in the Culver’s drive-through,for those of you unfamiliar with the Midwest, Culver’s is basically a burger place that also has a ton of frozen custard options. Frozen custard is like ice cream, only way more fucking delicious. We had gone and  gotten tacos fand gottencause my partner was off for the day, he had just gotten lasik A couple weeks ago  and had a follow up this morning. So, we came back home after the appointment and then went out to do some book shopping, ate some tacos, And we were following up with this delicious, perfect meal of tacos, I mean, The most perfect plate of tacos I’ve ever had in my entire life from my favorite Taqueria, which is El Jalapeño in Madison, Wisconsin, just by the way. Um [laughs]…it’s so good.

[9:31] Anyway, we are in the drive-through at Culver’s and we have made our order and we have moved up. And we’re behind a car, that’s you know, doing the food-money exchange, and um, The car that pulls up behind us…uh… well it was Illuminated, and it was just like the nose-down, and this person looked just like my mother.

[10:06] I was able to realize pretty quickly that was triggering my PTSD, but it was still almost a minute before I was able to articulate to my spouse, that “Hey, just FYI, this person looks like my mother, and you know…just FYI.” And we talked, and we tried to help me know that  it wasn’t my mother. The problem is, my rational brain gets it, but part of my brain does not, and that’s because of the nature of PTSD. it’s the part of your brain that supposed to keep you alive, and ironically enough, it makes it hard for me to live life.

[11:01] The rest of the night, I was mostly nonverbal. My spouse would say things to me, and I might reply, but I didn’t really go out of my way to specifically make conversation. I talked a lot on Twitter about what I was dealing with because earlier in the day, ironically, someone had made fun of triggers, and so I had kind of gone off on a little Twitter rant. Although, it wasn’t negative, it was just informative, so conversation with myself? I don’t know. But I had talked about it, and then ironically got to talk about it more after getting my peanut butter cup custard, which was delicious.

[11:52] for a while, I was almost infantile, reverting back to what I would do in fear as a child, hiding in the dark. Now as a child, I hid behind this floral two-seated, love-seaty thing that we had, that was in a room that would’ve been part of a garage. And I would hide behind that and I would cry, when I was six and they told me that I would be in a wheelchair by age 8. I sat behind there, and I cried for hours, and nobody cared to look for me.Nobody cared to talk to me about what that might mean. The first time I had frozen shoulder, I was convinced I had just pulled a muscle, granted I was seven, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I sat behind that couch, and I cried every night, and again, no one came looking for me.

[12:57] luckily, I can’t hide behind my couch. It’s up against a wall, and the room it’s in has our guinea pigs in it, so it’s not necessarily a room I want to hide and cry in as much as I want to snuggle the shit out of those little fuzzy buddies and cry in.

[13:17] but then I assume for me, was having my spouse at home to help me and comfort me. let me be more toddler-esque, which was what I needed. It’s what I need a lot of times when I have a PTSD episode, and I need him, or anyone else, to just kind of let me be in that last state before I had PTSD.

[13:49] And it’s kind of hard to think about the fact that that was me being a toddler.

[13:57] Last time this happened, which was during the same thing: going and getting custard, maybe I shouldn’t go through the drive through anymore there, um, I cried for hours. I sat in the bathroom and cried. Then I went and laid on the bed and cried, and then my spouse came in, and was like “What’s wrong?”, and like, I hadn’t been able to articulate it, and so I finally told him, and he just held me and cried and made me laugh, which is what he’s good at. I mean, he’s good at other things too, but he’s really good at making me laugh.

[14:37] After the crying, last time, I basically went through all of what I just talked about: the hiding in the dark, the being mostly nonverbal… It’s awful, and sometimes it can last for a couple days, and that fucking sucks. I have a life to live. I mean, I work for myself, so I’m at home with the guinea pigs all the time, but I have a life to live.

[15:07] Knowing what it takes to recover from just one episode of being triggered, I fear for our country, and how we move on.

[15:21] I’m not the only one triggered by this election or by the people fucking involved in it. And frankly, I think you’d be inhuman, to not be afraid of all of this.

[15:36] I’m not gonna be the stereotypical white person and say, “We’ll get through this…hold my hand, and we can go forward”  ‘cause fuck that. The reality is that some of us won’t, especially those of us who need this podcast, those of us who aren’t cishet, those of us who are disabled.

[16:04] It scares me. It scares the fucking shit out of me, especially as a crippled, pansexual, genderqueer, femme sex educator. It scares me as someone who strives for intersectionality, who recognizes that I do have privilege as a white person who can be passing for cishet. It scares me as someone with a vagina, who survived abuse and assault… It scares me, just like my mother does.

[16:39] And every day, since you-know-who decided to run, I have been sitting here triggered…triggered by the gaslighting, triggered by the abuse of conversation, and triggered by hearing things that I heard every day for the majority of my life, from the… homophobic, transphobic conversations, to the misogynistic conversations, to ableism and white-supremacy. I wasn’t lying when I said my mother is basically you-know-who. Fuck, Ted Cruz follows her on Twitter, okay? Like that should be enough of an “Oh Shit.”

[17:37] Now that we just talked about all this stuff, let’s take a couple of breaths together, right? In [breathes deeply] Out [exhales], In [breathes deeply] Out [exhales]. Okay, here’s what I can tell you: We’re gonna fucking fight this shit. We’re gonna fight like hell. We’re gonna fight like our lives depend on it because fucking A, they do.  We fight for ourselves, our friends, all the children that we know. We fight for people not yet born. We fight to be on the right side of history.

[18:19] I promise you this: Chronic Sex will continue. I will provide information that helps, heals, and motivates. I will promote intersectionality and raise up the voices of those of us who defy the Aryan ideal. I will fight until I’m stopped, whether that’s by, you know, some death eaters or illness, or what have you. I’ll fight for you.

[18:55] I may not know you. We may not have ever had a conversation. But by listening to this, I already know a few things about you: By listening to this, I know that you value people. I know that you’re looking to learn and expand your horizons. And I know that I love you.

[19:21] This is when I get back into my touchy-feely stuff, but I started Chronic Sex for several reasons. One of the biggest, though, was that, those of us with chronic illnesses and disabilities don’t get to hear things like “I love you” and “I care about you”. We don’t get to get the self-esteem that maybe some other people do. And that’s okay. I’m not saying that everything should be fair, but I mean, it’s not okay, that statistically, there are so many of us that don’t get that care. We don’t get told that it’s okay to unfriend people or it’s okay to grieve for a while before you come back to the fight. Fuck, I’ve been grieving for two (2) weeks. We don’t get told that it’s okay to take a break from being inspiration porn because “Oh shit, no, they need us. They need us to keep themselves going.” At least they don’t have X-Y-Z, right?

[20:36] But, I love you. And I’m going to fight for you. And we’re gonna fight for each other. We’re going to fight to make this a safe place, and no matter whether Cheeto Voldemort or Lucius Malfoy, his right-hand man becomes president on January 21^st, we fight. We make our voices heard. We talk about the Dakota Access Pipeline. We talk about gay conversion therapy. We make these things known, because it’s clear that unless we start making these things more public, people won’t see it, and next time they go to vote, we’ll be fucked all over again. And I’m not about to have that. If we have to suffer through this administration, if we have to fight like this, I want it to only be four (4) years, if that. I don’t want this to continue. I don’t want my Muslim friends, and my Jewish friends, and my transgender friends…and my friends who identify as women or could pass as women…or have vaginas. I don’t want anybody to be afraid.

[22:14] I don’t care what your skin color is. I don’t care what’s in your pants. I don’t care what you believe when you turn off the light, and you’re trying to go to sleep.  I don’t want any of us to be afraid.

[22:28] So we’re gonna fight… and we’re gonna fight with the zest of the badassery that we fight through every fucking single day, with our illnesses and  our disabilities.

[22:44] We’re gonna fight Cheeto Voldermort just like we fight Arthritis, PTSD, Fibromyalgia, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Depression, whatever we fight. We fight this just as hard. Because there’s one thing that I know about us, we are fucking resilient… and nobody is gonna put us in a corner and tell us to be quiet.

[23:27] That was a heavy conversation, but one we needed to have, right?

[23:35] So, in the show notes. I’m gonna put some links to some ways you can help other people, to some efforts to organize resistance should you be interested in that, to some ways that those of you who may be white can learn more about privilege and can learn more about what this election may mean for many of us, and ways you can, I don’t know, expand your horizons as far as learn about how people who are not Voldemort’s base can…how we deal… what we’re going through. And the places I’m gonna send you are factual, they are wonderful places where you can either give money, give time, promote, do whatever you can to help.

[24:51] And if you want to come on here, anonymously or publically or under a pseudonym, and talk about stuff that isn’t sex, talk about the election, I am here for you. And I will do what I can to make it a safe place so that we can have those conversations.

[25:17] I don’t know about you, But I’m going to listen to some Hamilton today, thinking about rising up… and fighting because “we’ll never be truly free until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me,” and, um, we’re going to keep fighting. Ready? Let’s go.

 

I have some great guests lined up through the end of this year, skipping a week only for Thanksgiving if everything goes well.

Check out our page on SoundCloud or iTunes to listen.

If you’d like to volunteer to transcribe, please let me know by shooting me an email at kirsten@chronicsex.org.