Friends

All of the above have appeared in various places on the Internet.  It is my sincere belief that they are allowed to be re-distributed as is.  Take what you wish, but please do not hot-link.  Thanks.

Yours in the struggle,

sapphoq

Why I Care

Why I Care about what is happening with our teens and children; and other folks who are being abused, mistreated, raped, and manipulated in WWASPS facilities, in Aspen facilities, and in any other place where these great evils are occurring.

I care because I am a thinking and feeling animal called human being.

I care because I remember being abused as a child.

I care because I remember being abused as a teen.

I care because I remember the first rape as a young adult.

I care because I remember the second rape-- which was a series of rapes-- by a professional "helper."

I care because the professional "helper" got a slap on the hand for "poor paperwork."

I care because I was considered to be "not a credible witness."

I care because I watched his co-workers surround him and defend him and lie for him in a court of law.

I care because I remember the attempted rape as an adult.  I kneed him in the groin and kicked him in the balls.

I care because I've watched censorship and intellectual monopoly grow through the years.

I care because the perps want us to be silent and ashamed.

I care because I remember all of these things.

I care because no one deserves abuse.

Caring is nothing without action.

I care and I take action, especially for those who are not considered to be "credible witnesses," for those who watched the court system side with the attackers, for those who were harmed by religious people professing love.

You?

Courage

I just found TED talks like today-- a niece raved about them but when I began to investigate them myself, today-- I found a sense of excitement and connection.

Some years ago I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert in Baton Rouge.  Yeah, I'm a parrothead.  And this was back in the days when I was still endeavoring to be a chemist.  I was high.  I reckoned that most of the audience was high. I was drunk.  And so was Jimmy.  During that concert, I had a drug-induced vision.  I "saw" fibrous connections between everyone in that whole place.  It was sort of new agey, and so was I.  Even now in my happily atheist being, I remember that drug-induced vision with a sort of fondness. 

Today I believe that this life is about inter-connection.  It's up to each one of us where we go with that.  We are all alone in our own skins.  [Folks with alters not exempt-- I will postulate that each alter or fragment of an alter is also alone in his or her own skin.  With apologies to physicists].  We can journey together yet there are things that each one of us have to do for ourselves.

I've known for awhile things like, "I am not my disease."  "I am more than my labels."  "I am bigger than my problems."  But today, I learned very clearly that I am not my body.

And so, I present you with Janine Shepherd who learned how to fly:








Because courage, true courage is the ability to dream new dreams and to act on them.

sapphoq and friends