#the power of advocacy

[beechannel27]

In this day and age, it is so important to be your own advocate in the health care system. Tune in to this insightful conversation that Trent Brock and I had on the power of advocacy.

You can listen and or watch the full episode by clicking the link below!

Trent Brock is 3X terminal cancer conqueror and international small business entrepreneur. Trent introduced, owned and operated a kettle corn manufacturing business in New Zealand over fourteen years. In early 2019, he was diagnosed with aggressive pelvic/hip cancer. The surgery left him disabled with one leg shorter than the other (Doctors told him he would never walk again - he has been in a wheelchair/crutches over five years). Then he got lung cancer and later pancreatic with a less than 5% chance to survive. Trent made drastic changes to his diet, exercise routine, mental and spiritual outlook even though five specialists told him life was over and given a year to live. In the Spring 2021 he returned to the US to have cancer treatment from his now home base Bentonville, Arkansas.

As of today, he is almost three years cancer free! Trent is currently in the middle of a three-part journey-within-the-journey surgery recently having the largest, most complex hip implant ever done in the world. He is a few months from walking.

Turning his pain into purpose, Trent is now an inspirational speaker, cancer journey/patient self-advocate ambassador and best-selling author in "Breaking the Silence: Voices of Survivors Vol 1."

Catch up with Trent at www.trentbrockcoaching.com

Feel free to leave a review/rating/comment on Spotify and let us know what you thought about today's episode!

[respect-the-locals]

🐢Daily Sea Turtle Fact:🐢

Loggerhead Sea Turtle: The loggerhead turtle is named for its large head. Loggerheads are carnivores, only occasionally consuming plant material. They have powerful jaw muscles, designed to crush their prey, that enable them to feed on mostly bottom dwelling invertebrates such as whelks, conchs, other mollusks, horseshoe crabs, and other crabs.

[quotelr]

There are people that are to champion the campaign and advocacy against the cycle of ungodliness and injustice in every nation.

Sunday Adelaja, The Mountain of Ignorance

[trans-axolotl]

some of Eli Clare's writing about diagnosis feels very relevant to discussions on tumblr right now:

"It’s impossible to grapple with cure without encountering white Western medical diagnosis—ink on paper in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases, a process in the hands of doctors, a system of categorization. I want to read diagnosis as a source of knowledge, sometimes trustworthy and other times suspect. As a tool and a weapon shaped by particular belief systems, useful and dangerous by turns. As a furious storm, exerting pressure in many directions.

Simply put, diagnosis wields immense power. It can provide us access to vital medical technology or shame us, reveal a path toward less pain or get us locked up. It opens doors and slams them shut.

Diagnosis names the conditions in our body-minds, charts the connections between them. It holds knowledge. It organizes visceral realities. It draws borders and boundaries, separating fluid in the lungs from high blood pressure, ulcers from kidney stones, declaring anxiety attacks distinct from heart attacks, post-traumatic stress disconnected from depression. It legitimizes some pain as real; it identifies other pain as psychosomatic or malingering. It reveals little about the power of these borders and boundaries. Through its technology—x-rays, MRIs, blood draws, EKGs, CAT scans—diagnosis transforms our three-dimensional body-minds into two-dimensional graphs and charts, images on light boards, symptoms in databases, words on paper. It holds history and creates baselines. It predicts the future and shapes all sorts of decisions. It unleashes political and cultural forces. At its best, diagnosis affirms our distress, orients us to what’s happening in our body-minds, helps make meaning out of chaotic visceral experiences.

But diagnosis rarely stays at its best. It can also disorient us or de- value what we know about ourselves. It can leave us with doubts, questions, shame. It can catapult us out of our body-minds. All too often diagnosis is poorly conceived or flagrantly oppressive. It is brandished as authority, our body-minds bent to match diagnostic criteria rather than vice versa. Diagnosis can become a cover for what health care providers don’t understand; become more important than our messy visceral selves; become the totality of who we are.

...

It is impossible to name all the ways in which diagnosis is useful.

It propels eradication and affirms what we know about our own body-minds. It extends the reach of genocide and makes meaning of the pain that keeps us up night after night. It allows for violence in the name of care and creates access to medical technology, human services, and essential care. It sets in motion social control and guides treatment that provides comfort. It takes away self-determination and saves lives. It disregards what we know about our own body-minds and leads to cure.

Diagnosis is useful, but for whom and to what ends?"

-Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection pg 41-42, 48.

[lycanr0t]

the thing about aplatonicism is that just like aromanticism and asexualism, it doesn't inherently mean you don't want friendships, every individual apl person has different needs and wants in regards to friendship and each person will go about it differently.

I for example am aplatonic and don't specifically feel platonic attraction as in, i don't feel a drive to befriend people. I don't get "friend crushes" or ever get the desire to befriend specific people. I am personally, very open to the possibility of friendship if someone else approaches me and we vibe. I am not platonically attracted to them, but I also do get enjoyment from socializing with others in that way and can become attached to them, etc. Platonic attraction does not equal caring about someone/being good to them. Attraction is not moral in that way. it just is.

Just like how some ace people still enjoy sex, even without sexual attraction. Some aplatonic people still enjoy friendship, and some don't. And that's okay! There are so many types of relationships out there that people can form and explore what makes them happiest and it looks different for every person and that's such a wonderful thing.

[systemserendipity]

So. We've decided.

If we're going to be out, we're going to be out 110%. No more hiding behind half-truths and inside-jokes.

We're opening up to the entire world as plural.

Not just to Tumblr. Not just to Reddit. Not just to Discord. Everywhere. In-person AND online. Even on our professional-grade portfolio-style journalist's blog.

Meaning, if somebody sees our socials or otherwise hears about our identities and starts asking about it, we won't shy away. We'll block harassers as we see fit. But. There's no erasing us. Not anymore.

As trans. As demipan. As multiple. As disabled. As neurodivergent. We'll shout to the moon and back as every label we can and/or want to smash together!

Do we know the full ramifications of this decision yet? No. But we're THRIVING right now. So happy to say we're trying to serve our communitIES as a representative.

As a queer person. As a disabled person. As a system.

And, ya know what, world? You can't bully us into the closet anymore. We're done with that shit.

And does that piss you off? Good. Rot in hell.

It's 2024, and it's time for good-faith diversities of all shapes and sizes to come together against oppression.

At this point, when the entire globe aims to literally genocide us marginalized folks away, it's (again) literally radical to BREATHE. To EXIST. Let alone if you have any left-leaning political beliefs thrown in there.

So, to anybody that's in any of our communities, or any other minorities: we see you. You're real. And you're strong. Just by showing everyone you don't give a shit about the bashers. Who cares if you're a full-on, 24/7 activist or not? The fact you're trying to lead as a good example for your fellow earth is perfect.

Cringe culture is dead! Long live the victors!

My name is Bly. My general pronouns are:

he/they/it(&)

And I'm a system! 👋 Ask about it!

[gabby-i-guess]

Next time someone says, 'Everyone has ADHD these days!', tell them this.

Hello tumblr friends, how are we all doing?

I just wanted to hop on here and share some (brief) research I did after getting a comment from someone (irl) about how 'everyone seems to have ADHD these days'. Because yes, rates of diagnosis have raised dramatically. But that doesn't tell the full story.

I will preface this by saying that I only read this article, bc I am too busy to do proper research right now. But it confirmed my suspicions, and I will hopefully do more thorough research soon.

For the sake of making sure as many people as possible get my point, let me just say it straight out:

The rise in ADHD diagnoses is coming from people who didn't have access to diagnoses in the past.

My breakdown of the numbers is below the cut. Please do take a look - I've tried to keep it pretty simple, because it's important to me that you understand where this fact came from, and not just take my word for it.

In this study, the percentage of USA minors diagnosed with ADHD went from roughly 6.1% in 1997 to 10.2% in 2015. Big jump, right?

BUT.

Over this time, the percentage of boys diagnosed with ADHD went from 9.0% to 14.0%, while the percentage of girls diagnosed with ADHD went from 3.1% to 6.3%. Girls' diagnoses more than doubled. Boys' diagnoses went up by not even two-thirds.

Along the same lines, diagnoses in white children went from 7.2% to 12.0%, while diagnoses in hispanic children went from 3.6% to 6.1%, and in black children from 4.7% to 12.8%.

And finally, diagnoses in the richest group of children went from 6.2% to 9.4%, while diagnoses in the poorest group of children went from 6.6% to 12.9%.

If that didn't really make sense, let's try a table and a chart:

The chart below shows the change in percentage between 1997 & 2015.

Percentage increase, by the way, doesn't mean the exact number the percentage increased by. It's just a more mathematical way of saying a number 'doubled' (which would be a percentage increase of 100%) or 'trippled' (percentage increase of 200%), or 'went up by half' (percentage increase of 50%). Hopefully that made sense to non-maths people...

Yes, ADHD diagnoses did become a lot more common between 1997 and 2015. But diagnosis rates went up by more in marginalised, disadvantaged, and minority children than in children with privilege.

The rise in ADHD diagnoses is coming from people who didn't have access to diagnoses in the past.

Now, go forth and defend neurodivergent minorities. Because when people say 'ugh, everyone has ADHD these days', they're not talking about rich little white boys. They're talking about women, about black people, and about poor people.

[cyberpunkboytoy]

Release day: I'm not going to make a Reverse 1999 self insert. I'm not. I won't do it.

One week later: I seriously won't do it. No OCs either. It's not like I have any ideas to work with.

One month later: What would I even theme myself as, a millennial zeitgeist? I'm mostly interested in modern aesthetics, but the whole point of the game is that time wasn't able to progress to the twenty first century. I can't think of any past historical eras I resonate with.

Now: Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with intellectual disabilities located in the Willowbrook neighborhood on Staten Island in New York City. The institution gained national infamy in 1972, when Geraldo Rivera did an exposé on the conditions there. Public outcry led to its closure in 1987, and to federal civil rights legislation protecting people with disabilities.

[jasperthetransandfriendlyghost]

hiii! im planning to go to my district's board meeting about lgbtq bullying and support, can tumblr help me out here? i know I gotta bring up nex and stuff bc people istg. anyone have ideas????

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I am me. There is only one me. I am the same as everyone else. I am different from everyone else. Do not disrespect me. Do not bully me. Do not abuse me. My body is my own. My mind is my own. My heart is my own. I will stay Protected Powerful Proud When I choose to, I will say 'yes' But when I need to I will say ... No! Back Off, Leave Me Alone I will take care of myself. I will take care of everyone here.

Dave Hingsburger, "Pledge of Personal Power" Of Battered Aspect, 19 June, 2007

[whalefill]

I'm seriously going nuts 💀 speaking out against the actions of settler colonialists? practically hate speech, make that shit illegal. not giving them your money? oh that's even worse. ban that.

[m0thmachine]

The usual family venting

I’ve been like “I can’t abide by the zionist activism, or the continued Harry Potter fandom for that matter” for a while without having the guts (or opportunity) to just cut out my sister… it’s really funny that she might just do it for me because she’s mad at me for not taking time out of my schedule to take over a favour that she volunteered for

[rightsaidmanfred]

the face of a bitch who is KILLING the game today

(they/he/it)

[rxttenfish]

not gonna lie, for some of nyall i wish you would just go ahead and call me a violent crazy and try to hit me with your car, because that would be so much better than this continued pretending that you give a shit about the mad

[harmonyhealinghub]

Unleashing the Power of Your Voice: Standing up for Yourself and Others

Shaina Tranquilino

October 21, 2023

Throughout history, individuals who have used their voices to stand up for themselves and others have played a pivotal role in shaping societies. From civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. to Malala Yousafzai advocating for girls' education, these courageous individuals remind us of the immense power that lies within our own voices. Speaking up is not always easy; it requires courage, resilience, and determination. However, in this blog post, we will explore why using your own voice to stand up for yourself and others is crucial and how it can create positive change.

Advocating for Yourself:

Speaking up for oneself is an empowering act that allows individuals to assert their needs, boundaries, and beliefs confidently. When you use your voice to advocate for yourself, you establish healthy relationships built on mutual respect and understanding. Moreover, expressing your thoughts and opinions openly fosters personal growth by challenging self-doubt and building confidence.

Empowering Others:

Using your voice to speak up on behalf of others who may be marginalized or oppressed is an act of solidarity that holds immeasurable value. By amplifying unheard voices, we help create a more inclusive society where every individual's experiences are acknowledged and respected. A powerful example is the #MeToo movement, which empowered survivors of sexual assault to break their silence while shedding light on the pervasiveness of such issues.

Catalyst for Change:

History has proven time and again that when people unite behind a common cause with a collective voice, they become unstoppable forces for change. It was the resolute voices of suffragettes that won women the right to vote in many countries worldwide. Similarly, civil rights leaders fought against racial segregation through peaceful protests and speeches that ultimately led to significant legal reforms.

Inspiring Others:

When you find the courage to speak up and share your experiences, you inspire others to do the same. Your voice can become a catalyst for change in someone else's life, encouraging them to confront their own challenges and advocate for themselves or stand up against injustice. By using your voice authentically and fearlessly, you create a ripple effect that spreads empowerment throughout your community.

Overcoming Challenges:

Speaking up is not always easy; it often comes with risks and hurdles. However, by embracing discomfort, we grow stronger and more resilient. When faced with adversity or opposition, remember that every great movement encountered resistance before achieving success. Use these challenges as opportunities to refine your message, learn from differing perspectives, and build bridges of understanding.

The power of using your own voice cannot be understated. Whether standing up for yourself or advocating for others, speaking out has the potential to transform lives and shape societies. It may feel daunting at times, but remember that even small acts of courage can have profound impacts in creating positive change. So let us embrace our voices, unleashing their power to uplift ourselves and those around us. Together, we can make a difference by speaking up, even when it is hard to do so.