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Content Warning: discussion of abuse

It is not specific to ADHD however, it’s incredibly relevant to us. It’s so straightforward that I’ll just quote wikipedia:

DAF … results from overuse of the brain’s inhibitory attention mechanisms, which handle incoming distractions while maintaining focus on a specific task. 

We pay attention mentally pushing away other distractions and stiumli (which ADHDer SUCK at; its why get easily distracted). You get DAF when your brain gets overworked after pushing away these distractions for too long/

If you read the symptoms of DAF, you’ll see how similar the symptoms are to ADHD (wikipedia even points it out).

“Netflix is adding to its growing slate of African content with its first original animated series, “Mama K’s Team 4,” produced by South Africa’s award-winning Triggerfish Animation Studios and British kids’ and family entertainment production company CAKE.

The series follows four teenage girls living in a futuristic version of Lusaka, Zambia, who are recruited by a retired secret agent to save the world. It was created by Zambian writer Malenga Mulendema, who in 2015 was one of eight winners of the Triggerfish Story Lab, a pan-African talent search backed by the Cape Town-based animation studio and The Walt Disney Co. The series is designed by the Cameroonian artist Malcolm Wope.

Mulendema said she was inspired by the experience of watching cartoons as a child in her native Zambia, where none of the heroes looked like her or lived in a world that resembled her own. “In creating a superhero show set in Lusaka, I hope to introduce the world to four strong African girls who save the day in their own fun and crazy way,” she said. “Most importantly, I want to illustrate that anyone from anywhere can be a superhero.”

“Mama K’s Team 4” is the latest African original for Netflix, which recently announced its first two dramatic series on the continent. The streamer is now collaborating with Triggerfish and CAKE on a pan-African search for local female writing talent to join the creative team on the series.

Read the full piece here

“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“

She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.

A few years later, when she was 25 or so:

“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“

During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry.  And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”

By Yogi Slivers 

Earlier this week, I found out that a previous co-facilitator and San Diego Native American activist, Karen Vigneault, died in January 2019. She was a Kumeyaay twin-spirit (lesbian). I co-facilitated an LGBT Native American discussion group with her back in 2005. It was called Nations of the 4 Directions. 

This notification is a patchwork of what she had accomplished in her lifetime. Excerpts are taken from The San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame website, my own personal interactions with Karen, the California Indian Education website, and an online blog by Lara Trace Hentz. 

Karen Vignealt was an enrolled member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel. As a child, she was refused attendance at public schools, since she did not fit into the white/black categories of segregation. Eventually admitted to a Catholic school, she became passionate about rediscovering traditional Kumeyaay practices. 

Karen was the first in her family to earn a degree, she received her Library and Information Sciences M.A. in 2008. She attended Grossmont College (1997), SDSU (2001), and Drexel University (2008). As a member of the American Indian Library Association, she raised awareness among peers about indigenous literature and strove to increase the number of appropriate texts offered in libraries. She educated U.S. and Mexican indigenous peoples about their authentic traditions and the extraordinary, respected, historic role twin-spirit people have held in indigenous societies. Karen was awarded the Soroptimists Women Making A Difference Award in 2007 and was inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, she was awarded the DURGA award. 

Karen also worked with the Peace and Dignity Project at an indigenous children’s shelter in Tecate, Mexico, cultivating Kumeyaay traditions, language, and culture while protecting children from the hardships of orphanages. In addition, Karen helped American Indian adoptees locate their birth families. Her work took her as far as Iceland where an Iceland woman was able to track down her Native ancestry; her father was a Native American US military member who had been stationed in Reykjavík. 

Overall, Karen contributed to the San Diego Native American and LGBT Communities. She was a fierce and stubborn butch woman that I will miss. I respected her. One cherished memory I have is when she called to tell me the San Diego Pride Parade for the first time was going to allow LGBT Native Americans to start the parade. And there she was in full Kumeyaay regalia. She had a huge heart for her fellow LGBT Natives and I’m sure she’s enjoying the huge pow wow in the sky. Walk in beauty my friend. Hágoónee’. 

Yes the leadership shown by NZ’s prime minister during this tragedy has been admirable.

Yes NZ’s swift response in changing its gun laws is admirable.

Yes the many vigils and expressions of sorrow are heartfelt.

But please, please, do not generalize New Zealand as some utopia. 

New Zealand, alongside Australia, remains one of the most virulently xenophobic and racist places on the planet.

Stop smothering the everyday reality of people of color in NZ and Australia with your sweeping generalizations based on the public image you see during such a tragedy.

Stop smothering the voices of those PoC with the weight of your whiteness.

Just stop.

Just as those innocent souls died from a thousand bullets, people of color continue to suffer death by a thousand cuts over years through everyday racism and xenophobia in NZ and Australia. 

It ruins lives. Over and over again. 

And no one pays any attention to that.

The best thing you can do is to support the families of the victims, but also to keep bringing awareness to the rampant xenophobia and racism in New Zealand and Australia. 

Burying that ugly reality in platitudes in a time of tragedy is not the way to bring about any real, lasting change. The only way New Zealand and Australia will change is if they are pressured from the outside. They rely heavily on a sanitized international image for tourism and trade. 

If you want to see proof of the incessant racism faced by people of color in NZ and Australia just browse through these tags:

New Zealand: https://thisiseverydayracism.tumblr.com/tagged/new+zealand

New Zealand - Pakeeza Rasheed, a Muslim community leader, says she’s had her hijab ripped off, eggs thrown at her and has had someone spit in her face.

Guled Mire, a writer, speaker and community advocate, describes being chased by skinheads on his way to school.

Racism is a social problem that many are talking about in the wake of Friday’s Christchurch shootings aimed at the Muslim community.

Whether it’s overseas or in Aotearoa, racism is alive and well.

Mr Mire escaped war-torn Somalia to face another battle here.

“People in this country, they are living in complete denial about the very form of racism that exists in Aotearoa,” he told TVNZ1’s Seven Sharp.

“I’m done talking about racism with white people. I’m done, because it’s honestly like banging your head against a brick wall.“

Out of adversity, these community leaders are determined to be the voice of change.

“I’m mad because it’s taken us a national tragedy,” Mr Mire said. “Fifty lives lost for us to be in a position where we are actually talking about this,” says Mr Mire.

“Were our voices not enough that whole time?”

Ya’ll white liberals idealizing New Zealand as some utopia of racial harmony and wholesale buying into the optics presented by their prime minister are showing exactly why racism thrives. Your denial and ignorance is so deep that nothing short of a heinous tragedy gets your precious white attention. 

Fuck every one of you. You’re no allies. Stop scoring precious points milking a tragedy.