#actually 2e

It’s that season where we start to celebrate Halloween.

Halloween is cool it has a rich history and has different ways of honoring the dead.

Honoring the dead is important Wether you are spiritual or not because honoring the dead is an acknowledgment of the lessons learned by our predecessors.

Halloween though is often turned more into a casual joking and costume situation.

It’s ok if you do that or that’s how you celebrate but please be mindful and consider some things.

Halloween is celebrated differently from culture to culture. It’s important to be respectful to those who take it as a more serious day to reflect and to welcome the joy and sorrow filled lessons of those who came before. That being said some people see the honoring the dead part as something outside of costumes and a call to examine how we would respond to things done by people who came before to heal it within our own bloodline or reflecting on the amazing ways our predecessors have contributed to society. (How can we preserve our traditions and be an ally in the fight for other cultures to perseve the

Llama

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Costume responsibility

Costumes that perpetuate Racism sexism or cultural stereotyping is not honoring.

Costumes that highlight the most traumatic part of a persons life is not honoring. (Wether you believe in spirits or not …. Or wish to honor them and those who lived before this is just r that pain

Especially since their are still many LIVING Predecessors who survived the worst of human cruelty and can just have that trauma and shoved right back in their face…

What should I look out for or Avoid this Halloween season?

Our friends and Neighbors impacted by the following are working towards liberation so it’s is oppressive to reinforce stereotypes or dehumanization that is contrary

Be mindful of B.I.P .O.C folks

•Black Lives Matter is a serious and dire:

So Racist costumes such as , Blackface/yellow face ,

Dressing up as a specific cultural heritages more specifically dressing up as a racial community.

Nuerodivergents—

Every year Nuerodivergents have to see you smile and laugh about what our communities consider great tragedies and. Depending on how you define Genocide some would consider it Genocide.

Asylums: Most Disabled and Nuerodivergent People who would have been Elders in our communities that have died were killed in Asyslums or died there.

Eugenics in America is a part of what is kept alive when we believe in things like “Functioning levels.” Or that “Intelligence.” Can actually be measured and depending on that value people are worth keeping alive or the cruelest people I have heard refer to some of us as wastes of resources.

There isn’t a Damn Disabled or Nuerodivergent who’s is “a waste of resources.”

I would like to please remind you.

Nobody owes you productivity or production in exchange for their lives.

Nobody owes you work in exchange for their lives.

For people in Disabled and Nuerodiverse communities People in our communities find value in what they like.

It’s how we calm ourselves. Special interests are how we calms ourselves and no special interests don’t need to fit NT or Ablebodied ideas of “Age Appropriate.” Especially as they like to use this to back up the “Mental age narrative which is gross.”

Point is a lot of Adult Nuerodivergent and Mentally Ill folks who turn to shows like Thomas the tank engine or kids TV

Is because Kids TV follows a routine it is predictable it doesn’t have all the scary and abrupt violence that might happen on mainstream tv.

It isn’t about “Intellect.” It’s aboit

Comfort.

If you have a migraine it is probably hard for you to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

However you might be able to watch a new process The Lion King

Those are the same story told in different ways with different complexity of language.

However if you can watch Lion King you are seeing and observing Shakespeare…

It’s a matter of presenting it with words that are accessible to folks even when extremely stressed… sometimes people may understand better with just pictures and that’s cool too.

Point is given the right and accessible materials All disabled and Mentally Ill can understand complex subjects it’s about supporting that persons individual s learning and comfort to work together to find the best way for her to learn

It’s not an ok narrative.

(specially with covid many have brought this sentiment back chanting things like sacrifice the weak.)

This is the notion that has killed Many Disabled & Mentally Elders off.

That being said costumes don’t lack meaning. Asylum themed haunted houses actually are cruel mockery’s of a real truth a truth that paints the victims of the Asylums often as the “Bad Guys.”

..

The Straight jacket is a torture device for restraint.Electro shock therapy while Ect may help those with SEVERE SEVERE depression

However medical consent is talked about like sexual consent so most medical consent needed for things like isn’t actually consensual if we ally the same terms;

A person must be over 18+

It has to be their choice not anyone else’s.

They have to have had the procedure explained to them in an accessible way. They should be able to give some indication of understanding the produces. Ex this will help me by,

People can answer with guidance ,but not let them be pressure.

I still don’t know what job title would best allow me to do it, but I know what I want to accomplish in life.

I want to help people understand minds that don’t develop according to the usual timetable. Minds with unusual disabilities, minds with unusual talents, minds with giant gaps between the two. Labeled, unlabeled, multiply labeled, doesn’t matter. But more than that, I want to hold up a mirror to such people and help them understand themselves. 

I want to help them discover the language and concepts to explain themselves to themselves and eventually, to others. If I have the opportunity outside academia, I’d like to help develop those concepts and language, by doing research.

I want them to learn they’re not alone in the world and there are other people that understand--a whole community ready to welcome them.

I want to help them internalize that they have a place in the world and something to contribute to it. Not in some far off imaginary future when they’re “cured” and “normal.” Now, as they are. That self-improvement is within their reach, and it involves being a better version of themselves, not a copy of everyone else.

In short, I want to be the person I wanted to meet when I was young. A candle that lights other candles.

I have something to say and want to be heard. And while trying to do it for free on the internet is deeply soul-nourishing, somehow, I want to be paid for it.