My other post lost traction, but Brittany Delaney, a young Black single mother from Minnesota, is fighting for her life against cancer and lupus. Her first two rounds of treatment were unsuccessful and she has spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital, all while suffering from medical racism. Her need for support grows more dire with each day that passes. Her c@sh@pp is $survivinglupus30 and v3nm0 is Brittany-Delaney-3. Her gofundme is linked in the article, and you can also find more details about her situation. Please spread. Thank you!
I also sobbed when I saw barbie appreciating an old woman, sitting beside her on the bench, because that’s what a woman is and that’s what being human is, and that’s what life is and she saw imperfection and age and realized it was beautiful.
She was so scared of being imperfect and having cellulite and aging and dying, and then she saw how beautiful all of those things could be, and she cried, and I cried.
Strange that it never occured to me. There are times I’ve been so upset that I’ve stamped around while cussing, that I’ve lain flat on the floor and groaned for as long as I had breath, that I’ve ranted my frustration aloud in an unhinged monologue, that I’ve swung my limbs about in a fury. All until I’d vented enough to just … resume my normal life.
And if I’d had not the privacy of my home, I’d either have had to bottle that all up … or open it all up where the public could scrutinize my every move. It really is a privilege to not be constantly on display like that.
[ID: tweet by Lydia Kiesling @ lydiakiesling, “Housed people have the privilege of having their worst moments in private; unhoused people don’t. That gives some people the mistaken impression that the person they see acting belligerent on the street is and will be that person every single moment of their life.”]
Also consider how you must look every time you’re sick for any reason. Everyone gets delirious with fever now and then, everyone gets stomach cramps where they’re doubled over moaning in pain, now imagine how much more often that happens to people with no clean facilities. I can’t count how often I’ve heard or seen someone complain about a homeless “druggie” and the behavior they’re describing is significantly more likely to come from food poisoning than drug withdrawals.
Not that drug addiction isn’t also a medical condition that warrants medical care, but the fact is a large number of people will attribute literally all of an unhoused person’s displays of pain, exhaustion or discomfort up to drugs and alcohol.
