relationships

Memory: A Risk Taken

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This is inspired by a daily prompt for writing I saw recently that invited people to write about a risky action that turned out well. With my philosophy of “what’s the worst that could happen?” I an spoiled for choice.

I could talk of stolen kisses or jobs applied for; of approvals given or appointments made – but the most life-changing was getting in touch with Lady M after she had moved to Switzerland.

We had been flatmates, and there was no denying a spark at the time. We also had existing partners (and I was also going through a divorce) so it was complicated. She took a job out there and left, and amid my general chaos the relationship I was in also ended.

A while later, we started talking online, and I took up an earlier offer to come visit. Despite the best efforts of airlines, weather, and air traffic control I duly made it out there – and was met by a shocked Lady M who had convinced herself I wasn’t going to be on the plane.

The spark ignited, and has blazed ever since through all the ups and downs of modern life. A risk well worth taking.

Meetings and Preparations

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Today was mostly spent assisting others in presenting courses and in finding out information to help my group of managers present events in the near future. There’s probably a bad pun I could forge out of those but I’m very tired. It has been rewarding all the same.

The course was part of a series of bite-size training content the LGBTQ+ Staff Network is putting on at lunchtimes – and today was about Accessibility in LGBT+ Spaces. We were joined, and it was led by, a colleague from our Disability Network and was both well attended and interactive. My role was to hit buttons and post links, and to keep an eye out for people raising their hands to ask questions or volunteer information. It was the first time I’ve done that but I’ve seen enough people doing so in other courses that it didn’t take long to get into the swing of things. So, that’s a new skill set learned today.

The preparations were basically sorting out funding options for events around the coronation at my libraries. More on that as we get things firmed up…

Allyship Work

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I’ve been very active over the last year or so at work in raising and socialising the concept of Allyship in our EDI (Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion) groups and projects. This is the process where people who have relative privilege engage in the ongoing unlearning and questioning and support of people with disadvantages – its not an identity but an ongoing journey to take part in the work needed to raise equity for everyone. I’m lucky enough to be working with staff networks and a professional team in our corporate strategy areas to pull together guidance and training that I hope can be made available at all levels in out organisation. Today saw another step forward.

I’d done a draft last year of materials and then handed them over to the wider networks to start the conversation about what Allyship means to different people – whether that’s LGBTQ+, Women, Disability Forums, Carer support, Ethnic Minorities, Religious groups, indeed anyone from a protected or overlooked community or group. This morning we gathered to start to feed back on and develop the first draft of a training session aimed at raising awareness and starting conversations. It has been a huge source of pride to see the bones of the material I assembled being used as an inspiration and starting point for something that I hope will demystify and empower people who are not themselves in a minority group but who want to show, embody, and lead in support and understanding their colleagues and customers.

It’s been an exhausting morning, but I hope it leads to some really important things. I’m also glad to be involved in moving it all forward.

All this has come from my experiences since the first lockdown in supporting my friends, partners, and extended family both in home life and professional contexts. It comes from talking to customers and people casually met. It comes from the number of times I’ve heard “Oh I’m scared I’ll say the wrong thing”, and it comes from seeing and hearing the distress of the trans, disabled, and otherwise extraordinary people in my life. It’s one thing standing up for myself – that’s relatively easy as I can choose to pass as a white heteronormative man – but showing up and staying put for others is more important. I don’t always get it right, but I learn, I correct, and hopefully take away the fear for others.

This Allyship project means a lot to me – and hopefully I’ll be able to carry on reporting great things about it as it comes to fruition.

Hot Water Bottle Time

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I’ve been staying over at boy s’ place the last couple of days to have some quiet time in celebration of five years of his being collared. WIth our collective health and it being a bit of a sparse time of month we didn’t do anything spectacular but instead enjoyed quiet time. We tidied the flat, watched YouTube videos, grabbed food, and had an early night.

I couldn’t let the event pass without some kind of gift or sign though. One of the things I’ve introduced the boy to is Dungeons and Dragons – and with that has come the dice goblin urge to gather as many shiny maths rocks as possible. He’s been keeping them in a box, but I know he’s been looking for a big partitioned dice bag to hold them in – so it was an easy choice to grab something that then gave plenty of room for expansion:

And so with all the hyper focus I love watching, he spent time grabbing sets out and dropping them in matching patterns or colour combinations to fill each of the sections of the bag. It is of course nowhere near being full, so he has now announced that he needs more – which will make birthday and christmas gifting much easier..!

The boy also struggles with feelings of worth sometimes – linked to various issues around the impact of mental health and other factors on how well he can engage – especially as part of our relationship. I felt that I really had no choice but to give him something to remind him when he’s feeling low, of how worthy he remains. So I got him a LARPing Mjolnir hammer that he can pick up to remind himself that he is of course worthy of love and care and attention.

That made him laugh.

Queer Joy

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I wrote the following for a work blog but it didn’t get used as originally intended. Instead I ended up using it as the basis for a piece I did to open the LGBT History Month event at the Surrey History Centre.

I’m hoping to get hold of the video footage at some point, or even just an audio recording, but there may be some hoops to jump through for that. In the meantime, here’s the original blog. It doesn’t include the joke suggested by boy s about a picture of Queer Joy and how wonderful they are.

As someone with deep clinical depression, it feels a little odd to talk about queer joy. Leaving aside my imposter syndrome, however, that is the point of doing it. Finding and appreciating good things is an important skill. Queer joy is not in and of itself a matter of mental health though. 

 
Queer joy is a positive moment of celebration. It is even more remarkable because they are in an LGBTQ+ context. I experience it when I eat cake at a same-sex wedding. I experience it when I hear that we have hired an amazing new transgender colleague and that they are thriving. I experience it when I contemplate the anniversaries of myself, partners, or friends. At its heart, queer joy is a name for our reaction when we encounter signs of progress. 

Queer joy is the experience of being in a diverse and empowered community. I can be myself, or I witness others be themselves without threat of violence or rejection. It comes when people can wear what feels right to them. It comes from encountering – or being – someone LGBTQ+ in a leadership role. It is the joy of seeing people blossom. It is the experience of people who find their voices. It is seeing people work out who they are outside rigid gender roles and norms of behaviour. 

The importance of queer joy is that it helps sustain me. Media and personally experienced backlash and hate across our community is exhausting. We get our celebrations in Pride and LGBTQ+ History Months, but queer joy appears in the small moments. It is often unexpected, like sunshine rays through breaks in an overcast sky. In those moments, queer joy is often bittersweet. For all the joy of the moment, we still remember the fight. We remember not everyone is as lucky as we are in that moment. 

There is a resilience that comes with queer joy. The joy peaks when someone in the LGBTQ+ community wins an award. The joy shines out when I hear a song celebrating same-sex love. When my found or chosen family supports me, it is an example of how we rise despite setbacks and step forward and up. It might only be a small step, but it is still a step forward. 

Queer joy is for everyone. If you want to see equality, diversity, and inclusion in our society, then you can experience it too. The empathy within us manifests as joy at people’s success. We may call it queer joy, but you are all welcome to experience and thrive in it. 

Sleepiness and Suits

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I’ve taken some more time off work this week as a couple of celebrations bookend it and frankly I could do with a rest. So yesterday I herded both Lady M and boy s into the car to wander into Kingston – as you do. This was partly just to get out of the house and distract them as they were having low days – but also to do some clothes shopping.

Lady M doesn’t often spend money on herself, so putting her in the vicinity of clothing shops can sometimes take a bit of a run up. At the same time, we have an event at the end of March to go to, and it occurred to me that one of the rites of passage that boy s has never had until now was that of getting measured for his first suit.

I had threatened to take him to the tailors that I got my wedding suit made at, but a more low-key approach felt kinder. Both Lady M and boy s can get overwhelmed with lots of people around, so I was mindful to suggest going to Marks and Spencer, knowing their men’s section tends to be a bit quieter. We ambled around and looked at some styles and colours of things for him to take to the changing rooms – and then while he was trying a few things on, I had a chat with the attendant.

I explained that he had never had a fitting or indeed a suit, and so I thought actually knowing his measurements would help immensely. Indeed, it would not only inform getting formal clothing but would also be something to bear in mind when buying clothing from here on out. It would take the guesswork out of things as he got used to creating his own wardrobe.

Like me, boy s is not exactly the smallest person in the room, so there was a fair chance there wouldn’t be anything in store that would quite fit – but that’s only because they keep a limited size range in the actual store. The full ranges are available online – and so this was very much in mind.

So, having done that, and with Lady M’s eye firmly on items for herself too we retired to our new favourite coffee shop where I introduced boy s to what he has described as the best hot chocolate he has ever had.

And with that, collective spoons were depleted, so we went to retrieve the cub from school – and we all seem to have spent most of today cat napping…

Its obviously needed

The Power of Our Stories

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I was privileged to be involved this week inan event, speaking and introducing other speakers at the Surrey History Centre for their LGBT History Month event called The Power of Our Stories. I was there in my role as co-Chair of the Surrey County Council LGBTQ+ Staff Network and spoke on the power and nature of queer joy to a sold out audience.

We heard from colleagues about the work of the staff network, of Surrey’s provision of support to young LGBT people, and the work of the History Centre in documenting and archiving LGBT stories in Surrey. We heard from a student in film and lens media studies talk about their work and mission to reclaim and desexualise the depiction of trans bodies through challenging expectations. We were also honoured to hear from Bernard Reed OBE, founder of GIRES, speaking of the heartbreaking events that led to their campaign to improve the lives of trans and non-binary individuals throughout the UK. To round it all off, we then had the most beautiful accapella arrangement of Somewhere Over The Rainbow provided by the Surrey Rainbow Choir.

We had stalls from a number of services and charities in Surrey, ranging from the local library and the adoption service, to the police, Catalyst, HER, and Haven. There was talk, laughter, song, and connection among a wonderful array of people – and I was absolutely buzzing from the positivity and happiness that buoyed the whole event.

I’ve been utterly exhausted as a consequence the last day or so, but so worth it and can’t wait to work with my colleagues to make it all happen again. My original copy of my speech was rapidly grabbed by Di to add to the archive but I’ll grab the text when I’m next back in work. Recordings were also made, so as those become available I’ll link to them too.

LGBTQ+ History Month – Found Family

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I was asked to write a piece for work as part of our celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month. Various topics were thrown out as a brainstorm of possibilities and I found that the concept of Found Family resonated quite a lot. So here it is, for a wider audience:

When my nephew came out last year, I was delighted to be one of the first people he shared his truth with. It’s very easy to fall back on cliched responses in the moment when given news like that. There is the immediate pressure to make some glib but accepting statement, but instead I welcomed him to a life of discovering found family.

To some degree we all experience this phenomenon of meeting people who you click with and who are there for you through thick and thin over the years. It is, however, particularly resonant for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. As we discover and embrace who we are, we are often drawn away from familiar orbits and into unfamiliar places and experiences. Heteronormative society has a script for life that includes how dating should go, a relationship escalator through to marriage, making a new household, raising a family and so on. This script does not always chime with or serve people in the LGBTQ+ community well.

This unease can range from who is offered the bill at a restaurant to assumptions of who someone’s next of kin should be. It begins to feel better, however, as we meet other people who are on similar journeys. It isn’t a matter of whether someone’s biological family is accepting of who we are, but of the similarities of lived experience that we encounter and draw strength and confidence from. Shared experience leads to jokes and commiseration in equal part. The nuances of how we talk about things, or approach situations have an extra resonance that is hard to quantify at first, but it can and does develop into strong friendships that are only half-jokingly referred to as our found family.

We didn’t know we were missing the light and support of these people from our lives, but they come to be as important to us as those we were born alongside. The LGBTQ+ Community thrives on these unconventional connections for support and validation, in the same way that people might expect of their own families. There are just as many disagreements and discussions along the way – that’s just being human. The custom families that we build and cherish are a bulwark against a world and society that can often feel deeply divisive and hurtful towards the most vulnerable people among us.

My experience of this has led to meeting amazing people and feeling safe enough to relax in their presence within minutes – sometimes in the most unlikely of settings and contexts. My hope for my nephew is that alongside the support he gets from us, he also finds his own people and grows and flourishes. I hope he finds love and relationships in whatever configurations work for him. I hope he will find people who cherish and look after him in ways that may not mean anything to anyone else. I hope that we all may be so lucky.

Morning After the Munch

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I managed a great and rare thing last night – which was to drag the boy s off his couch and with me to a local munch – a social gathering for people in the kink/poly community (there’s a fair overlap) not that far from us. He’s been saying he wanted to go for some time, as he hasn’t been to any in four years. Between moving, covid, and ill health he’s not felt up to it – while I’ve been making connections with the locals over the last year or so so I could introduce him properly. Its as much an element of peer support and presence for a community who are not particularly visible as anything else – and he was very very nervous.

Part of that was that he would also be meeting Lady T in person for the first time – they’ve chatting along with everyone else in our group chat, but just like introducing new cats to an existing household you hope that in person people get on.

Well, we got there and headed to the freezing beer garden that normally hosts this particular event and as you might expect he sat and shivered while people chatted a while and then the ice broke with the mishearing of a comment turning into a running gag that turned the air several shades of blue. We did then all retreat into the warmth of the bar as it was relatively empty. And I have to say that I was proud of him coming out of his shell and talking to people with more and more confidence. He came close to being overwhelmed by the auditory input for a while, but Lady T had some stress putty that distracted him – and so an autistic alliance was formed, and rollup cigarettes shared, and an evening passed well. All in all, the boy did well. Here’s to getting him out the house some more.

The boy s

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We’ve had a lovely quiet Christmas break mostly piled round the flat with boy s and the cub – a gentle gathering of most of the polycule. I’ve been quietly carrying on with doing largely D&D-related posts in the meantime and pushing out concepts that may end up being in one or more games in the months to come.

The boy started catching up on posts yesterday and wanted to have one all about him – a “gushing” post as he put it. I, of course, then put up a new Map post yesterday because I wouldn’t want him to think that these things are just produced on demand whenever the brat asks for one.

However, he has been fighting colds, bugs, and plagues brought home from school by the cub more or less non-stop since September. He is also starting to show signs of brightness and recovery from a serious depression dip that has nigh-on crippled his capacity to engage with the outside world.

Even if that were all that he had achieved, he’d be worthy of praise and support – and yet on top of that he has continued to raise an amazing son who has a fierce intellect and curiosity and who very much sets the terms of his engagement with the world around him.

The cub has had his whole world turned upside down over the last couple of years and yet has formed both a strong network of new friends, and leapt forward in academic achievements despite not believing he had the capacity to do so.

And he fiercely and unconditionally loves his father

How can I not love and appreciate someone who has managed all that? The boy s doesn’t see how amazing he is, despite having a wide band of people around him who care and enjoy his presence. He is passionate about his interests, and cares deeply about causes and people alike. Even in the depths of depression, his humour is pointed and evokes belly laughs – the the things he gets upset about come from his own sense of wanting to do better for others.

As he reads this, I know there will be a little giggle as I tell him he’s a dreadful brat. He will protest that he is, in fact, a wonderful brat and if I’m there he’ll try and flutter his eyelids at me and paste a gormless grimacing smile on his face – and if that isn’t just the most lovable thing I challenge you to pick out something printable instead.

I’ll just leave here, that he is a good boy.