vagabond-sky

[vagabond-sky]

Had the most infuriating series of interactions yesterday -> today (and every single day for the last 2 years)..........

Bel had an appointment w case management yesterday, 2pm. We bus downtown and get there about a half an hour early only to be told "we tried to call you to reschedule, she's not here today." we reschedule for today, 1:30.

Today we bus downtown and get there 40 minutes early, wait for his appointment, and finally meet with his case worker, for the 2nd time ever, only to be told "theyve cut our funding, we're no longer doing case management." She lost her fucking job.

Bel is still signed up to get into therapy and groups, and once he's in therapy and has a treatment plan, he can still get in with some other local resources he was interested in. But we're back to tracking all of that down on our own.

Last year when we were in a different county, we got him set up with therapy there, he went to several sessions, mentioned in one that he was homeless, and then immediately following that, his therapist dropped him, quit the practice, never notified him or got him rescheduled with anyone, ever. just didn't schedule him again, didn't say anything, poof, gone.

It's ALWYAS fucking like this... You never get the phone calls rescheduling you, you can't get transportation, the gaps in their expertise/availability are precisely what you need help with, there's months or years long wait-lists for the most basic of care, any housing that exists anymore is unsafe or virtually uninhabitable and just as unstable as anything that comes before it.

You go in circle after circle after circle tracking down the most basic of resources - food pantries that change location and hours every month, buses that get rerouted or don't show up, public bathrooms you can reliably use, just getting to the laundromat without a car is a full day ordeal.

And then to top it all off, people either ignore us outright or speak down to us, and ask us shit like, "why aren't you asking the government for help?" When all we fucking DO, as a full time JOB these days, is try to track down help from those useless, insidious mother fuckers EVEN THOUGH they are actively and openly trying to KILL US !!! HELLO!!!!??????!!!!!!!!!!! DOES ANY BODY FUCKING SEE US

The purpose of the system is what it does, and in this case, if it doesn't make you fully insane and kill you, it forces you into complete obedience and compliance and defense of this entire system, because if you don't behave you can't get safety and basic resources. Put those things behind a paywall, restrict payment to those who comply, call it a choice, and wait while countless disenfranchised and othered people either and "fall through the cracks," just as intended.

And so many people say they see it, generally speaking, and that it's so regrettable and awful and bad, but when I say that what's happening to us is systemic, those same people suddenly wholly believe in meritocracy and think I'm insane and self obsessed and just mentally ill and making poor choices because I feel like it, I guess.

I don't even have any words anymore. Not sufficient. Imagine a white hot atomic mushroom cloud of pure incandescent autistic queer rage swallowing the earth whole like a mote of dust in a cameras flash. bwaaaaaa. that's how my brain feels

Anyway you should have to see homeless people on your daily commute. Fuck you. We should not have to hide for your comfort. We have to see your housed assess every minute of every single day and listen to the constant abuse and grief you give us for DARING to survive this vile consumerist hellscape you cherish so dearly. We NEVER get a break from you. You can survive being reminded of us for 5 fucking seconds.

[vagabond-sky]

i'm sorry to be that person but buying less shit and spending less money in general is actually such a salve to so many of our personal/political/environmental problems. saving your own money and not mindlessly giving it to corporations who are ruining our world, walking instead of driving, buying second hand or swapping with friends or joining a buy nothing group or picking your furniture up off the street, reusing things until they're totally dead and then giving them a new life as something else, eating cheap, whole foods - dried beans and rice and seasonal produce, or dumpster diving if you're so inclined - or growing your own, sharing what you have with others, learning how to make and fix things, singing and playing and dancing with people, these things don't need to cost money and for so much of human history they didn't. we all need to get out of the mindset that we can buy our way into happiness because we can't, but we can create communion with the places and people around us and connect in a way that is not facilitated by big profit making machines. stop spending your hard earned money and time on things that don't give a shit about you, and focus on creating a world that you want to live in, stop letting them tell you that it's not worth your effort because it is.

[vagabond-sky]

[vagabond-sky]

I say this as someone who works at a nonprofit: the attitude “someone who has nothing will be grateful for anything” is harmful and dehumanizing when it’s used to justify donating something ripped, stained, or expired to someone less fortunate.

Homeless people deserve clothing with good structural integrity. Victims of house fires deserve linens that are free of stains. No one should have to eat expired food. It’s disrespectful to give people scraps when they’re already hurting.

Please, out of respect for your fellow humans, check the dates on your food donations before you drop them off.

[vagabond-sky]

[vagabond-sky]

Some cool graffiti + signs spotted in Grand Rapids, Michigan

[vagabond-sky]

You know how much of a pain in the ass moving is, and not just to move all your things, but to learn a new place, get your address changed everywhere it needs to be, get established with new care, figure out new grocery stores, and even just making the new space comfortable enough for you to rest in?

Homeless people have to do this all over again and again and again, constantly, all the time, every day. Even couch hoppers like me who occasionally get a reprieve, we spend so much time trying to make our little corner/couch/porch/closet/whatever work for us, that by the time we have it figured out, it's usually time to leave again.

In my case trying to setup a mobile art/computer station is. SO much more complicated than it sounds in other people's houses. It is so much more than just a chair and a flat surface.

Literally like 95% of your time spent while homeless is just doing normal shit that takes 2 seconds when you have your own place. "shit shower shave's taking the whole day."

So when people are always asking me why I'm not selling art or freelancing after just moving again, think about it for 2 seconds! Are you ready to get creative the minute you get to a new place, before any of the groundwork is even laid? Great. Now imagine this work never ends and the only "free time" you get to make art or freelance or whatever, is the time in between those other survival tasks. Also, youre homeless, so it's on hard mode, which means everyone is constantly pestering you about why you're relaxing for 2 seconds instead of getting on that grind, even when you ARE grinding already! They'll just be like 'oh weird! it doesn't look like it from where I'm currently sitting and relaxing!'

[vagabond-sky]

"forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul."

The longer I'm queer and disabled and homeless in America the less I ever think I would even want to go back to ""normal.""

I shouldn't have to be homeless, I didn't choose this, and its horrible, and yet, all things considered, I'm somehow happier and healthier this way than I was working and trying to stay housed and being closeted and trying to confirm to society's expectations.

The weirdest thing is that the people who have the least respect for me will act like they're jealous of me? 'oh I wish I didn't have to work' type shit. If you won't own your misery then who will.

Anyway. Absolutely 100% unironically I feel like one of the ones who walked away from Omelas. Once you're out here and have seen the ugly underside of that "normalcy," the true cost of that privilege, you cannot unsee it.

[vagabond-sky]

Source about Blackstone

National Assoc. Of Realtors about 16 million homes vacant

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis on who is homeless in the US, updated for 2025: a record-high count for one night reached 771,400 people.

16,000,000 ÷ 771,400 actually comes out to 20.74... more than 20 vacant homes per homeless individual.

[vagabond-sky]

Or water fountains, public washrooms, outdoors tables, etc, etc

[vagabond-sky]

I miss Goosemoose pet forum. Used to be that if you couldn't get to a vet for a period of time, folks could give you some helpful info to get thru the wait. These days it's like, "you don't have 2k set aside in a savings fund to go to the vet? Youre evil for even having a pet, you shouldnt even have gotten one, it would be better if you euthanized it."

[vagabond-sky]

You know that structural inequality and bigotry affects certain groups more than others. These groups are marginalized. You understand that this means they face more bigotry and hardship, but also that people are less inclined to believe them, due to the 'winners writing history' phenomenon. You know that people with instituonal power and privilege get believed, and people without get scapegoated.

You also know that homelessness is one of the ways people are marginalized; ie groups that face more discrimination and bigotry are more likely to be impoverished or outright homeless, due both to outright discrimination, and to the many subtler ways the system is designed to funnel certain demographics of people into further poverty, and ultimately, crimialization.

Put simply, you know homeless are more likely to be vulnerable people already: Black, Indigenous, migrants, disabled, LGBT and so on.

You know homelessness occurs more often to these people in particular because our identities fail to conform to the dominant hegemony by default; lack of privilege translates to punishment.

You know that homelessness is used as a punishment for 'failure' to conform. That in order to have the kind of job opportunities that will keep you from homelessness, you must be abled, generally look, behave, dress, a certain way, your life must follow a certain path and meet the same milestones, and there is little room for deviation from the path.

You know this.

So why is it that so many well-meaning and well-edcuated people, leftists, activists and allies alike, still act like homeless people are stupid addict babies who can't be trusted to string 2 words together?

Why is it that, when we talk about the systemic abuse and mistreatment we (homeless) face, people across the political spectrum are just as quick to disbelieve us as conservatives are. They claim we're lying or exaggerating; blame us for our circumstances; assume that we're addicts; or assume that we don't want help.

Why are you all just as quick to play devils advocate and say, 'well, what about your own behavior may make other people not want to live with you?'

I think you know why... because I already mentioned it.

It's the same reason people don't believe individual rape victims. It's the same reason people don't know about the missing and murdered Indigenous women. It's the same reason why white people don't listen to Black folks about racism, and why cis people don't listen to trans folks about transphobia. It's even the same reason why so, so many people cannot leave their abusers.

Because "winners write history."

Because privilege means you get to be believed. You get to tell your own story, and everyone else's, too.

It's because you, as a housed person, have power over a homeless person. You have been given the right to make assumptions about their life, not the other way around.

White men write racism out of their version of history, cis people write trans people out of theirs, abusers rewrite the stories of their victims and largely get believed.

Housed people write the story about their couch-hopping friend who just didn't want help, and couldn't get out of it, and they just don't get it! It's so sad!

Everyone is afraid of homelessness, of "losing everything," even white cishet normies. Avoding it is the very backbone of our society, the shared fear that keeps so many untold millions of unhappy and underpaid workers clocking back in day after day, isn't it?

Doesn't this imply that homelessness could happen to anyone?

So tell me why, then, the character of homeless people is the one topic that leftists, centrists and right wingers all seem to agree deserves questioning?

This is regardless of whether they think homelessness itself is bad or deserved. I know a lot of left leaning folk who frown at "homelessness," as a topic, who say it should end on an instituonal scale; but who clearly feel that, on a personal one, homelessness is still a reflection of someone's choices or even their mental health/ability to make said choices.

And I don't mean generally speaking. I mean dear family members and friends of mine who I'd known for decades, who respected me and called me wise and often came to me for help and advice -- I mean those same people turning around and treating me with WILD disrespect, disbelief, gaslighting me about my own experiences and more.

It's those same people, people who have loved and trusted me for decades, leftists and queer people, who have turned around and start repeating right-wing talking points about homelessness to my face, when the only thing that changed about me is that I'm homeless now.

It's the very same people who have spoken to me, face to face, multiple times, about the government benefits that are keeping me alive, the same ones that prevent my partner and I from getting married. It's those same people who then turn around and chastise me for 'not asking the government for help'! Even when we JUST SPOKE about how I do!!!

These are people who believed me previously when the power dynamic was not in my favor, ie when I was in an abusive relationship. People who understand that being housed is itself a privilege. Friends who really did show up for me in big ways when I needed it...

But who also turned around and treated me like a child, or ignored me, or started being condescending purely because they could. People who insisted I stay with them, that we were roommates and friends, that I wasn't just a charity case, who went back on mutual agreements, who violated boundaries we had agreed to respect, and then said 'if you don't like it you can leave.'

Even the most bleeding heart liberal leftist counter-culture 'searching for queer community' types are not exempt from this. I have lived with a LOT of people, over 2 dozen, most of whom were very nice folks who genuinely meant well, people I knew before I became homeless...

People who, when I pointed out they were treating me differently now, had an absolute fucking meltdown about it, and "can't understand" why my trust in them is damaged, no matter how many different ways I explain it.

It's because they don't have to believe me anymore now that I'm homeless!! By default!! My narrative contradicts the stereotypes and assumptions they already possess. It goes against the story every housed person has about, 'i tried to help my friend/family member who was homeless and they took it for granted, I just don't get it! Why don't they want help? If you give a mouse a cookie...' I can answer those questions, but the answers don't validate their assumptions, so they don't hear my explanations.

One of the most clear examples of the power imbalance is thus: if we lived on a lease with "roommates," and we described the way we are treated -- the filth we're expected to either live in or clean up ourselves, other people's disgusting and biohazardous, unsanitary habits, infestations, etc to say nothing of the outright disrespect, the infantilizing tone people take with us, and the way most of them outright ignore us when it suits them -- people would balk. They'd be like, 'roommates from hell, that's the worst roommate EVER, you need to either kick them out or get out yourself, that's so unsafe, you deserve better!!!'

But if we describe the exact same scenarios being imposed on us by a host, rather than a roommate? Well... then it's, 'their house, their rules... You're not even paying rent, it kinda seems like a good deal, can't you just suck it up?'

So you agree? Being housed comes with the privilege of more rights? Being housed entitles one to more respect by default? Having to buy mutual respect and basic comfort, and withholding it from those who can't, is reasonable to you?

So you agree? Homeless people aren't equals to housed individuals? Do you suppose this could, in theory, impact how the housed people see or even treat homeless friends and family members?

Do you suppose that, like racism and xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia etc, this axis of power and privilege could come with its own blind spots to the unique ways homeless people are harmed by this dynamic? Do you suppose that, like other oppressed groups, homeless people experience particular violence and even microaggressions at the hands of well-meaning housed people who have simply never thought about this stuff before?

Do you believe that "beggars can't be choosers"? Do you think abuse is better than being ignored? Do you believe that this is a choice which you can make for another person, as long as you've clocked enough hours at work to buy the privilege?

So you agree: homeless people are supposed to be uncomfortable or even downright miserable? We are supposed to lack the privilege of preference, of basic decency, of bare minimum respect? We are supposed to feel infantilized and disrespected, and that's supposed to 'motivate us' to get back out of homelessness? It is reasonable for us to have lost this, say, because we became disabled by COVID or because a boss discriminated against us?

So you agree -- you think our status as homeless is is a just punishment for our failure to confirm to society's expectations and demands? That homelessness is an appropriate "motivator" towards the kind of upward mobility that has been systemically denied to SO MANY of the aforementioned groups of people who are disproportionately homeless?? (I.e. Indigenous, Black, disabled, queer youth and elders -- all demographics more likely to be homeless than white, abled, cishet folks who meet the standard.)

So you fundamentally believe that marginalized people deserve to be treated as lesser in society, until the day comes that we can purchase our equality with housed people once again?

This is something all of you need to be considering in the days ahead, particularly my fellow USAmericans. And not merely to stay in line with your own purported values, but because so many of you are poised to join us as fascism tightens it's chokehold on this country. I hope you deconstruct these ideas before it happens, and you never fall into the trap of doubting your own self-worth once you lose your status and worldly possessions. That shit kills. Housing is the 1 thing that ends homelessness, but how you survive it in the meantime? It's by not listening to that shit.

It is actually possible to be homeless and not merely survive, but live a fulfilling and worthwhile life as a homeless person. Even as a disabled one. There are many types of homeless, many ways to be homeless, and despite the dangers and abuse we face, it's not necessarily always a death sentence.

I say this only to help break through the stigma and assumptions that so many people tend to have off the bat about us; IMO, it's people's preconceived notions about what causes homelessness, or how to feel about it, that makes it so hard to accept our lived experiences with it. They are so different that they can't reconcile the two, and the easier, more commonly scripted thing to do is to merely assume that homeless are lying. If you can actually set aside your assumptions about us and listen, you would learn some really useful and interesting things.

The first thing you can do to be a better ally to homeless people is realize that you are primed to disbelieve us, to make assumptions, and paint us all with the same brush -- even if you know better, even if you're very socially conscious. If you have a question about why homeless people do X, Y or Z that you can't wrap your head around, dont just draw assumptions, ask a homeless person. Try perusing r/homeless; I can almost guarantee someone has asked your question there before.

Better yet, make friends with your local homeless. Say 'hi' to panhandlers and wish them a good day. 99% of us will not fucking bite. In fact you'd never know that most of us are even homeless. The filthy raving addicts that get in your face are just the loudest, they don't make up the majority of homeless people -- and even those assholes deserve better tbqfh. I 100% understand how someone gets to the point of ranting and walking around making threats under their breath, especially when you are so utterly constantly inescapably surrounded by the need for money, the need to be productive, the need to be valuable... All of this shit will make you jaded, and make you (rightfully IMHO!!!!) distrust housed and "normal" people.

Always remember: if you're someone who touts "believe women" and Black Lives Matter and Protect Trans Kids, then you NEED to be listening to -- and deferring to -- the voices of homeless people about our stories, because homeless people ARE overwhelmingly Black, Indigenous, Trans, disabled, kids, victims of sexual assault, etc.

We are overwhelmingly already part of the demographics you're supposedly championing. We just get dehumanized even by the "we have to stop dehumanizing humans" crowd and y'all don't even stop to fucking notice. Even despite knowing that homelessness is specifically being used as a tool to disenfranchise and further demoralize any potential unrest, and as an additional way to 'be rid of' any identities that are undesirable to a white supremacist authority.

You know it's a tool, but you don't ever stop to consider how it's actually used. Not merely by the state, but how housed individuals themselves also have power over homeless -- the power to retell our own stories, the power to be believed by default, the power of the narrative.

That is a power that can be wildly misused in the wrong hands, but it can also be a great responsibility and boon to your whole world, to absolutely everyone who is connected to you. Use it wisely.

Homeless people are still people; not as a platitude, but we are part of your communities and movements too!!! We are part of your blogging and gaming communities. We are shopping at the same stores as you.

We are the forgotten even among the underdogs. People leave us behind every day just because they can. Please don't leave us behind in your efforts for justice, too. Please listen to what we have to say. Please believe us. What we say doesn't actually beggar belief AT ALL if you're already studying systems of oppression. If you just listened to us, you'd never again have to wonder why we struggle to get out.

Believe homeless women, too. Protect homeless trans kids, too. Homeless Black lives matter, too. Homeless people are still people, and we deserve to be the narrators of our own stories.

[vagabond-sky]

You know how much of a pain in the ass moving is, and not just to move all your things, but to learn a new place, get your address changed everywhere it needs to be, get established with new care, figure out new grocery stores, and even just making the new space comfortable enough for you to rest in?

Homeless people have to do this all over again and again and again, constantly, all the time, every day. Even couch hoppers like me who occasionally get a reprieve, we spend so much time trying to make our little corner/couch/porch/closet/whatever work for us, that by the time we have it figured out, it's usually time to leave again.

In my case trying to setup a mobile art/computer station is. SO much more complicated than it sounds in other people's houses. It is so much more than just a chair and a flat surface.

Literally like 95% of your time spent while homeless is just doing normal shit that takes 2 seconds when you have your own place. "shit shower shave's taking the whole day."

So when people are always asking me why I'm not selling art or freelancing after just moving again, think about it for 2 seconds! Are you ready to get creative the minute you get to a new place, before any of the groundwork is even laid? Great. Now imagine this work never ends and the only "free time" you get to make art or freelance or whatever, is the time in between those other survival tasks. Also, youre homeless, so it's on hard mode, which means everyone is constantly pestering you about why you're relaxing for 2 seconds instead of getting on that grind, even when you ARE grinding already! They'll just be like 'oh weird! it doesn't look like it from where I'm currently sitting and relaxing!'

[vagabond-sky]

[“Seeing the indigent as wastrels, as the dregs of society, was certainly nothing new. The English had waged a war against the poor, especially vagrants and vagabonds, for generations. A series of laws in the fourteenth century led to a concerted campaign to root out this wretched “mother of all vice.” By the sixteenth century, harsh laws and punishments were fixed in place. Public stocks were built in towns for runaway servants, along with whipping posts and cages variously placed around London. Hot branding irons and ear boring identified this underclass and set them apart as a criminal contingent. An act of 1547 allowed for vagrants to be branded with a V on their breasts and enslaved. While this unusual piece of legislation appears never to have been put into practice, it was nonetheless a natural outgrowth of the widespread vilification of the poor.

By 1584, when Hakluyt drafted his “Discourse of Western Planting,” the poor were routinely being condemned as “thriftless” and “idle,” a diseased and dangerously mobile, unattached people, everywhere running “to and fro over all the realm.” Compared to swarms of insects, labeled as an “over-flowing multitude,” they were imagined in language as an effluvial current, polluting and taxing England’s economic health.

Slums enveloped London. As one observer remarked in 1608, the heavy concentrations of poor created a subterranean colony of dirty and disfigured “monsters” living in “caves.” They were accused of breeding rapidly and infecting the city with a “plague” of poverty, thus figuratively designating unemployment a contagious disease. Distant American colonies were presented as a cure. The poor could be purged. In 1622, the famous poet and clergyman John Donne wrote of Virginia in this fashion, describing the new colony as the nation’s spleen and liver, draining the “ill humours of the body . . . to breed good bloud.” Others used less delicate imagery. American colonies were “emunctories,” excreting human waste from the body politic. The elder Richard Hakluyt unabashedly called the transportable poor the “offals of our people.”

The poor were human waste. Refuse. The sturdy poor, those without physical injuries, elicited outrage over their idleness. But how could vagabonds, who on average migrated some twenty to eighty miles in a month, be called idle? William Harrison, in his popular Description of England (1577), offered an explanation. Idleness was wasted energy. The vagabonds’ constant movement led nowhere. In moving around, they failed (like the Indians) to put down healthy roots and join the settled labor force of servants, tenants, and artisans. Harrison thought of idleness in the same way we might today refer to the idling motor of a car: the motor runs in place; the idle poor were trapped in economic stasis. Waste people, like wastelands, were stagnant; their energy produced nothing of value; they were like festering weeds ruining an idle garden.”]

Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History Of Class In America

[vagabond-sky]

[“The English were obsessed with waste, which was why America was first and foremost a “wasteland” in their eyes. Wasteland meant undeveloped land, land that was outside the circulation of commercial exchange and apart from the understood rules of agricultural production. To lie in waste, in biblical language, meant to exist desolate and unattended; in agrarian terms, it was to be left fallow and unimproved.

Wasteland was idle land. Arable tracts of desirable property could only be associated with furrowed fields, rows of crops and fruit trees, golden waves of grain, and pasture for cattle and sheep. John Smith embraced the same ideological premise with a precise (if crude) allusion: the Englishman’s right to the land was ensured by his commitment to carpeting the soil with manure. An English elixir of animal waste would magically transform the Virginia wilderness, making untilled wasteland into valuable English territory. Waste was there to be treated, and then exploited. Waste was wealth as yet unrealized.

In his “Discourse of Western Planting,” Hakluyt confidently described the entire continent as that “waste firm of America.” Not terra firma, but waste firm. He saw natural resources as raw materials that could be converted into valuable commodities. Like other Englishmen of his day, he equated wastelands with commons, forests, and fens—those lands that sixteenth-century agrarian improvers eyed for prospective profits. Wasteland served the interest of private owners in the commercial marketplace, when the commons was enclosed and sheep and cattle grazed there; forests could be cut down for timber and cleared for settlements; fens or marshes could be drained and reconstituted as rich, arable farmland.

It was not just land that could be waste. People could be waste too. And this brings us to our most important point of embarkation: Hakluyt’s America required what he classified as “waste people,” the corps of laborers needed to cut down the trees, beat the hemp (for making rope), gather honey, salt and dry fish, dress raw animal hides, dig the earth for minerals, raise olives and silk, and sort and pack bird feathers.

He pictured paupers, vagabonds, convicts, debtors, and lusty young men without employment doing all such work. The “fry [young children] of wandering beggars that grow up idly and hurtfully and burdenous to the Realm, might be unladen and better bred up.” Merchants would be sent to trade with the Indians, selling trinkets, venting cloth goods, and gathering more information about the interior of the continent. Artisans were needed: millwrights to process the timber; carpenters, brick makers, and plasterers to build the settlement; cooks, launderers, bakers, tailors, and cobblers to service the infant colony.

Where would these workers come from? The artisans, he felt, could be spared without weakening the English economy. But the bulk of the labor force was to come from the swelling numbers of poor and homeless. They were, in Hakluyt’s disturbing allusion, “ready to eat up one another,” already cannibalizing the British economy. Idle and unused, they were waiting to be transplanted to the American land to be better (albeit no more humanely) put to use.”]

Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History Of Class In America

[vagabond-sky]

would you mind expanding a little bit on “parenting” versus “care”? i seem to conflate the two a lot especially with how much I want to help loved ones receive things they didn’t when they needed them and were younger, I want to help but I’m realizing I may not know when I’m doing too much both for them and myself.

parents have an obligation to provide care to their children. the difference is between obligation and the non-pressured consensual choice.

have you ever received willing care from someone with zero obligation to help you, who did it out of their own free will and a desire to show up for you in that moment? have you been able to compare it to receiving care from someone who felt obligated to help you out of guilt and fear and a need to protect their identity?

the difference is hard to describe if you’ve never felt it.

[vagabond-sky]

“Remember that dangerous can mean a threat to more than just the well being of our body. It can mean a threat to what we do, say, think, care about, believe in, or yearn for.”

Resmaa Menakem

My Grandmother’s Hands