I recently shared with a client that I don’t use the words “allies”, “ally” or “allyship” in my work. I have said this before but I refuse to use language that I don’t know or I don't agree with the origin of.

The centering of Whiteness, White experiences and White feelings is excruciatingly apparent in those books. Thinness is mentioned often throughout the pieces along with the tying of monetary hoarding to success. There’s absolutely no mention of race, sexual orientation, gender beyond the binary or life outside of marriage, motherhood, business and?

In my work on psychological safety, I constantly note the needed foundations for safe relationships: trust, honesty, respect and the prioritization of safety throughout. They are all intertwined and it is almost impossible to have one without the other. Yet we see these seemingly basic human needs being dismissed by people in positions of power daily.

The people that do need advocacy are the people stating the harms or bringing harms to your attention, or having a trying to have a conversation with you on how to best move forward in the relationship, and you advocating for someone who's not even a part of the relationship is telling to say the least.

I watched Heathers for the first time in 2018. Que Será, Será by Sly and the Family Stone played at the end of the film and really solidified my decision to kill myself. 

Without space for White people to do what they need to do, we are constantly expected to hold this space and to tolerate their stunted emotional maturity around their history. I want and they need a White History Month.

Anti-Blackness refers to actions or behaviors that minimize, marginalize or devalue the full participation of Black people in life. The spectrum of anti-Black actions and behaviors spans from unconscious bias to motivated acts of prejudice. They include the tolerance of or indifference to the under-representation, differential success and advancement, or experience of Black people in the university.

In fact many of the people inhabiting islands within the Polynesian triangle and those who proudly call themselves People of the Pacific or Pacific Islanders first migrated from West Africa. Hell, there’s even a place called Melanesia. The White-washing of history, mass genocide and raping of local people has lead many to believe this is not true but I know y’all see the physical features the same way I do. I touched on a lot of this in my pieces Moana is Trash and The AAPI Acronym.

It’s literally titled How to deal with remote work microaggressions but goes on and on about “allyship”. It basically just lists all the microaggressions they can think of for various communities and drops BIPOC as many times as possible. Who are y’all talking to? Lola Bakare (She/Her) shared similar feelings after receiving an email entitled “Want to Be an Ally to Black Women? from Lean In. Lola shared that “another great way to be an ally is to acknowledge your Black subscribers exist.” Both examples credit the writing to the brand and not a specific writer or group of writers. If your target audience is cis White people, you should say that.

Often people are not able to get past question one. I also make sure to let them know that I have no interest in being hospitalized. A therapist dedicated to providing adequate care and ensuring those in search of care are able to receive the care they need would be able to provide honest answers. Not all therapists are good therapists. It’s better to know that before building a harmful relationship with a bad one.

With psychology and mental health being such White dominated fields, it’s easy to imagine why these behaviors were not annotated as stimming but rather purposeful disruptions. This disconnect is harmful and has led to so much more harm. Black people be stimming. This needs to be acknowledged so we can receive correct diagnosis and get the care that we need.

Relationships, amiright? Just the word makes a lot of people run for the hills. What we run from is the thought of defining them. We’re running from the intimate conversations needed to maintain and acknowledge our relationships — and to manage our fears and insecurities in relationships.

No contact is a strategy in order to cut ties with a narcissist, sociopath or other emotional manipulator. No contact works because it stops giving energy to the unsafe relationships. Narcissists need “punching bags” because they refuse to self-regulate, acknowledge their own emotions or stop abusive behaviors. There’s a lot of terminology associated with this topic and Dr. Ramani Durvasula (She/Her) provides a lot of in depth explanations on it all.

I have been Queer my entire life.

I never got the chance to “come out” because I’ve always been me. I shared a lot about my thoughts on “coming out” and my journey on Chris Angel (they/them) Murphy’s podcast Allyship Is A Verb. Last year, I used the word Queer for the first time publicly to describe myself because I was assumed an ally. For me Queerness is the ability to move freely outside of the boxes they’d like to put us in. It’s permission to love and be loved exactly as you are. I have been Queer my entire life!

This thinking stems from the frequent use of the Body Mass Index (BMI). The same system used by the military. Heather Irobunda, MD, FACOG (She/Her) and Sabrina Strings, Ph.D. (She/Her) speak frequently on how this system is outdated, rooted in White supremacy and not an indicator of health or wellness.

They created a video describing the history of the system and how it still causes harm til this day. This video not only promotes self-advocacy in all spaces but also solidifies the fact that….. Fatphobia is Anti-Blackness.

There are a lot of people who believe even if you are trans you must choose and take part in the binary in order to identify as trans. They believe people who refuse to choose should not be allowed to identify as trans until they do. There are also people who believe you should not be able to identify as trans unless you partake in Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) and Gender Affirming Surgery.

The next time someone says PTSD and your brain automatically pulls up a cis White man who is also a combat veteran , challenge it to think of anyone else. Challenge it to think of a trans person who has been disowned by their family for transitioning or a Black person who just had to watch another Black person be murdered. Think about who is defining trauma and why they are defining it this way.