Holding This Pandemic Life Together- 4/24/2023

Conversation Overview

Messy Conversations invites a collab with Narratives of Pain—an Antioch Seattle project started by Dr. Zain Shamoon (AUS) for sharing pain in a community context and holding supportive space for those sharing and bearing witness.

Elizabeth Lemon, Marissa Hackett, & Sara Beth Lohre will invite and hold our discussion of the enduring impact of the pandemic on our lives including space for the losses and gains, gifts and pains of our community in this new world order.

Guest Bios

Elizabeth Lemon is a recent graduate from Antioch Seattle with an MA in Couples and Family Therapy, and is finishing up a certification in the treatment of trauma through attunement and somatic integration. A long time Antioch Seattle student, she achieved her BA in Psychology in 2019. She recently started her own practice working with relational and individual clients to find agency in their own lived narratives. Previously, she has worked part time with the International Rescue Committee on a pilot project to bring the healing power of art to re-settled Refugees and Immigrants. With a background in fine art and photojournalism, Elizabeth finds the visual arts to be a powerful medium in uplifting subjugated stories, especially when words are hard to find. Currently, she is working on a project about climate change induced trauma and grief, researching the social and cultural impacts of therapist portrayals in the media, and working with Marissa Hackett to cultivate the Seattle chapter of Narratives of Pain.

Marissa Hackett lives in Seattle and is in her second year of the Couple and Family Therapy program at Antioch University Seattle. Marissa is one of the leads of the Narratives of Pain storytelling showcase Seattle chapter. Marissa also has an extensive background in various social work and student support roles in higher education, including working with unhoused folks in Montana and providing case management to students with disabilities at UC Santa Cruz.

Sara Beth Lohre is an alum of Antioch's PsyD program, the Psychology Coordinator for Seattle Undergraduate Studies & Health Counseling Psychology, and one of the original Messy Conversations coordinators who believes that student voice across our campuses helps us to stay focused on our call to antiracist work.

Additional Resources

COVID, Isolation & Hope by Rafael Alvarado (Editor); Consuelo G. Flores (Editor); Richard Modiano (Editor)

ISBN: 9781646627707

Publication Date: 2022-02-25

“From Wang Ping’s moving story of a doctor and a COVID patient in Wuhan, to Kim Dower’s plucky courage in the face of isolation, to the music of Amélie Frank’s pantoum, this anthology is full of candor, grace, insight, and good humor. But mostly it is full of poetry, “the only form of speech we have that meets this need to acknowledge that we are more than unemployment statistics and death tolls” (Victor Infante). What but poetry to help us come to terms with how extraordinary the ordinary things in our lives have become? What but poetry to remind us that though we “shelter in space/like the stars” (Luis CuahtémocBerriozabal), “the baby still needs to be fed” (Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross). Life, for the fortunate of us, has gone on, but this historical moment will be remembered always. I am delighted that this anthology of COVID poems will be there to make sure it is remembered in all its beautiful humanity.” –Gail Wronsky

Covid-19 is disproportionately taking black livesHundreds of years of racism has delivered poor health and economic outcomes for black people, making them more vulnerable in the pandemic.

Dear rich white friends: The pandemic isn’t a vacation. Black and Brown people are still dying.COVID is over—if you can afford it.

The lessons we should really be teaching kids in the pandemicGive up the rigorous homeschooling. There has never been a better time for simple lessons about inequity.

For vulnerable black communities, the pandemic is a “crisis on top of a crisis”The coronavirus outbreak is an added public health threat in Flint, a community that still struggles with clean water and resources.

Disability laws finally gave them an education. School-from-home threatens to make that impossibleSchools have been told they must provide equal learning opportunities to students with disabilities, but the schools and parents say that's not happening during the coronavirus crisis.

What Does 'Hood Feminism' Mean For A Pandemic? : Code SwitchThe coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated issues that disproportionately affect women. So on this episode, we're talking to Mikki Kendall — author of the new book, Hood Feminism — about what on-the-ground feminism practiced by women of color can teach us that the mainstream feminist movement has forgotten.

How to heal the 'mass trauma' of Covid-19When the pandemic is over, how should we process the memories of what happened? Ed Prideaux discovers counter-intuitive answers from the science of trauma.

The ‘Grief Pandemic’ Will Torment Americans for Years - KFF Health NewsMore than 5 million Americans lost a loved one to covid, and the ripple effects could lead to serious illness down the road.

(4:24:2023) 1-s2.0-S0924977X21016357-main.pdf

Double Jeopardy: COVID-19 and Behavioral Health Disparities for Black and Latino Communities in the U.S.

Autistic, Surviving, and Thriving Under COVID-19: Imagining Inclusive Autistic Futures—A Zine Making ProjectThis article takes up Mia Mingus’ call to “leave evidence” of how we have lived, loved, cared, and resisted under ableist neoliberalism and necropolitics during COVID-19 . We include images of artistic work from activist zines created online during the COVID-19 pandemic and led by the Re•Storying Autism Collective. The zines evidence lived experiences of crisis and heightening systemic and intersectional injustices, as well as resistance through activist art, crip community, crip knowledges, digital research creation, and the forging of collective hope for radically inclusive autistic futures—what zine maker Emily Gillespie calls “The neurodivergent, Mad, accessible, Basic Income Revolution.” We frame the images of artistic work with a coauthored description of the Collective’s dream to create neurodivergent art, do creative research, and work for disability justice under COVID-19. The zine project was a gesture of radical hope during crisis and a dream for future possibilities infused with crip knowledges that have always been here. We contend that activist digital artmaking is a powerful way to archive, theorize, feel, resist, co-produce, and crip knowledge, and a way to dream collectively that emerged through the crisis of COVID-19. This is a new, collective, affective, and aesthetic form of evidence and call for “forgetting” ableist capitalist colonialism and Enlightenment modes of subjectivity and knowledge production that target different bodies to exploit, debilitate, and/or eliminate, and to objectify and flatten what it means to be and become human and to thrive together.

Surviving and Thriving: Queer Crip Pilipinx Kapwa Dream Worlds in Animal Crossing New HorizonsAs a queer, crip, genderfluid, and diasporic Pilipinx scholar-activist-educator, my ancestors, communities, and I live at the intersections of multiple sites of oppression and resistance. As someone who is sick, disabled, and neurodivergent, I experienced anxiety, depression, and chronic bodymind pain before the pandemic and even more during the pandemic. Nintendo Switch’s Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH) video game kept me afloat during uncertain times. ACNH opened up a whole new alternative universe for me to live in. I meditated more when escaping to my scenic and calming virtual island. I relaxed more when fishing, catching butterflies, and hearing the tranquil ocean waves crash within the game. Building my dream world within my ACNH virtual game contributed to me surviving and fostering deeper friendships with fellow sick, disabled, neurodivergent, queer, transgender, Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC) friends. ACNH became a safe way for us to socialize and it continues to be a source of joy for many of us. I highlight how my experiences with ACNH allowed me to cultivate queer, crip, and decolonial Pilipinx Kapwa dream worlds where all beings including people, animals, land, water, and air thrive together.

AboutMia Mingus is a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice. She is a queer physically disabled korean transracial and transnational adoptee raised in the Caribbe…

Leaving Evidence by Mia Mingus

We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live--past survival; past isolation.

Leaving Evidence is a blog by Mia Mingus.