Book Reviews

Book Review: “At The Broken Places” by Mary Collins and Donald Collins

This is a powerful book. It’s not violent, not exciting, but powerful. I really enjoy books about the queer experience and this one was no exception. At The Broken Places by Mary Collins and Donald Collins is written by a mother and her son who is trans.  They share their painful experience of transformation that started when Donald was a teenager. 
 This book opened me up to a new perspective on being the parent of a trans kid. Mary shares how she grieved and felt unsupported in her grief for the daughter she had birthed and raised for fifteen years. The idea that a parent loses a child when that child transitions has never crossed my mind. But wow does it make sense. I know grief from many experiences. It is an emotion we should talk more about. It appears so differently for each individual, but has a power that can be overwhelming and exhausting. It can be a weight lifted or a devastating blow that deathly sorrow.
I highly recommend this book if you are interested in Trans issues, grief, and the relationships between parents and children.

You deserve to love yourself completely, totally, fully as much as anyone does. Keep healing and I will hold your heart in my heart. If you desire extra support to stay on top of your self-care practice, check out my 30 day challenge Dive Deeper Into Self-Care.


I’m an artist and writer with a focus on art therapy. If you would like to support my heart work, please consider becoming a monthly patron on Patreon.com/Loviedo. For $1 a month*, you can fund programs like my D.I.Y. Therapy: Healing Depression E-course, my monthly “Radical” e-zine and other creative healing projects, like “Cultivating Radical Self-Love: A Collaboration of Healers, Artists & Writers“.

*You can also receive also receive art in the mail for a higher contribution.

Empowering Discussions, Poetry

Call To Action for the Promised Generation

Promised Generation

by Leah Oviedo

They promised our generation equality

Pulled hoods over our eyes to hide the reality

Work hard and you will reach the American dream

At any cost

They told us it was their fault when we failed

Does that sound familiar?

 

The real bad guys are still pale and rich

Stealing our tax dollars for oily, greasy power

Forget our schools

Forget our mentally ill

Cultivating poverty to keep us in check

Money will never buy happiness

Pull that hood off.

 

They said we can do anything a man could do

We can have it all

We are equal now

Except when they rape us

Except what they pay us

Pull that hood off.

 

Drug dealers and gangs roaming our streets killing our children

Lock away the bad guys, be tough on crime

Police are judge, jury and executioner

Jim Crow never went out of style

Just another form of slavery

Pull that hood off.

 

It gets better we’re told

Adults are mature, respectful

You can be out of the closet

Get married, be accepted

Unless you’re too flaming

Too gender bending

Pull that hood off.

 

The air is cleaner

We don’t need all these regulations

Don’t you want a new phone

A bigger car

Water turns our blood to cancer

Our mothers die

Mountaintops disappear and oceans turn to oil

Our fathers perish

Pull that damn hood off.

 

They are taking your jobs

Taking over your schools

They don’t deserve a living wage

Those people came here illegally

You think you did?

You think nobody civilized was here before you?

Pull that hood off.

 

Eat more chicken, less red meat

Pumped full of nutrients

Full of hormones and poison

Slaughter warehouse

Tortured to death

So you can have a 99 cent cheeseburger

Pull that hood off.

 

Terrorists are everywhere

Let’s kill them

On their own soil

Before they come here

Kill their children too

Just in case

Soldiers are disposable

We will honor them once a year

Pull that hood off your eyes

That suffocating, blinding, deadly hood.

 

Pull it off now before you don’t have any hands to pull with

It’s only uncomfortable at first

Then you feel the warm light

The light of a billion suns

Working together in solidarity

Not charity

Justice for sisters

Freedom for brothers

Healing our children

Who cares which bathroom you use

Opportunities for all abilities

Without borders

Respect Mother Earth

Open your eyes and look around at reality

Where is the equality

Pull that hood off and speak the reality.


I’m an artist and writer on a mission to bring healing arts into the mainstream. If you would like to support my heart work, please consider becoming a monthly patron on Patreon.com/Loviedo. For $1 a month, you can fund programs like my D.I.Y. Therapy: Healing Depression E-course, my monthly “Radical” e-zine and other creative healing projects, like “Cultivating Radical Self-Love: A Collaboration of Healers, Artists & Writers“.

Empowering Discussions

New Campaign Breaks Stereotypes and Redefines The Human Experience

What is the human experience?  Many of us were taught that it involves living by a specific set of rules. Grow up, finish school, get a job, raise a family, work until we are 65, retire, be grandparents and deal with any bumps that try to throw us off “track” along the way. But what happens if that’s not what you desire, or if society at large tells you the experience you are having is abnormal or even wrong? The truth is there is no singular human experience. We are not mass produced in specific molds so we don’t have the same goals and desires. We are unique which means our experiences should be too.

T.H.E (The Human Experience) wants you to join their February campaign to share stories of all the different experiences that we as individuals are living through.

Now more than ever we have a chance to connect globally with people of all colors, classes, nationalities, sexual identities, genders, and beliefs. We can show the world that 1. There are many options for our own experience that are not what we thought “normal” should be, and 2. Discourage our unhealthy system of labeling people as if they are cans of food.

Wouldn’t you like to share your experience?

Read more about T.H.E at: thehumanexperienceblog.com

Follow the easy instructions for participation at:  thehumanexperienceblog.com/you-are-the-human-experience-tell-your-story/

WHAT WORDS DESCRIBE YOUR HUMAN EXPERIENCE? Leave a comment.

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*The ads on this site are here because I haven’t paid extra money. not because I support the product or service.*