flower-swift:

don’t forget on pride month

You guyssssz

Look what I found on reddit

This is such a beautiful progression

“And this is to my mom. Ma, you deserve the world that you dreamed of giving me. You deserve the love you’ve showered me with and times infinity. You deserve everything you were robbed off, you deserve the stars and moons that you were told that you were not worthy of. Ma, you deserve everything the world did not give you. You deserve the world and I am sorry if I or the world ever made you that you deserved less than that. Everything that I am right now and everything I will be is because you were there every step of the way. And today I want to say you are worthy of so much and I am sorry if you ever thought you weren’t. You deserve everything and I will try my best to make sure you know that. And all the ‘I love you’ will fall short in comparison to everything you’ve done but I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.” 

g.d. (ma) 

I wanted to put out a plea to people out there to be kind to each other. You don’t know what someone else has been through or what trauma they might have of their own. You may have experienced trauma of your own that no one could possibly imagine or wish upon anyone, but you mustn’t invalidate or minimize someone’s feelings because they appear to pale in comparison to your own experiences.

By minimizing someone’s feelings, you may be unintentionally fostering a mentality in them that their feelings don’t matter; that no one cares because others have been through worse and that they are weak for being upset. They feel they are better keeping their feelings inside and never discussing them because ‘how could they possibly be sad when they are so fortunate’? As a result, they feel like all they are allowed to do is support those who have had ‘more painful’ experiences and feel ashamed for feeling any pain of their own.

And those feelings grow and grow until the emotions all spill out at once and consume them, sometimes to a devastating degree.  

Everyone’s feelings are valid, regardless of their experiences. Even the more fortunate are allowed to be sad sometimes. Please be kind and just listen to one another. You don’t need to fix things or put a value on feelings based on who has had the most traumatic pasts…just listen.

And for those of you out there who need to hear it, you matter. Your feelings matter. 

i pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for…

sentientcitizen:

bellybuttonblue:

Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

You can choose to be the bus driver.

s/n

never take mental health as a joke. to anyone that’s struggling out there please reach out. don’t suffer alone. you matter. you are loved by many.

my deepest condolences to jonghyun’s family, friends and shawols. heaven gained another angel today. he will be remembered as a great artist as well as an amazing person.