PRIDE & CARE

A short self-ethnographic writing piece on thinking Powerarchy and Love

A few weeks ago I watched “Heartstopper” with a beautiful friend, and devoted healthcare assistant; it inspired me to share a story I have dear to my heart 2 years and 7 months since mom’s death. It is a story of pride and resilience that I am only recently owing. Before you read on, please mind that this is a self ethnographic piece of writing. 

In the last few years of her life, my mom rented houses to host transgender sexual workers, assist their business, and have a safe place to live and work. I don’t remember her sitting down and telling me straight up “my job is assisting and helping transgender women do their job as sexual workers safely”. I only remember that I entered that part of her life organically. There was not an announcement. 

I remember thinking that mom was a pimp, and had a very negative idea about it all. We didn’t talk about it openly with other people, but I remember the lightness and realness mom could bring in her conversations with me. Like everyone else, she wanted to share her experiences of how she sustained herself. I remember her talking about all the hard work that was involved in what she was doing - ads, picking up phone calls, cleaning the house, helping the girls with their mental health and vice versa. My mother was a stone of care.

My mind WAS the mainstream. I thought about what she was doing as inferior, wrong, nasty, somehow reflected into ‘me’. Little did I know about how much resilience was in what she did after a lifetime of societal abuse, raising a child as a single mother. She raised up, she tried to move on, doing what she was great at - CARE. I did not know how important her job was. My beautiful mother would have been the perfect colleague in a beautiful lgbtqia+ company or organisation. My mom was a carer and I am proud of that. I am sorry I didn’t know it when she was alive, and I am surprised it took me so long to realise it myself after her death. (This is how the "Powerarchy" Melany Joy, 2019 gets you. It sneaks in your thoughts, it is difficult to realise). 

My mom was also a bodyguard to the girls. She would make sure they were safe. I remember her stories about the man that would visit the house. Handsome looking man, police people, lawyers, family members, young and old, the kind that “you would never say”. How repressed are we all? 

We live in a society where beautiful people like my mother feel that they are doing something dodgy, something that is not right, and that they ended up doing it because they had no education, or were not intelligent enough at a young age to get that education. My mom was such a strict advocate of education and I now know why. I wish I could tell it straight to her face that what she did was honourable. She took care of the most vulnerable in society, even if she was one herself. 

I am grateful for the pain I feel today because it is a symptom of love, and how much I care for a world where NO BODY goes through what she had to go through, and what billions of people go through everyday - prejudice, bigotry, ignorance, hate, violence, abuse…  

My dear mom, you brought light and love to people that needed it the most and I am so proud of who you have been and who you are becoming in my memories. As your best friend told me: you “were an animal from another planet, you were authentic - this world was not for you”. 

I hope this story helps someone, somewhere in the world, to see beyond the societal mainstream that makes us see ourselves through the lenses of dangerous mindsets based in hierarchy, power and dominion. I also hope to inspire people to get curious about life, minds and experiences. Celebrating EVERY BODY, MIND and EXPERIENCES because all we have to gain is a glimpse into our selves.