Sonia Connolly

I loved this story, Pocosin by Ursula Vernon. Read it twice through and then sat with it, savoring. It's about women and strength and good endings that include death and doing what needs to be done and being bone-tired and claiming rest, with lots of right-there sensory details about the surroundings.

Searched on McKillip, found this lovely story after Changeling Sea, which I own a copy of, but clearly don't remember very well. This story made me want to reread it.
Leaving the Sea (Turns out this one is from 2004, because I was in the full Yuletide index. Totally worth reading anyway!)

There's been a lot of not-knowing in my life lately, so this story fit right in, as well as being a finely-crafted followup to Phantom Tollbooth
From the Mountains of Un

A right and proper sequel to Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. Along the way, it addresses heteronormativity and history classes that only talk about dead white men.
The Piper

Tristan of Hed! From Riddle-Master of Hed. Long ago, that was the book I finished, held in my hands, and turned over to start again. This story lives up to that.
The Crown of Hed

ETA: Via castiron, a sweet vignette
Frog and Toad Forever

Two online graphic novels recommended by a friend, both complete:
14 Nights is the love story between two men, one of whom is asexual. Not work safe. I loved the details in the art around plants and other backgrounds, although the people are often sketched somewhat hastily. I felt like the author/artist held my emotions in safe hands, even when emotions in the story ran high. Includes some disability issues as well.

Prince of Cats. This one didn't grab me in the first few frames, so I haven't read it yet, but I wanted to save the recommendation. It includes talking cats.

I'm listening, reading.

"12 things white people can do now because Ferguson" by Janee Woods

"My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK" by Kiese Laymon

"The Price of Blackness" by Lanre Akinsiku

When we allow all our conflicting feelings to be present, drop what isn't ours, and imagine the problem is already solved, we can emerge into new terrain.
All Done! Tools for Rapid Change

New book responses at Curious, Healing. Have you read these? Comments welcome!
"Sea Change" by S.M. Wheeler
"A Theory of Everything" by Ken Wilber
"Mass" by Leonard Bernstein
"The Art of Empathy" by Karla McLaren
"Disarming the Narcissist" by Wendy T. Behary, LCSW

Article updates
tim pointed out that Change the Rules, Inhabit Your Pelvis was cissexist in the way it talked about female and male pelvises, because someone who identifies as male might have a wide pelvis, and vice versa. I edited the article to include more acknowledgment of trans people's experience.

A client mentioned that Portland's SIA meetings are currently women-only. I edited the Learn More section of Triggered! Now What? as well as the Website Resources page to reflect that information.

Thanks to you both for your feedback!

The holidays are coming
As a holiday tradition, I link to one of my first articles, Choose Your Traditions. May you navigate the holidays with lightness and grace.

Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

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I'm 45 years old, and I currently identify as bisexual. This is subject to change without notice.

The age is in there because I'm bemused that my sexual identity is still subject to change.

I was kindly notified (feel free to let me know in comments if you want to be named) that in my article Change the Rules, Inhabit Your Pelvis, referring to female and male pelvises is cissexist.

I want to change the article to be more correct/welcoming, and I'm looking for suggestions for better phrasing. "People with uteruses" probably correlates fairly well with wide pelvises, but seems indirect to me. "Assigned female" has the benefit of being compact, but is not entirely accurate. "Child-bearing" pelvis? What would I pair that with?

I welcome google search suggestions - I haven't come up with useful search terms yet. I imagine that trans-aware anatomists have come up with acceptable terminology, but I don't know how to find out what that is. What's a good way to say "anatomically female," or "female-bodied," or ....?

ETA: I changed female to cis female, and added a bit of text about "your pelvis may be wider or narrower than you expect." I thought about eliding gender altogether, but that felt like silently going along with cis male being the default everyone learns about.

Got chased out of choir by fragrances. People mean well, but they leave conditioner in their hair or put on just a little fragrance in the morning and then they follow me when I move away from them. We're all standing and moving around and for some reason people sense when I'm moving away from them specifically. Fascinating, but not conducive to having a good time singing.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally asked one woman to please move away from me, and she stayed close to me and said she didn't understand and demanded an explanation and didn't even really respect the universal "talk to the hand" sign and finally went off crying. OMG. Choir director emailed both of us and this woman went on about feeling attacked, and I did my best, "This is what I hear you saying, is that right? I hope you understand that my experience was different." No response, and haven't seen her at choir since.

Last week was better, but this week was worse again. I think I'm done.

I liked this story and its illustrations. "Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land" by Ruthanna Emrys.

I want to say to the second commenter, not everything you don't understand is wrong. Despite having read that sentence several times and wondered the same thing before settling on understanding.

It's nice to read a story that assumes knowledge I grew up with, rather than knowledge I learned by observation. So many stories assume Christian canon. And also it's about friendship and connection across gaps and nations.

shehasathree's post about emotional flashbacks and complex PTSD is very useful!

Links from there for my future reference:
http://www.pete-walker.com/flashbackManagement.htm
http://www.pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTSD.html