These days I’m more Strawberry than Laura-Marie. Thank you for holding my hand during the transition. Please keep your arms and legs inside the imagination at all times. Please enjoy the ride.
I’ve been doing radical mental health for 19 years including co-creating de-escalation trainings and facilitating support, based on the idea that there’s so much we can do for one another as mutual aid, outside the medical model. Love is the best medicine. Nine years ago I co-founded the Las Vegas Radical Mental Health Collective which is still meeting.
One year ago, I co-founded the Eugene Radical Mental Health Collective. I’ve lived in community for ten years (four different communities–for seven years, one month, one year, and two years, each place). I’m happy to share what I’ve lived through and explain what I’ve learned. This blog is that project–it’s been going for 20 years. It’s the least I can do.
land prayer
I’m writing mostly on Kalapuya land these days. Thank you for having me.
I love you, ancestors. I love you, land itself. Water, air, electricity, Jaguar, Jagaddhatri, Parent Earth, Snake Mother, Harriet Tubman, all forms of Durga, all forms of light, plants, rocks, tiny tinies– I love you.
Please protect me and bless my writing and art to reach the places it needs to go. Please help my words and pictures benefit the world. May it be so!
this project
This blog is part of a larger project which is my life’s work. The project is about
- feeling our feelings
- being real about needs
- using the gifts my ancestors handed me, such as big heart and truth-telling
- building community and chosen family, especially with trans, queer, fat, mixed, disabled, and crazy people such as myself
- dance, movement, stimming, motion
- ritual, altars, worship, prayer
- autistic liberation
- radical mental health
- zines
- health on our own terms, however we define it, divorced from mainstream medicine and all its shame
- loving all beings and all creatures, including Parent Earth and those with the least power
- experiences of the divine through pleasure, such as food, flowers, and song
- building a happier culture where love is more important than money
work
I’m disabled and work very hard, but not at a job, and not for money. I work hard on my survival. The radical mental health, disabled dance facilitation, art making, and blogging I do is unpaid.
If you’d like to support this project, please
- share posts
- link to my work
- trade zines
- keep me and Ming in your prayers
- comment supportively
- consider chipping in if you’re blessed with funds
Here are ways to chip in.
- venmo: @LauraMarie-Taylor
- cashapp: $StrawberryPancakeFae
- paypal: robotmad@g mail.com
I’ll take the money and share it with stranded radical faeries, friends who are being evicted, and other artists. Also I might pay for web hosting and domain names.
interviews
Some media! Please enjoy this Madness Radio interview Love is a Skill. Will Hall and Jacks McNamara asked me about community, zines, an apocalyptic interplanetary time traveling librarian dream, my favorite things about radical mental health, and how all bodies are valid bodies.
Love Is a Skill | Laura-Marie & Jacks McNamara | Madness Radio
Please hear this interview featuring both me and Ming about Disabled Resilience Permaculture.
yep
This blog is by our hero Strawberry Pancake Fae Nopales, also known as Laura-Marie. I’m a queer trikewitch extraordinaire. Whatever you observe about me by reading my words is probably accurate? You see it through the lens of you, your own eyes, at the minimum. You might be wearing glasses in addition.
However you think I am, probably you should multiply it by ten. It gets confusing to consider. Most people overstate, but I usually understate.
I’m like the lady who calls the doctor to say, “My contractions are three minutes apart,” but sounds really calm, so the doctor doesn’t say to come in right away, so she births twins in the back of a taxicab.
In this metaphor, what would the twins be? Two websites, or two zines. I guess you could say I have too many feelings–that would be fair also. But see for yourself, reader Friend.
Maybe you’ll have a good time anyway. Depends how close you get. Dose is important for all medicine.
what I like
- touch and being touched by humans I trust
- lying in the half-dark just breathing
- rest
- zines
- plant life vibrant and healing
- nurturing
- singing mostly in Sanskrit and Bengali, but also English and German
- fat dance
- riding adult trike such as Bluebird of Friendliness Pure Bliss
- cooking delicious veg food
- ideas
- learning
- Parent Earth
- mother energy
- being out in the desert and taking off my shoes and standing on a cool rock, talking to Mother God
- mutual aid
- trying something new– change
- service, works of mercy
- asking for something
- giving something
- helping somehow
Hmm, I love writing, apparently. I give my life to radical mental health, ritual, doing my own things, writing letters and sending mail art, connecting.
into the future, back to the past
Let me know if you’d like a zine, letter, or postcard.
My favorite time I ever got arrested was immediately after marrying Ming. Please see this video of part of the ceremony.
there’s more
I’m also a psychiatric survivor, voice hearer, disabled permaculturist, love anarchist, retired bassoonist, fat liberationist. I’m mixed race as my dad was white, and my mom was Mexican-American.
These days I’m not a woman, but I kind of look like one. Also I’m a compulsive gratitude journal-er and desire journal-er, sneaky radicalizer, and lover of dreams.
Come with me to a world where a mouth can kind of be a closet at the same time, relatives are sleeping in a strange place, the water is dirty, and I’m getting ready for a performance I forgot to rehearse for.
Or just come ride bikes with me. Love to your journey.