Just be honest for now

Mostly scribblings and inspirations KhaleMcHurstComics: Khale's Comic Blog I Do Not Have An Eating Disorder Comic Directory Resources for EDs, depression, self harm and suicide Polyamory Isn't For Everyone comics directory Other Comics Directory View all previous asks MissPixNMix on Twitter Khale McHurst online: all Khale's artwork and comics in one place Support the artist: Khale McHurst on Society6 MissPixNMix Answers: a blog for questions and support on depression, anxiety, EDs, self harm and suicide

[misspixnmix]

supposed to stick up for you defend your attackers. Unfortunately I don't know if your mum will ever understand this. But please remember you have the right to do whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe (mentally and physically) - whether that's ending a visit early because mum's dad is offensive, or choosing to put up with because you choose to (not because you're weak or don't care but because like any minority you know that sometimes we choose to pick our battles for our own sakes).(tbc

“Only you can know what is the right choice for you. Personally I think that your grandfather's feelings are his problem. If he's upset by you and your partner that's on him to work out. If his "upsetness" ends up being expressed by him saying/doing offensive things towards you or your partner you are perfectly justified in removing yourselves from the situation. If your mum has a problem with any of this that's her problem, and for her to work out.

I know it's not always simple and that perhaps you fear that your mum's supportiveness will become less if you stand up for your right to be treated with respect) But you and your partner have just as much right to be treated with sensitivity and respect as the other people do. If people don't respect who you are and be sensitive to your feelings (by, for example, choosing to keep their mouth shut about their homophobic beliefs when you are visiting), why should you have to be“

Hi beautiful, 

I am so sorry that Tumblr ate half of your message. But it feels like a message of support, in response to some tough times I was going through a while back with my mum and my now father-in-law. Thank you so much for your kind words. You are absolutely right, we deserve to be treated with respect by all parties, and this hurtful behaviour is not OK. I am delighted to report that my father-in-law has greatly improved his attitude since then. I wish I could say the same for my mum, but she still has a ways to go. In the mean time, I have maintained much stricter boundaries with her. I still love her, I still want her in my life, but whilst her politics are so toxic to me, I know I have to limit my exposure. 

It’s awful that so many of us have to manage our familial relationships like this. But this also makes me glad that my biological family is not all I have - I also have a loving and supportive Found Family who fulfil me in many ways. I wish for everyone to have that. 

Thanks so much for your message of support. It really means a lot. 

All my love, 

Khale xox

[misspixnmix]

Hi again! I just sent you the EMDR message but ran out of characters. I wanted to add that with a little research. EMDR is something you can even do for yourself at home if there's no therapist in your area who offers it. (My therapist even said "There's no wrong way to do EMDR" but I would personally recommend going through the process with a trained and competent EMDR therapist first, so you know what negative cognitions are in your head and what questions to ask yourself if you do it solo.)

Thank you so much for your message. I did end up having some EMDR sessions with a licensed therapist (this will be covered in the comic eventually). I found the EMDR overwhelmingly positive when it came to my specific traumas, but ran into some difficulty when the therapist continued trying to use an EMDR approach for core beliefs rather than specific traumas. It actually got me into a really bad head space and I had to find a new psychologist to continue to work on things. But in terms of reducing my complex PTSD symptoms, the EMDR was very helpful. Thank you so much for the additional info. 

All my love, 

Khale xox

[misspixnmix]

(2) roles reversed, with him being a very monogamous person and me wanting to explore poly. A mono/poly relationship is definitely possible but there has to be compromise sometimes and you have to strive to make all parties involved comfortable and aware. We have found a very good place now that we are both happy in but when it first happened, I fell into the same mistakes your ex did with what was essentially cheating and lying. I'm happy to hear you are happy with someone new. :)

Hi beautiful, 

Tumblr has eaten the first part of this message, but it sounds like it was essentially something positive - it sounds like you have found a very comfortable position with your partner(s) and are making things work. Thank you for your kind words - I am very happy with my partner (now my wife) and although I have landed on monogamy, I am glad I had some experience with poly so that I can better understand my poly friends (and have incredible respect for them and how they operate). I hope you continue to be happy on your life’s journey. 

All my love, 

Khale xox

[dresdoodles]

On falling in love with your gay best friend 💖

follow me @dresdoodles or on twitter

[biffisdrawing]

image description under the cut because this is a whole-ass 5 page comic. (sorry!)

happy pride. i drew this instead of things i should be doing. it was a good excuse to draw a lot of beautiful girls using references (found under the cut). it’s messy and bad, but i think the message gets across. i love being a lesbian because it helped me love myself more.

Keep reading

[eliasericson]

The Cat has its Heart on the Outside

Available as a fanzine in Swedish with a translation note here.

[damianimated]

I feel like I have to state this once a month, but it’s really uncool how often people jokingly use the word “triggered.” 

[misspixnmix]

New comic launch

Hey there for anyone still following this blog, my new comic has just launched over at my comics blog. You can find the first page, and a written introduction here. 

To keep seeing pages, be sure to follow khalemchurstcomics.

All my love, 

Khale xox

[misspixnmix]

TRIGGERED: Starting Jan 21st

Hi all,

I know a lot of us have abandoned ship, but for those still here, don’t forget: my new comic

TRIGGERED: A story of PTSD, a Plebiscite and the Patriarchy

begins on January 21st on my comics blog. Like all my previous projects, it will update weekly. I’m really nervous about this one, but I think it’s an important story.

Thanks so much to everyone who has stuck by me for so long.

All my love,

Khale xox

[insincere-engineer]

idk if y’all americans and that know this, but in Australia instead of snow at christmas we get these lil shiny bugs everywhere and they’re attracted to the christmas lights and we call them christmas beetles

and despite being australian they don’t bite or anything they just crawl around on your hand and it’s such a good and pure feeling and yeah

[cryoverkiltmilk]

‘despite being australian’

[misspixnmix]

These beautiful creatures are the best thing about Christmas in Australia. That being said, I tried to show them to some Norwegians and they FREAKED OUT insisting that I could not possibly have something in my hands that was beautiful and yet ‘wouldn’t immediately kill me’. 

Curse our reputation. 

[polararts]

If you think your art blog is going to be deleted:

You can save all your posts with these instructions I’ll do it too just to be safe, I honestly don’t remember what I’ve posted here over the years.

[1ivoryandsalt1]

You can also import a copy of your blog into wordpress. YMMV if you have a huge amount of posts.

[polararts]

Oh thanks!! This is also a good one!! In case the first doesn’t work or you don’t have the memory for a whole zip of your blog~

[misspixnmix]

Tumblr changes

Hi there beautiful people,

It looks like Tumblr is making some changes to what content can be posted here. I haven’t been flagged yet, but I know there are pages of my comics where I have depicted myself in little to no clothing for artistic purposes, so I feel like it may be coming.

I really hope I get to post the ending of I Do Not Have An Eating Disorder before anything happens. We’re only a few pages away! But in case everything goes south, and I have to find a new home for my comics, please find me elsewhere online for updates.

My twitter, instagram and Patreon are all KhaleMcHurst (please note on Patreon you have to enter my name exactly in the address bar; you can’t search for me due to some of the content I have there).

Maybe by some miracle my comics will be spared, but it’s good to be prepared. We will see.

All my love,

Khale xox

[leslieknope2k44]

a guide to wlw period pieces

[misspixnmix]

Maybe a list we could work on

[misspixnmix]

This is super nitpicky, but I always forget your comic blog's name and wander around this blog until I find it, so I can catch up on your comics that I've missed. Could you put a link to it in your description? (It's not a big deal so feel free to ignore!)

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve added a link to my comics blog in the side bar. Hope that helps!

All my love, 

Khale xox

[neornithes]

seriously, fuck the false dichotomy between Science and The Arts. as if capital-S Science isn’t an art that requires creativity, perseverance, patience, and skilled observation. as if The Arts don’t require rigor, discipline, practice, and attention to detail. as if both aren’t cultural structures that stand on foundations of sexist, racist, capitalist hierarchy. as if they both can’t be used for purposes of enrichment and revolution. i am so fucking over this idea of presenting science and art as opposites, when they have so much more in common than people think.

[ajaegerpilot]

UM!!!!!!! UM!!!! this is a beautiful post!!!! and I feel it with every part of my soul!

[misspixnmix]

I love this post. I am a scientist by day and an artist by night and both are incredibly good and fulfilling. You can be a science dork and a majestic art geek as well. Follow your very big dreams. 

[misspixnmix]

Hello! I get if this is too personal to talk about, but what is your past with religion like? You've mentioned religion a couple of times in your comics and, in your latest Japan comic, you mentioned being a church leader. As an ex-Orthodox Christian and a queer person I am interested. And a big fan of your comics, by the way!

Thank you so much for reading my comics, I really appreciate knowing I have an audience. 

Personal questions are generally OK with me, as I’m pretty open about my life and past (I do write pretty honest comics about them after all). 

I was raised in a very religious environment. My parents belong to the Southern Baptist church (so basically in Westboro Baptist Church territory - I don’t know if any of the churches in Australia are that extreme, but they come pretty close). My entire life was surrounded by the church - we went to church every Sunday, we only ever went to private religious schools, all of my extended family was religious - I never really even met anyone who wasn’t a die hard Christian until I got to University. Once I was a teenager my weekends were taken up by local youth groups - church-led social groups that aimed to keep local teenagers occupied in all their free time so that they wouldn’t drink or have sex. By the time I was in my mid teens, I was doing a lot of extra curricular church activities - I was a Sunday school teacher, a worship leader, and I also had a lot of additional ‘good girl’ activities at my school. I was a true-blue bible thumping born again Christian, and I was not shy about telling anyone and everyone I met about their sins and the fact that they needed to come to Christ. I was also DEEPLY homophobic. It had been a consistent message since I was a child that anyone who liked the same sex  romantically was a pervert and a pedophile. It went right along with all the other messages they taught us - (please forgive the slurs I am about to use - I am quoting verbatim what I was taught) that women who had sex before marriage were whores, that only prostitutes and perverts masturbated, that secular music was a gateway to satan worship, that anyone who didn’t come to Christ was going to hell. I was completely brainwashed. 

It took me a long time to escape the church. The shame that I had been taught was so entrenched in me that I didn’t know how to live my life without it. In my early twenties, I kissed a girl for the first time. It was absolutely a life-changing experience. I was feeling things in my body that were so new, so exciting, and I felt like my whole body was charged with electricity. I felt so alive, so happy. But soon after it happened, a wave of shame washed over me, so deep and so profound, that I was convinced that I was going to hell. I locked myself in a bathroom stall and used a stanley knife to carve the word ‘whore’ into my thighs. I still have a hint of those scars today. 

I spent A LOT of time in therapy trying to make peace with what I believed about myself. The church had taught me that I was fundamentally bad - a sinner, dirty, shameful - and when you add to that the fact that I had realised I was gay, you can imagine the internal dialogue I was having. I had to make peace with the fact that I was gay, and come to accept that that didn’t make me an evil pervert who was destined to spend eternity in hell. 

These days, I do not consider myself religious. I understand that organised religion can be genuinely positive for some people, but for me personally, all it ever did was teach me to hate myself and feel shame. I am still working in therapy on trying to overcome that shame. I know it brings many in my family a deep sadness that I am not ‘with Christ’ these days, but I am actually just so much happier and healthier now that I am not a member of the church. Once again, I am not saying the church is bad or wrong for everyone, just that it was a bad fit for me personally and that the extremist arm that I was associated with inflicted some pretty significant harm on my emotional health. 

If you are ever interested in seeing comics about my time in the church (some funny, some sad), on my Patreon I regularly post comics for my $1 Patrons from my series ‘Growing Up Good’ - these are short stories that chronicle the relationship between my queerness and my religious background. I’m currently posting pages from a story about the burning circles my church used to have for ‘evil’ false idols such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter and Twilight. 

Thanks again for reading my comics. It really means a lot to me to know that so many cool people are sharing this journey with me. 

All my love, 

Khale xox

[misspixnmix]

Thanks for PIFE! I followed it from the beginning and loved it! I found it while trying to learn about polyamory as a queer woman and it was beautiful. I also learned a lot about mental illness and eating disorders along the way. You certainly succeeded in painting both yourself and your ex as humans with flaws and incompatibilities, not flat cartoons (haha). Turns out polyamory is for me, and so is your art. Thank you! Sending best wishes for a future full of ever better love and health.

Thank you so much for your beautiful and supportive message. I found PIFE so hard to write, not in the least because I really wanted to portray my ex and I as just two people trying to do life together, making a lot of mistakes but still ultimately caring about each other. I was so scared it would end up looking like a story that said ‘this person hurt me, therefore she was a bad person’. I don’t believe that. She wasn’t a bad person. She made errors in judgement, and so did I, but both of us genuinely loved each other and never meant the other harm. 

I’m glad you’ve been enjoying the comics and learning things as well. I originally started writing comics as teaching tools to help me explain myself and my feelings to the important people in my life, and if they can serve that purpose for other people as well then I am delighted. 

Thank you so much for continuing to join me on this journey. It really helps me so much to know that I have an audience for these stories. 

All my love, 

Khale xox