#softlyfiercely

[draconym]

I don't care for Taylor Swift but I do appreciate her fans for popularizing friendship bracelets.

All-around great type of object to give and receive.

[walkingtheborderline]

What advice would you have for someone who is going to be a therapeutic foster parent for young women who have been through trauma?

I’ll try to be as open and honest with my experiences as I can, but definitely keep in mind that each girl will have her own needs and react to her trauma in unique ways. 

I think my first piece of advice is to be prepared for ‘episodes’ to occur, things like panic attacks, dissociation, flashbacks and the like. Even if the girl doesn’t seem to have a history of it there’s so many little things that can trigger someone and they might seem completely and utterly bizarre. 

I’ll give you a person example. 

At night (as in after it gets dark, the actual time doesn’t matter) I am most easily triggered into dissociation episodes. When I dissociate I seek to self harm. So one night I just wandered into the kitchen and lingered there unresponsive and tried to burn strands of my hair with a candle lighter, cut myself with a kitchen knife, and tried to run out of my house at 2am because I felt like I was being cornered. This episode lasted nearly an hour with me crying hysterically and hiding under my kitchen table because I was afraid that the people who abused me would find me. I went from dissociation to panic attack very quickly when my boyfriend removed the self harm tools from me. 

I don’t describe this to scare you away from fostering these girls, I think it’s absolutely wonderful you’re opening your life to them. I just want to give you a glimpse into what things can look like when it get’s bad. It’s better to be ready for the worst to happen than hope for the best and be totally blown away. 

Whether your foster child has a history of self-harm or not I suggest locking things like shaving razors, knives, craft tools that are sharp like scissors and blades, and lighters away. It will be inconvenient but it will 1) prevent your foster kiddo from having ready access to possible self harming tools and 2) if she has to actively start searching for something the process of needing to look can help redirect her mind away from wanting to self harm. 

Be conscientious with how you phrase things. One of my triggers is the tone in someone’s voice, which often the person speaking doesn’t realize sounds this way to me. If someone gives me a neutral or vague answer instead of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ I see only negativity. For me neutrality doesn’t exist-it’s always the worst case scenario. So for example if I ask my boyfriend “Are you upset with me?” and he says “its all good” even though that sounds to most people as a perfectly fine answer to me it’s too neutral and vague. He has to say “no I am not mad at you” for me to believe he isn’t upset. So when you’re speaking with your foster child try not to be pointed and specific because the mind will seek out places to doubt. 

Respect her boundaries. I am sure this is obvious and you don’t need to be told this, but boundaries might come in strange places or at different times. She might feel perfectly fine with you giving her a hug one day but the next hates being touched. It might come at random throughout the day with seemingly no rhyme or reason. So be ready to adapt to her boundaries as they change, and make yourself someone she can come to to discuss her boundaries in the first place. 

Sort of connected to the above, I’d suggest you and her come up with a safe word to use. If she needs you to back off a little she can say it and right away you take a step back. If she feels like she might self harm or is suicidal she can say this one word without having to come out and describe all of her feelings at once. A safe word between you two can be used for anything it needs to be used for.

There will come a point she’ll say something she doesn’t mean to say. One day she might shout the meanest sounding things you’ve ever heard a young girl say and it will no doubt sting and feel pretty shitty. Please always believe that these moments are not who she is, these things she might say are not what she truly feels, the broken plate isn’t a bad child showing her true colors. All of these words and the anger are not her, they’re coming from the trauma inside of her. She’ll need your forgiveness in these moments, as much as what was said may be horribly painful to hear. Please be willing to let them go and not hold it against her. 

I think most of all I would urge you to be honest and open with these girls, they probably haven’t seen much of it in their lives, and making yourself a judgement free source of affection and trust will go so so far. Be ready to hear the worst things you’ll ever hear, to see the worst things you’ll ever see, and to still care about and respect the young girls when it’s said and done. 

I am sure there’s a thousand more things I could say so I am going to open this for my followers to add on to and I hope some of this helps a little.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

I have a question re: the cockroach house: can roaches really enjoy things? Are those roaches having a happier cozier comfier life than a roach that lives under someone's fridge? Obviously more complex animals can be happy/content or unhappy/bored/lonely/etc. but is it possible to give a roach a "treat"? Do they "like" having different spaces to lounge about and different foods to eat? Or are they just only ever in "surviving, things are fine/not good, need to change something" modes?

Y’know, I honestly don’t know if roaches (or other bugs, by extension) have enough of a conscious internal state to have a sense of welfare. @bogleech and @crispbean, we need your cockroach expertise again! 

[cincodenada]

@softlyfiercely if you haven’t seen this video yet, you need it in your life.  Look at all those little lizards!  Favorite: the little buddy who comes and checks out the camera at 6:12.

Seems that if you can get to these islands off the southern coast of Spain, there are a bunch of tiny islands you can kayak to that are full of tiny lizards.  This dude posted a report about his trip that has SO MANY pictures of SO MANY lizards, and it’s the best.

[sunfish-exotics]

Congrats on the new bb! I loveloveLOVE naming things, especially gecko lovelies. Here are some pretty/girly names I thought of when I saw her: Celia, Duchess, Opal, Emmeline, Lovey, Marseille, Goldie, Anastasia, Lula, Blush, Selene, Wynnie

Oh thank you so much for the name suggestions! I really like Celia, Opal, and Blush, they’re all so cute! It’s going to be much harder for me to pick a name than I thought ;-;

[cincodenada]

I just spent two hours reading and editing the Wikipedia article on the Stable Roommates Problem because softlyfiercely blogged about it and now annapear is mad at me because I haven’t been snuggling or eating and now it’s midnight and Lily this is all your fault

but hey, now there is one less Wikipedia article that uses gendered pronouns, and future people wondering about Stable Roommate Matching will find a (hopefully) slightly-less-confusing article about it. So, there’s that.

[walk-up-songs]

lmao softlyfiercely remember that time our professor said 4chan was pushing the boundaries of the internet

[walk-up-songs]

tagged by becsology AND slightly

Rules: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just ones that have touched you. Tag ten friends, including me, so I’ll see your list. Make sure you let your friends know you’ve tagged them!

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. My grandmother gave me a copy of the book last night that is nearly but not quite identical to one of the other copies I have and I took it anyway. Because it's marginally bigger than the other copy, okay?

2. Flight by Sherman Alexie. One time I told Sherman Alexie that he was a rock star and he laughed at me.

3. Peter Pan by JM Barrie. Who's a precious little murderer? Peter's a precious little murderer! Mwah.

4. Natives & Exotics by Jane Alison. Whenever I think of third culture kids, I think of this book. Contains one of the best child POVs (in an adult novel) that I've ever read.

5. A Tortoise For The Queen of Tonga by Julia Whitty. The collection's titular story is one of my favorite short stories ever. 

6. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Don't talk to me about Philip Pullman. I hate him (I love him).

7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Yossarian?!?!!!

8. The World According To Garp - John Irving. I read this when I was too young and consequently think about the scene where she bites the dude's dick off all. the. time.

9. Poems on the Underground ed. by Judith Chernaik. I think this is the first poetry collection I bought by myself? I bought it when I was a shitty anglophile and it's probably the best thing that came out of that phase.

10. The Hunger Games trilogy by Susanne Collins. Teeeeeeeam Katniss.