A Peer Support Specialist reaches across, not down. Non-hierarchical-- that's literally a requirement spelled out in the job description.
We close the liminal space between "patient" and "well person". We bridge the gap between the person receiving care and their therapist/doctor etc. We're the people you want knocking on the door when you're having a major personal crisis-- you know, instead of the people with guns. We've lived through our own crises/trauma/illness/addiction/etc, and we know how it actually feels.
This isn't just some cute hand-holding role. It's a crucial part of a larger movement to integrate and humanize-- frankly, to TRANSFORM-- healthcare. That's the agenda, straight up. And I even get to fucking SAY THAT out loud.
And how do we enact this subversive scheme? By using empathy to relate to people, while helping empower them to determine and work on their OWN damn recovery goals, without judging.
Trying to "fix" people leads to burnout. Coercion and punishment have diminishing returns-- you can't force anybody to get better by kicking them when they're already down. Stigma has done massive damage. So we slow down, give an actual shit, and walk WITH people while they learn to fish, instead of beating fish over their heads, get it?
I am a botanist and also worked as a gardener for two years, and I can weigh in on this!
Yes, as is obvious, those trees are fucked, in multiple ways. This may be a bit of a long post, but I hope I will explain all the ways these trees are fucked in a clear manner, and even teach about some botany in the process.
First, pruning, and what that even means. Pruning is the practice of removing branches from plants (in this case trees), in order to train the tree into a specific shape, or limiting its growth to stop it going into power lines. It is done all the time, but there are specific times this should happen depending on the type of tree. This type of pruning, when you remove most of the canopy at a similar height, is called pollarding, and should only be done when the tree is dormant, in late winter or very early spring.
This is because, when you remove basically all of the tree's leaves, which are the things that allow them to get energy from the sun and produce oxygen, the tree's response will be to make new branches in order to make more canopy to get sunlight. If you pollard a tree while it's dormant in seasons with less light, then this growth happens using the trees stored resources when it would usually put out new growth, and it's fine. It looks ugly as sin, but it won't die. Look up pictures of pollarded birch trees to see how gross they look.
If you pollard a tree in summer, as these have been, then they need to use extra resources to make that new canopy at a time of year when they need to use their resources to not die of thirst and be building up stores so they can go dormant and then grow again next spring.
These trees are already under a lot of stress, as it's the hottest time of the year in LA, and inducing growth in them at this time splits their resources in ways that will kill these trees.
Another point is shade. Funnily enough, trees and plants can have too much sun and heat. They draw water up from the ground and to the rest of the trees, and at a time when there is very little moisture in the ground (LA has dry and wet seasons), these trees are going to get absolutely toasted without the shade that their leaves provide to themselves.
When the sun heats up leaves of a tree, water evaporates from the tree's leaves. This is actually wanted by the tree, because it is what actually pulls water up from the ground. It's called transpiration, you should look it up if you want to learn more, but the purpose of this post, you just need to know that a certain amount of evaporation from leaves is needed for trees to get water to live.
Given that almost all of these tree's leaves and canopy has just been removed before a heatwave, they have the dual problem of absolutely vitally needing shade without having any leaves, and no way of drawing water from the ground in order to cool themselves down. The thing about all that stuff about pollarding and growth at bad times of the year, is that all of the cell processes that actually allow for growth need water to complete. It's part of the basic equation that allows all living things to get energy from their food and do shit like grow and move.
Long story short, those trees definitely will die. Whoever 'pruned' those trees has killed them, and has ruined a whole street of organisms that could very well be older than the people who did the pruning, if they were younger contractors. One of the crimes done here isn't exactly a legal one, but I would say is a crime against nature. From what I can tell, they look like some kind of birch tree, which can live for around 80 years on average, but some can get up to 150 years. That's potentially 150 years of history, of growth, of pollution being cleaned from the atmosphere, of people walking by and sheltering under it. And they've just killed them. The carnage wreaked upon them is too much to recover from, and everyone who will walk down that street for the next 50 years has lost the benefits of those trees.
I said that Mastodon moderation wouldn't scale, it does. The cultural differences will likely continue to maintain a friendlier atmosphere r
"Ad-driven social media platforms are willing to tolerate monumental volumes of abusive users. They’ve discovered the same thing the Mainstream Media did: negative emotions grip people’s attention harder than positive ones. Hate and fear drives engagement, and engagement drives ad impressions.
Mastodon is not an ad-driven platform. There is absolutely zero incentive to let awful people run amok in the name of engagement."
This week I started a peer support certificate training course.
It's 80hrs over 2 weeks. I've barely left the house since 2020, so my anxiety is kicking into high gear-- I've hardly slept for days, dreading yet another migraine this is likely to cause, and I feel horribly awkward. How am I supposed to help model recovery when I'm in the middle of backsliding so badly that even basic shit like clearing off my desk or trying to answer the phone can set me off into destructive meltdowns at the drop of a hat?
I was contemplating just trying out a bit of volunteering very cautiously, but there's a lot of emphasis being placed on this being not just a job but even a potential career, which is downright surreal when I'm hanging on by my fingernails praying I can get through just doing laundry or getting out of bed on time and haven't had a job since 2020.
The actual content of the class is very good, a lot of stuff that seems very intuitive to me and honestly should be common sense everywhere but most definitely isn't. I'm not used to being able to comfortably participate in most any structured program (be it class, workplace, whatever) without a lot of moral objections and aggravation going off in my brain and/or getting spooked looks from the people around me when I talk. Some parts are challenging (I can definitely see that "recovery language" is going to take a ton of practice) but for the most part it feels oddly natural.
I'm nervous about discovering where the lines will be drawn-- I can carefully couch deeply political and subversive ideas in very neutral, subtle, and easily digestible ways, yes, but I am not going to pretend I'm something I'm not, and I will not squelch or silence my fundamental core belief that our whole society is deeply corrupt and needs a profound overhaul.
I want to participate in something useful and real. I want to move forward and get out of this hole and do something with my life. I'm so terribly afraid that I'm not good enough to amount to anything but a liability in the end, burdening instead of helping.
We're from a smaller city and she's only ever been personally, directly acquainted with two trans people (THAT SHE KNOWS OF). Both behaved towards her in pushy, creepy, boundary-trampling ways that made her profoundly uncomfortable. One was a classmate who spent months manipulatively worming their way into her head, trying to guilt trip her into things. She's autistic, painfully shy, and has major difficulties with social situations to begin with. Both of these people trigger the same warning bells in her instincts that go off from trauma caused by abusive men, which confuses the hell out of her. (The way she's described it is, "your Y chromosome is showing").
I've spent more than ten years living in the SF bay area. I've encountered a whole rainbow of variously gender nonconforming friends, bosses, roommates, coworkers-- and I'm agender/nonbinary, myself. Trans rights are human rights, and gender essentialism is destructive patriarchal bullshit, period. This has always just been a no-brainer for me. We're all just people, and in pretty much any demographic some people are gonna be jerks and some aren't, that's life. But my mother has not had positive experiences to balance out her perspective. She's spooked. She's sympathizing with J. K. Rowling and "likes" Blair White (actually willingly listening to a fucking Trumper are you even my mother or a pod person wtf is happening right now????) and I'm just in shock. She thinks cis is a slur. She doesn't want a penis showing up in the womens' locker room (nevermind what all this shit is like for anybody who didn't want a penis showing up ON THEIR BODY in the first damned place). I can't even. She's smarter than this. Surely this is just a misguided phase she'll regret soon. She knows better. Surely she knows better.
This shit is keeping me up at night.
It reminds me of how I felt when I discovered that my grandmother voted against gay marriage some years after we lost my uncle to AIDS. He never came out to the family. I grew up thinking we're a very progressive bunch, so I never understood why he didn't feel safe to come out to us. I couldn't comprehend my grandmother's position whatsoever-- and I was too young to ask. I just sat down and cried, uncomprehending. I still don't get it. And now this.
I'm about an inch from just shouting at her YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME but I know that's not going to help. And it's not like I'm going to trot out my trans friends to prove they can be good well-mannered examples of their friggin kind-- she's the one who needs to behave. I've carefully tried to send her some videos refuting the usual TERF lies but if she doesn't listen I don't know what to do. I just don't get it. I can't wrap my head around it, and it's legit keeping me up at night.
