sorry I fell off the face of the earth for a long while. my various disabilities have fucked me up for a while and make me really fatigued, and over the years, language-based things -- reading, writing, talking with mouthparts -- have gotten really difficult. my life mostly revolves around dealing with chronic illness stuff & other disability stuff while in a wonky living situation, & trying to distract myself a lot (music, TV, movies, instagram, etc), & taking naps with my dogs.

I keep planning to finally assemble the new mental health compilation zines I got all the submissions for, Mumbles & Flickers (which is on altered states of consciousness / psychosis / whatever you wanna call it), and Wish I Could Stop (which is on OCD), but I just haven’t had the energy yet. (I also haven’t done anything for either zine...) I’m sorry for the super long delay - I know contributors are still waiting & waiting, since I periodically get emails asking what the statuses of the zines are. I feel like shit about this, tbh. I’ve got the contributions in my email still, I just have to come up with image descriptions etc and edit everything together... but yeah... just thinking about things like this makes me tired... but maybe I can do things bit by bit.

if things can magically get better with my level(s) of fatigue, and/or if I can find more people to help out with the zine, at some point I’d love to do a third issue of No Missing Pieces Zine, since currently I think NMPZ is the zine project I’m proudest of having done.

<3

jordan

Rest In Peace, Mel Baggs <3

I didn’t know Mel Baggs well, just through tumblr posts, and then hir contributing to the first issue of my Autistic compilation zine (started on tumblr in #actuallyautistic), No Missing Pieces Zine. Partly since I love hir poem, and partly because sie wrote a great, fairly extensive contributor bio to go along with it, I thought I would share the poem sie contributed in hopes y’all will love it as much as I do.

Rest in peace, Mel. You are so very missed. Thank you so much for everything. <3 <3 <3

If you reblog this, please leave this post in tact out of respect for Mel and to credit the zine sie was a part of.

(Note - I’ve added periods to break up hir contribution a bit on here & break it away from the rest of the post for accessibility & to have it stand out more. Otherwise, no edits.)

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Contributor Bio: Mel Baggs is 34 years old.  Sie was born in the redwoods of California, grew up in San Jose, lived in the redwoods again as an adult, and moved to Vermont in 2005, where sie currently lives.  Hir biggest hobby is crocheting, and sie always has several projects going on at once. Sie has been involved with the autistic community since sie was almost 18 years old, and has seen a lot of history and changes even over that short period of time.  Sie has also been involved in other aspects of the disability rights movement:  The psychiatric survivor/consumer/ex-patient movement, the mainstream (mostly physical) disability rights movement, and the developmental disability self-advocacy movement.  Sie is not one of those people who is always finding a movement or community and feeling as if sie has come home for the first time.  But if sie had to pick one of these movements, sie would pick the developmental disability self-advocacy movement.  Sie has been in the developmental disability service system hir entire adult life, due to severe problems with daily living skills.  This may make hir more emotionally connected to the experiences of people in general with developmental disabilities, rather than autism in particular.  Sie has a number of disabilities and chronic health issues that make hir more aware of autism as it fits into a broader concept of the landscape of disability, rather than being a unique condition that is different from disability somehow.  Sie also loves cats, and lives with an elderly and amazing cat named Fey.  Hir experiences as an autistic person, particularly hir perceptual differences from the norm, are highly meaningful to hir and sie would not change them even if it meant sie would be more ‘independent’.

Sie has a poetry blog at:   http://ameliabaggs.wordpress.com/ Sie also has a blog at:  http://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/ Hir tumblr is: http://withasmoothroundstone.tumblr.com/

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In 2000, a group of autism parents decided to hold a rally in Washington D.C. to “raise awareness” for an autism cure.  They did not consult with autistic adults anytime during the process.  They did collect as many pictures of autistic children as they could, to show how many of us existed.  And worst of all, they called the rally “Hear Their Silence,” the message being that only parents could talk about autism, autistic people were silent and only fit to be present as silent faces on posters.  The following poem is my response to the title of their rally:

You Can’t Hear My Silence

They told the world to hear our silence Hear the silence of the mute autistic people Who will never have a voice of any kind Presumed, by them, to be all of us Or all of us who matter And they, of course, would speak for us All of us At all

I wish they could hear silence I wish they could listen to silence until they heard it

Silence is The gap between your words Silence is The void between you and me Silence is The place where everything begins Silence is The place where the universe hides Silence is Everything there is, and nothing Silence is Where I’d rather be Silence is Where you’ll find all of me that matters

But you’ll never hear my silence Because you don’t know how to listen To things you can’t hear

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after i finally put together & start printing the two mental health zines i’m doing, would anyone be interested in submitting to, reading, helping to edit, etc another issue of No Missing Pieces Zine (the Autistic compilation zine i do)? and should it have a theme, or be kind of “open” (?) like the two previous issues? just floating ideas out.

i will definitely super need help editing it though cuz chronic pain & other chronic illness kicks my ass & i don’t have energy to read through, decide on, minimally edit as needed (just for accessibility), lay out, etc zines anymore, especially NMPZ which tends to get the most submissions. so if any of you want to be coeditors on potential future issues of NMPZ, that’d be great :) no prior experience with zine-making needed.

No Missing Pieces Zine to autism centers???

so, my unfortunately now former psychiatrist, who specializes in working with autistic people (but she’s good about it.. hates Autism $peaks, ABA, knows about & likes ASAN, etc), is super happy to know about the Autistic compilation zine i put together, No Missing Pieces Zine. 

she said it’d be a really, really important thing for various allistic professionals to read since they don’t get enough info about actual life experiences with being autistic & they need to know this stuff, since autistic people are the only real experts on autism -- that’s so good to hear from an (i guess) allistic person! 

so she said i should make more copies - i’m trying but chronic pain & being fatigued all the time gets in my way of doing stuff i want and need to do - & send them to autism centers. but like.... how do i do that? where do i send copies? who would i send them to? anyone have any ideas?

anyone have any interest in helping me put zines together?

(sorry i’m taking so fucking long putting zines together. i really really appreciate peoples patience!!)

so, i need help with coediting stuff

- no experience with zine-making needed!

- you should be disabled in some way though (bonus points if you’re lgbtqi+ some kinda way but i don’t care all that much i guess?)

co-editing needs:

- possibly help with reading through text contributions to: 1) reading through & figuring out contributions go where in the zine / layout stuff?; 2) writing or editing trigger / content warnings (as needed); 3) writing & double-checking image descriptions

- while the end result of making zines is nice and cool and stuff, the process of making them is A Lot for me due to various disabilities i have making it really difficult

- you’ll get full credit in the zine & on any website i might put the zine on as a co-editor, however you want to be credited (if you want that)- i don’t have money to pay people to help me, nor do submitters get paid: any money i make from the distro (when people buy zines from me) goes right back into running the distro. (frankly i’ve lost money on it.) so if you help me, it should just be cuz you’re into zines or you’re interested or whatever. if you don’t like co-editing, you can stop any time.

if you’re interested or have questions, you can email me: feralismyheart (at) gmail (dot) com , and/or send me an ask on here. (i don’t seem to get notifications of chat messages :\ )

feral is my heart zine distro plans

i’m in the process of gradually changing what zines will be in my distro, which is why there’s currently only No Missing Pieces Zine #1 in my etsy shop (which you can find here - link).

my plan for the distro right now, in terms of paper zines, is:

No Missing Pieces Zine #1 (also available online)

No Missing Pieces Zine #2 (PDF version online, hopefully more completely online soon)

Quiet Riot AKA Shy Kid Sober Zine

Mumbles & Flickers

wish i could stop

Bound to Struggle: Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet (radical left politics + BDSM and kink)

(hopefully zines by my friend RVL-M, but i’m not sure which specifically)

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haven’t printed NMPZ #2 yet. i have only 5 copies of NMPZ #1 available right now in my etsy shop. need to make more copies of Quiet Riot AKA Shy Kid Sober Zine. haven’t started copying Bound to Struggle yet. haven’t put together Mumbles & Flickers, or wish i could stop, yet, but all the contributions are in (except for my own stuff, of course, because lolz at time management).

if you make a zine & want me to consider adding yours to my distro, email me (don’t message me on here because i’m unlikely to see it): feralismyheart(at)gmail(dot)com

please be patient with me with responding to you - i’m chronically ill and have very limited energy

etsy shop: No Missing Pieces Zine #1 restocked

there are 5 paper copies of No Missing Pieces Zine #1 available right now in my etsy shop, which is here (link to shop) 

I've got 5 paper copies of No Missing Pieces Zine #1 available in my distro right now - but only 5 at the moment.

I'll put those NMPZ #1 copies up on my Etsy shop soon, but probably not until after Hurricane Irma has gone since I'm on the East Coast (in Maryland) & I'm not sure how bad the storm will be here.