the Positivity Blog

I stumbled across this blog today written by Henrik Edberg and I think it has some pretty great positivity ideas used in different ways... And he uses quotes which I love :)

Check out this post titled Gandhi's Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World.

Different Families and Homophobic Bullying

I recently attended a talk at my local town hall about different families. It was was part of National LGBT history month (here is the UK) and National LGBT fostering and adoption week. I was pretty excited to have such a talk in our area of London which is not very alternative or affluent.

 

All in all I found the talk a bit of a let down but did learn about Stonewall's Different Families campaign. We watched part of film made to educate UK teachers on how to work with children who come from non-traditional families. It is to help teachers combat bullying and homophobia in schools from a young age. It was refreshing to hear teachers speak of how they never assume that a child has a mother and a father at home and that family units come in all shapes and sizes. I also liked that one teacher spoke about using the word "gay" in class, essentially normalizing the term, the fact that same sex couples exist, and that children may come from families with two moms, two dads, or more parents. Of course this is made as a teaching tool and reality probably doesn't look as positive but it does give me faith that schools are moving towards the right direction. It is so important that children and young people who identify as LGBT or have LGBT parents have a safe and supportive environment for learning.

A Positive Attitude and Affirmations (Beginner)

A few months ago a good friend introduced me to the concept of affirmations- and affirmation is anything that you do or say. There are positive and negative affirmations and in order to help yourself achieve your goals and be as happy as possible you need to change the way you speak to yourself. An example would be instead of saying "I'll never learn a new language it's too difficult" you would constantly reinforce the message "I am learning a new language." By saying and thinking positive affirmations you are opening a door within yourself and taking the first step towards your goals. The idea is that by constantly pushing the negative thoughts quickly away and replacing with a positive affirmation you reprogram the way you think and recondition yourself on the whole.

My friend gave me the book "Experience Your Good Now!" by Louise Hay and recently I've been spending time reaching parts and listening to the CD that came along with it. Although I have tried to put affirmations into practice from time to time over the past months, last night I decided to give a true go.

Immigration Equality panel in London

I recently attended a panel on binational couples and LGBT asylum seekers put on by Immigration Equality and Interlaw Diversity Forum here in London. The panel consisted of Andrew Landau from Immigration Equality, Andrew Sullivan who is a well known blogger, columnist, and author who writes on a variety of political issues and is part of binational couple, Helena Wray from Middlesex university and expert on family migration law in the UK, and S. Chelvan who is a barrister who fights for LGBT asylum seekers.

I was interested to see who would attend and possibly meet other couples in similar circumstances. There were quite a few couples, some people on their own and possibly also part of a binational couple, and several lawyers. We didn't do any networking or meet anyone but that is at least partially my fault as I felt pretty sad by the end seeing so many couples effected by this and listening to the speakers.

I really enjoyed listening to Andrew Sullivan and have been reading his blog since the panel. He has an inspiring story of fighting for his rights and ultimately winning. He also taught me about the ban on people who are HIV+ or have AIDS immigrating to the USA which was in effect until 2010. I was shocked and disgusted to find this out. Andrew is an excellent speaker and a great advocate for LGBT rights and is active in social and political issues in general. Watch how Andrew felt about attending the Immigration Equality Panel.

United by Love, Divided by Law

Out4Immigration is a organization dedicated to equal rights for LGBT couples in term of immigration to the United States. On Valentine's day they started a visual campaign via Tumblr for binational couples to post a picture or video to share their story and essentially put a face to this issue. There is not a lot of awareness around this issue so it's terribly important that there is a greater awareness about the inequalities around LGBT immigration rights.

So far there are only a few pictures and videos but I hope that people will add to it as more people find out about the campaign. Please have a look!

United by Love, Divided by Law



And here's our contribution!

LGBT immigration rights

As I wrote about a few months ago in my post titled  Binational, I wanted to look a bit further into the subject. In this post I want to explore what rights LGBT binational couples actually have at the moment and what legislation effects this.

I found a few good websites and organizations dedicated to immigration equality for the LGBT community which provides some good information for ways to try to stay or immigrate to the USA to be with their partner. Unfortunately as same-sex couples are not recognized as of yet so those immigration rights and avenues are the same as any single person wishing to immigrate to the states. Your options are basically to study, come as a tourist (but you would have to be able to prove you have good reasons to go back to your home country and having and American partner doesn't help that much), or to find a job which would sponsor you. The first two options are temporary and provide little assistance in supporting yourself and your family. Finding work in the US and convincing them to sponsor you is another can of worms that is not very easy to navigate. Of course there is also the option to enter into the green card diversity lottery every year.. but millions apply for the 50,000 spots given out annually and it really is like winning a lottery.

Gay Rights in the USA

This video has been going around the social networking sites and when I first saw the link I figured it was a news report related to gay rights in some way. I wasn't expecting such a moving and important video. I literally had tears running down my face by the end. I felt an overwhelming sadness about the hate that so many people have inside them and how that effects so many people in our country. The stories of young boys who have taken their own lives because of bullying and society constantly reinforcing that there is something wrong with them hurt me the most. I have many more emotions and thoughts to share about this but first want you to please take the time to watch this video, I think it's pretty important.

Violence Unsilenced- A survivors' blog

I stumbled across this pretty amazing website through a facebook friend. It is a blog for women who are survivors of violence. The premise of the site is really quite simple. It is a place for people to share their stories of violence and abuse in a safe and supportive way. This site was created to be a safe space for a person to write down their experiences in black and white, sometimes saying it out loud for the very first time. It is a place to get supportive comments from other survivors or just people who care. It can often be difficult to explain the complexities of abuse to friends, family members, or current partners and this platform can give someone the power to share with an audience who doesn't know them personally but can still understand their feelings and emotions. It is also for people to understand that they are not alone.

New Year's Resolutions

People generally try to make new year's resolutions at the dawning of each new year.... those who don't usually are vehemently against them as they see it as a time for people to make goals that they barely try to achieve... or there are the few that forget or just don't care enough to make a change in their lives. Usually I fall into the first category but end up the person that the second category despises,  so on this January 4th I find myself unsure of how to proceed. This year seems to be a big one in London with the Olympics coming to town and all, it also happens to be the year of my ten year high school reunion... lesser milestones would be turning 28 and a 4 year wedding anniversary.  It all feels like a lot of pressure so when my partner asks me what my resolutions are this year I find myself unable to decide. I don't want to just blurt out all of the regular things I want to change about myself but haven't yet been able to succeed but want to come up with something more... something do-able, something that will finally pull me up out of this rut. I do feel like I've made positive changes in the last year (some probably related to last years resolutions, or so I can hope!) including starting to heal some deep down emotional scars that hold me back from getting on with some of the more external goals I have for myself. So in that respect I do feel like I've taken steps to get out of this proverbial rut but I guess it's easier to gauge the more external factors in my life which I haven't been able to conquer yet.

So with some reflection, I've decided that I will have some resolutions for 2012 along with measurable steps to attain these goals. This year my resolutions will not be ones for the new year but instead for the 28th year of my life (or shall I say 29th?) so I have two weeks to fully put my thoughts together and come up with something realistic but continuing in the right direction. Here's to the 28 year old Becky getting past the writing stage and taking a few more steps to make life easier and a bit happier :)

Empower Yourself at Work

Last night I attended a workshop put on by Innerspace called Empower Yourself at Work. I've struggled with my happiness at work and more recently have been struggling with my workload the past month or two. I definitely felt like I could use a pick me up, something to change my mindset around work and maybe a few tips to use to maybe cope a little better.

I was a bit disappointed as the workshop was very similar to the Believe in Yourself lecture I previously attended by Innerspace. But it did remind me about a couple things I should be doing at work to calm my mind and I hope that I can use these things daily to be a bit happier.

The thing that I found especially useful was the Power of Packing Up. It's probably kind of obvious but it means that you don't bring extra thoughts and issues with you throughout the day.. instead you should travel light. This is a tool that also seems to be very useful in going through the journey of life. You choose to deal with your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and issues and then pack up and move on lighter and freer. In the workplace this is about your daily work tasks. Once you finish sending an email or in my case having a keywork session... you take a couple minutes and pack it all up, take a minute to reflect then move on. I find that I very much too often start thinking about what I have to do next while I'm still finishing the task at hand and go on like that throughout the day. Lately I find more and more that I am skipping back and forth between different tasks without completing any right away so my mind is constantly flitting around what I am working on and I'm not being as effective as I used to be.

So this is the new challenge at work. I want to try to be happy in the role that I'm in, the role that I wanted for too long./ I'm afraid that I am living with the idea that the grass is always greener and am quickly forgetting the reasons I do the work in the first place and what I enjoy about it. I need to be calmer within myself in order to move forward and not stay in the rut I've been for too long. I'll let you know how it goes!