https://www.facebook.com/marginalizedandalienated/ (please share this link with anyone. once you read the post you should understand why)
The photo on the left represents an Ode. The photo on the right represents an Elegy. Click on each image to get a more detailed definition of each.
I have recently created a Facebook page for those whose voices have been swept under the rug, stepped on, shoved into a junk drawer, or in any other way ignored and devalued. The following is a more specific list of my purpose and hopes for the new page.
1: People need a place that validates their unique existence. All my life I have never had a place where I felt safe to express my feelings, ideas, imaginations. I always felt out of place, kind of homeless in a way – although I did have a loving home with loving sisters and parents. And yet, I still felt like I couldn’t say or think what I was really thinking. So I hope with this page, people can feel that they are heard and valued.
2: I want to know how you feel (you meaning anyone who comments or visits this page for any reason). And I want you to be honest. Are you happy or sad or angry or suicidal or anxious? There is no such this as a “good” or “bad” emotion, only emotions that we like to feel and those we don’t.
3: I want to know your story. In what way do you feel “displaced”? For me, as a trans woman, I feel displaced because I don’t fit in the standard gender model and find it hard to relate to a lot of people – people who likewise have a hard time relating to me. I often feel like an alien who’s been left to fend for herself on an alien planet with alien customs and alien social norms. I want to know your story. Tell me about you.
4: I chose “Odes and Elegies for the Displaced” specifically because I am a poet, and I believe so much of our lives need to be praised (an Ode) more often. Our displacement, our alienation makes it easy for us to feel that there is nothing praiseworthy about us and that is not true. I want to encourage those of you who visit this page to find something about yourself or someone else to praise, to love, to not toss on the trash heap of society’s judgement. We are beautiful people. But that doesn’t mean we can mourn (an Elegy) those things that we have lost – friends to suicide, family who has deserted us, an old sense of self that has dissolved in our attempts to live a genuine life. It is just as important to be allowed to mourn our losses as it is to celebrate our beauties.
So if you find yourself perusing this page, feel free, feel encouraged to add a bit of yourself. Your name if you like, but mostly a bit of yourself that most people might think of as “wrong” or maybe just “odd”. Something most people don’t know what to do with.
This is your space. Our space. This is where the alienated come to find fellowship with other aliens, others who have been marginalized and not allowed a voice, or denied their existence for whatever reason. This is a space to be with our own kind, and to appreciate and be enlightened by new lives and new thoughts, experiences, troubles and joys.
On this page you are valid. You will be heard. And you will be valued for who you are, whatever and whoever you are.
storks in corsets 