Kicked Out Anthology

For the next couple of months we will be featuring a weekly post by different Kicked Out Anthology contributors. Each will be answering five questions about their experiences around being forced to leave their parents homes, involvement with the anthology, and what they hope the LGBT community, and the world will take away from reading this book.

Mx. Mirage

1. What has being kicked out meant for you?
Being kicked out has meant learning when to ask for help and not feel like a burden in doing so. It’s also meant creating a true family, which continues to be an amazing adventure.

2. What role has art & writing played in your life, and how do you see that as part of community building?
Art and writing have been helpful outlets for me to work through issues that arise in my personal journey. I see my experiences as helping to educate and sometimes enlighten folks within my community. It’s also overwhelming to see the support that can come out of such unexpected people and places.

3. What has being part of the Kicked Out anthology meant to you?
Participating in this book has meant a great deal to me. It kind of validates me in a way, I feel like people who read this book will have a more comprehensive and personal aspect of homeless queer youth and former youth. I’m very grateful to be a part of Kicked Out as a whole because it’s about much more than a book. It’s about all of us.

4. What are three things people don’t realize about being kicked out?
It’s not always park benches and bus stops, not everyone who reaches out wants your money, sometimes they just want another human to listen to them, and folks who get kicked out aren’t bad, wrong, or immoral.

5. What is one message about homeless LGBTQ youth you hope people take away from reading Kicked Out?
We need more resources, more of a voice, and a safe, warm place to run to when everyone else shuts their door in our faces.

From time to time Kicked Out contributors will be blogging about their experiences related to being forced to leave home as a result of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The following was written by Nat Roslin

Introspection occurs for me when things completely go wrong and I am forced to realise that I am once again sabotaging my happiness and that of those I love on a subconscious level. I never set out to do it and I never mean for it to happen, but it does. I find something happy and stable and wonderful and there is a part of me that thinks I don’t deserve it. Without it being on a conscious level I purposefully start to destroy everything I hold dear and that is an issue that I need to face. Today I’m being forced to realise that I’ve been on that path of sabotage more recently than I would ordinarily like to admit to myself. Looking inwards, I can see where it stems from and how I now need to step up to the plate, take a deep breath and push through it all if I want that happiness that I’ve always longed for.

Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday (21st Feb). That is the thought running through my head right now. I used to be so angry with her for dying. I felt that if she had lived, if she had been there when I came out, I wouldn’t have been kicked out of my home. She wouldn’t have let it happen. She wouldn’t have dared to let him treat me like that. No matter how he treated her. And yet the mere fact she’s no longer here has had me on more than one occasion questioning if she ‘left’ because of me. Then I remember something, something so easily forgotten when you’re bogged down with a myriad of conflicting emotions, despite all our differences and despite all the fights, one thing I always knew and to this day know unequivocally is that my mother loved me.

I look at the way things turned out and the way I lost a large part of my life and security the day she died and I cry. But most of all I cry for the fact I never got to share one of the biggest parts of my identity with her. It’s a gut wrenching, stomach churning, head spinning reality that to this day and probably for the rest of my life will feel like I’m being stabbed in the heart. I don’t blame her any more for being kicked out. I don’t blame her for leaving me without a real family connection. For the longest period of time I did. For the longest period of time I wanted to scream at her and tell her it was all her fault that her daughter has no connection other than biological with the man that raised her. But I can’t keep blaming a dead woman who didn’t have a choice in leaving behind her eldest child. That rage and blame is now placed at my father’s door. That’s where it should be placed. I’ve tried over the years to reconnect and the reality is he doesn’t want to. That’s not her fault and it isn’t mine.

Eight years on, which is what it almost is now, I’ve learned to accept the fact my mother is not coming back, as much as it hurts. And nearly five years after I was kicked out I can shake the feeling that it was because of her. I may not be as strong as I would like, I may not be the person I want to be and I may have made some huge mistakes along the way which have damaged my relationships with those I hold dearest because I feel like it will all come to an end one day and I can’t grasp the fact I have something so good in my life, but those were my mistakes to make. And now even if I want to lay the blame for them at the way I was screwed up by my past, today I have learned that the truth is that it is up to me to change.

Today is the day I start the journey to becoming a better me. To becoming the person I want to be. Today is the day I decide to take accountability and stop laying the blame elsewhere. Today I stop running and hiding. For so many of us that have been kicked out it feels emotionally safer to run and hide at times. We run and hide from the good and the bad, when things get too tough for us to handle we want to bury our heads in the sand because we can’t face that hurt again. Being disowned by those that we are meant to gain unconditional love from leaves a gaping wound that never truly heals and so we push away those that mean the most to us in a crazy perverse form of self-preservation. I have finally reached the stage where I will not run, even when it means facing the hardest and most difficult truths about myself. There comes a point when that pain, like that of a new tattoo being inked onto virgin flesh stings to the point you want to black out. But if I allow myself to black out I will never be able to move forward and heal the hurts I have created and show that I can rebuild even the most damaged relationship. I will learn to separate the past from the present and the way reality has shaped who I am and who I can become. But I will no longer let it be the be all and end all to the way things happen.

It’s time to say goodbye to my parents. To let my mother rest in peace and to accept that my dad too has been dead for a long time, even if my father still exists. If I can allow myself to mourn my loss, I can truly move forward and face the new day with a shining hope that may very well allow me to give the stability to my loved ones that I so crave myself.

- Nat Roslin

Kicked Out contributor kay ulanday barrett gives a big shout out to Kicked Out in the overview of all the rad things they are doing as part of their Boston tour, including an excerpted reading of “the hayop ka! chronicles: a queer pin@y OUTcasted & in the streets” which appears in Kicked Out

Kicked Out just received a fantastic review on the Trans Parental website! click the above image to check out the full review.

“The real strength of Kicked Out is how, by telling survivors’ stories in their own voices, the stories feel viscerally real. The contributions all feel very soul-baring and Truthful-with-a-capital-T, particularly the incredible photos by Samantha Box. One photo in particular captures two people embracing, one kissing the other’s shoulder, that wordlessly speaks volumes.”

-Trans Parental

For the next couple of months we will be featuring a weekly post by different Kicked Out Anthology contributors. Each will be answering five questions about their experiences around being forced to leave their parents homes, involvement with the anthology, and what they hope the LGBT community, and the world will take away from reading this book.

Nat Roslin

1. What has being kicked out meant for you?

Being kicked out has meant finding my own feet in a world I’m still not sure of.  But it’s also shown me that I have a family that is completely not biological in anyway shape or form.  The meaning of family has altered and changed completely for me since being kicked out and I have learnt that we, as people, are often left to face the unknown by ourselves.  My trust in people in general has dwindled and it takes a lot more for me to let people in.  If your own biological family, the ones who are meant to stand by you no matter what, refuse to do just that, how are you expected to trust others?  I only let people in as far as they show me I can.  And for some that will never be beyond the surface.

2. What role has art & writing played in your life, and how do you see that as part of community building?

I’ve been writing since I was a child, in more recent years I’ve added graphic making to my repertoire, and both have allowed me release and enjoyment, a way of expressing myself.  If someone sees my work (as I have with that of others) and takes something from it, be it a sense of belonging or a deeper understanding, then I feel I’ve done my part in creating a feeling of unity.  Of showing that each person is valuable and worthy of someone else’s attention.

3. What has being part of the Kicked Out anthology meant to you?

I’m not alone.  For the longest time, that’s how I felt.  As if I was the only one it had happened to.  Even though a part of me knew I wasn’t.  And it means I can let others know they aren’t alone either.  We all have different experiences of being kicked out, but we all have that one thing in common.  We were kicked out.  It’s also widened my created family.  I can’t thank a certain member of the Kicked Out family enough, for their words of kindness, wisdom, and support as I continue to battle the demons that come with being kicked out.

4. What are three things people don’t realize about being kicked out?

1) It isn’t their fault they were kicked out – for the longest time I blamed myself for being kicked out, I thought there was something wrong with me and I couldn’t understand how my once loving father had turned on me.  So it had to be my fault, there was something wrong with me.

2) It is common – there are more and more LGBTQ youth being kicked out for being who they are, each and every day and a lot of them don’t have the resources at their disposal to find somewhere safe.

3) Just because someone has been kicked out and in effect is homeless doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent – I hate seeing the way anyone who is homeless is treated by society as a whole.  Stop and have a conversation with someone who is homeless and you’ll realise that they are just like the rest of society only for one reason or another don’t have a roof over their heads.

5. What is one message about homeless LGBTQ youth you hope people take away from reading Kicked Out?

That we’re not diseased or unworthy of help and that everyone deserves the chance to succeed and become productive members of society.

On February 12, 2008 Lawrence King, a queer eight grader from Ventura, California was shot in the head and killed, in his classroom by a fellow student.

Two years later I still vividly remember reading about his murder just days before the call for submissions to Kicked Out closed. I read everything I could find about Lawrence, trying to make sense of how queerphobia could be so powerful that it would drive another child to carry a gun to school, and shoot a classmate. I’m still trying to make sense of that. Beyond the senseless violence of Lawrence’s death, the aspect of his life that has stayed with me was something that media outlets, as well as community organizers and activists seemed to overlook. At the time of his death, Lawrence was living in a foster home for abused and neglected children.

Lawrence who in death has become a poster child and rallying point for issues of school safety for LGBTQ youth, must in my opinion also be connected to the thousands of other LGBTQ youth on the streets and in foster homes across the country and around the world who have been forced to leave their parents homes because of abuse and neglect. I talk about Lawrence’s death in the introduction to Kicked Out, repeating many of the same words I spoke only weeks after his murder at the day of silence rally in his memory here in NYC: “We must never let community leaders forget the work that needs to be done for those who are still living.”

I’m sitting here staring out the window at the major snowstorm that’s been blanketing the east coast today, and I’m thinking a lot about the person I was and how far I’ve come in the last eight years.

Eight years ago tomorrow (Feburary 11th) I was kicked out for the final time. I’d left my mothers home six months earlier and had been living with my dog trainer/coach/best friend, and then she found out that I was queer and my world collapsed. February 11th  is the day that the rural dog show girl I’d been died, but February 11th is also the day the queer activist I would become was born. February 11th is a day both of mourning for what was lost, but also of celebration of survival and the life and family that I’ve built in the aftermath.  Last year on the seventh anniversary I marked the day by debuting a new reading/performance called Stories of Cell(ve)s Replaced. This year the day feels very much connected to the release of Kicked Out.

I always say the hardest thing for me about being kicked out wasn’t about loosing people, but about loosing dogs. In fact, my piece in Kicked Out  called “Shifting My Pack” is a whole lot about the loss of “my boys” as I call(ed) them because of who I am and who I love, and it’s about reaching a place where I have forgiven myself for leaving them

“did you know that a pack will fight to the death to protect one of its own? They will forgo escape routes to stay behind. They do not leave, no matter the pain. The ultimate trust. They will never give up until their bodies fail. Perhaps I was human after all. I’d saved myself, but failed my pack….”

The picture on the left was taken about two months before I left my mothers house at an outdoor dog agility trial, I’m holding my younger dog Flash, and got extremely damaged at some point over my years of moving.  The picture on the right was taken about two weeks after I was kicked out that final time and was one of the times I was able to go and visit with my older dog Snickers.

I never could have imagined that eight years later I’d be sitting in Brooklyn, that I’d have a family and home of my own, and that my life would be so full and blessed with an extended kicked out family of others who have survived these same experiences. Eight years ago I was unable to imagine that there was a huge queer community out there waiting for me. I’ve been incredibly blessed. Statistically speaking I shouldn’t be where I am today. I got lucky. There was a whole community of activists, artists, and just regular queer people (who I consider activists even if they wouldn’t self identify that way) who cared for me, listened to me cry in the middle of the night, who showed me how to live an out and proud queer life. I owe them my life.

I’ve been working on trying to come up with the words for what I wanted to say in this blog since I was at 35,000 feet somewhere above the mid-atlantic region (thankfully missing the snow storm) on my way home to NYC from the 2010 Creating Change conference in Dallas Texas.

I’m struggling to find the words because the conference was such an incredible experience for me, I had the pleasure of meeting and connecting with many incredible folks, and having the opportunity to nationally release Kicked Out as part of that conference was itself an incredible honor. I’m so grateful to the continued support of The Task Force, without whom last night’s event wouldn’t have been possible. I’m also so thankful for everyone at Creating Change who came out to the release event, everyone who bought books, to supporters of the anthology around the world who although not able to attend in person, whose presence and support resonated in the room, and a special thank you to UK based Kicked Out contributor Nat Roslin who participated in the release via digital recording.

I think there was part of me who thought the release would be like any other reading, and that I would feel good when it was over, but that most likely I would go back to my room, eat some dinner, and all in all be the same person. At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I have to say that for me the world is very much a different place after this event. Kicked Out is my baby, but it’s more than that it represents years of hard work, of blood, and tears, of friendships, and the formation of kin not just for me but for each of the books contributors. This book has been a full time job for me since it went into production, and to see it here, to watch people carry away copies into the world really made it hit home that we made it!

A special thanks to Task Force fellow Jack Harrison who made everything run smoothly, and Lisa Tusay my agent and ½ of the wonderful PhinLi Bookings who was my helper for the evening.

***As an aside, I just want to mention that I’m so thrilled about the number of conversations I heard happening at Creating Change about the epidemic of LGBTQ youth homelessness. It was reassuring to see this issue being prioritized over the push for marriage by activists and organizers from all walks of life, and a variety of backgrounds.

Hi everyone, I’m all packed and in just a few hours will be flying to Dallas Texas for the National Release of Kicked Out which will be part of the 22nd Annual Creating Change Conference produced by The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, whose groundbreaking report on LGBTQ youth homelessness is excerpted inside the Kicked Out anthology!

If you’re at Creating Change the Kicked Out National Release reading will be Friday night at 6:30pm (not sure of the room number yet).  Because I’m superstitious (and airlines charge so much money for heavy bags- and books are not light) I’ve got my carryon packed full of some of the first copies of Kicked Out!

I’ve only attended Creating Change one time before this, when I was a youth less than a year after being kicked out the final time, to be returning to such a monumental conference to debut a book like this that puts the voices and experiences of homeless LGBTQ youth to the forefront is such an honor.
If you aren’t at Creating Change I’m going to be twittering live from the conference on my twitter @ sassafraslowrey