My Top Trauma/Poly/Queer/Sex Resources of 2021
Jessica del Rosso, Alongside Trauma
www.alongsidetrauma.ca
This year, I decided to share my favourite resources on trauma, queerness, polyamory and sexuality. I wanted to provide folks with a compiled list that was easy to navigate, share and locate. Hopefully, this post provides exactly that! The resources will be divided by category and some may be repeated. Feel free to share this resource with friends, family, lovers and pals. The descriptions are directly from the resources or creators - both to save time and to ensure the resource is described the way it is meant to be.
Trauma
Author: Clementine Morrigan Zines (Most recommended: Love Without Emergency and Fucking Crazy)
My name is Clementine Morrigan and I'm a writer. I'm the writer behind the zine series Fucking Magic, and the zines Love Without Emergency, Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other, Fucking Crazy, and Fucking Girls. I also wrote the books You Can't Own the Fucking Stars and The Size of a Bird. I’ll be releasing three new books this year: Trauma Magic, Sexting, and Fucking Magic. I have been writing and publishing for more than 20 years and have many more projects on the way. I am also a podcaster as one half of the podcast Fucking Cancelled and I'm the creator the popular Trauma Informed Polyamory workshop. I teach other online workshops like Bisexual Girls with Baggage and Disorganized Attachment Is a Fucking Trip. I am an ecosocialist, an anarchist, an abolitionist, an opposer of cancel culture, a trauma educator, a sex educator, a person living with complex ptsd, a sober alcoholic, a polyamorous bisexual dyke, and a proud dog mom to Clover “the dog” Morrigan.
Author: Mark Henick
Mark Henick dedicated his life from an early age to opening minds and creating change. Now he regularly speaks to diverse audiences about mental health, mental illness, suicide, advocacy, recovery, and hope. Mark’s TEDx talk on suicide is among the most watched in the world.
His keynotes, panels, workshops, and media appearances aim to break the stigma that prevents people from speaking openly about their mental health. Mark believes that freedom is found in overcoming the barriers that stigma, disempowerment, and disconnection build. Mark has seen countless times, personally and professionally, that each and every person has the potential to unlock their most true and hopeful self regardless of how dark it may seem.
Author: Johann Hari
Author of New York Times best-selling book 'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.' I gave a ted talk called 'Eveything you think you know about addiction is wrong,' which has had 5 million views. I have written for the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, the Sydney Morning Herald and others. I am writing the authorized biography of Noam Chomsky, and also writing a book about how we need to think about depression, anxiety and attention problems differently.
Author: Evelyn Lau
Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971. She is the author of four volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian best seller and was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Lau’s prose books have been translated into a dozen languages worldwide. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award; Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award.
Author: Richard Wagamese
Richard Wagamese, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) novelist, journalist, mentor (born 4 October 1955 in northwestern ON; died 10 March 2017 in Kamloops, BC). A well-known Indigenous writer in Canada, Wagamese won several awards including the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize (2013) and the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Matt Cohen Award (2015). His works speak about the historical and contemporary socio-economic issues affecting Indigenous communities in Canada. They also bring attention to issues regarding Indigenous identity, culture and truth and reconciliation. A beloved writer, Wagamese’s works have inspired many Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and writers alike.
Author: Gabor Mate
A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development.
Podcast: Stuck not Broken with Justin Sunseri (Also check out their PVT 101 online course!)
I love being a therapist and I love teaching about trauma and mental health.
From East Side San Jose to the Mission District of San Francisco. In Stockton or even the more affluent Palo Alto.
Trauma has been a constant underlying factor with nearly everyone I've worked with since 2008 - in the public schools, county outpatient clinics, group homes, foster care, juvenile halls and online private practice. It's become the core focus of my professional development, especially the Polyvagal Theory.
Youtube channel: Alan Robarge / Attachment Trauma Therapist Youtube Channel
Thank you for checking out my YouTube channel!
I'm Alan Robarge, an Attachment Trauma Focused Psychotherapist and Relationship Educator. I teach and promote a model of Self-Directed Healing, which translates into a model of self-empowerment.
I create educational content with the goal of helping those who are struggling in their adult relationships. In my videos we explore how our childhood history can significantly impact our ability to create and sustain secure attachments as adults and how we can we learn better relating. Together we can learn how to improve our relationships.
Join our community on Instagram, where I post daily content and interact with readers:
@alan_robarge_psychotherapist
Check out the "Improve your Relationships" 8-week program and membership community to explore how we can map out a plan to address emotional, relational and developmental trauma. You are invited to join us. www.alanrobarge.com/community
Book: No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz
Is there just one "you"? We''ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can''t control the inner voices that don''t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz''s research now challenges this "mono-mind" theory. "All of us are born with many sub-minds-or parts," says Dr. Schwartz. "These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us-and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part."
Dr. Schwartz''s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you''ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment-and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you''ll explore:
. The IFS revolution-how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness
. Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model
. The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur-making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies
. Burdens-why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs
. How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts
. The Self-discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony
. Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part''s triggers, and more
IFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, "Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they''re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people-and that will contribute to healing the world."
Book: PolySecure by Jessica Fern
Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern extends attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a theoretical treatise and a practical guide.
Book: The Power of Attachment by Diane Heller
How traumatic events can break our vital connections—and how to restore love, wholeness, and resiliency in your life.
From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us through life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. And in the wake of a traumatic event—such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse—that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next.
In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections— with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others.
The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past.
Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you:
Restore the broken connections caused by trauma
Get embodied and grounded in your body
Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented
Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency
Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature
Book: The Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana
This book offers therapists an integrated approach to adding a polyvagal foundation to their work with clients. With clear explanations of the organizing principles of Polyvagal Theory, this complex theory is translated into clinician and client-friendly language. Using a unique autonomic mapping process along with worksheets designed to effectively track autonomic response patterns, this book presents practical ways to work with clients' experiences of connection. Through exercises that have been specifically created to engage the regulating capacities of the ventral vagal system, therapists are given tools to help clients reshape their autonomic nervous systems.
LGTBQ
Author: Vivek Shraya
Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film. Her album Part-Time Woman was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, and her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel.” She is also the founder of the award-winning publishing imprint VS. Books, which supports emerging BIPOC writers.
Author: Jaye Simpson
Jaye simpson is a Two-Spirit Oji-Cree person of the Buffalo Clan with roots in Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nation who often writes about being queer in the child welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. simpson’s work has been performed at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (2017) in Peterborough, and in Guelph with the Vancouver Slam Poetry 2018 Team. simpson has recently been named the Vancouver Champion for the Women of the World Poetry Slam and their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.
Author: Jen Winston
Jen Winston (aka @JENEROUS) is a writer, creator, and bisexual living in Brooklyn. She is also now an author, as her first book (Greedy, maybe you’ve heard of it) comes out this fall!
Jen runs a newsletter called THE BI MONTHLY, has been AN UNDERWEAR MODEL, and wrote a column for her college paper called THE MEMEING OF LIFE. She lives in Brooklyn.
Author: Amber Dawn
Amber Dawn is a writer and creative facilitator living on unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Her debut novel Sub Rosa (2010) won the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction and the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize. Her memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir (2013) won the Vancouver Book Award. Her poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins (2015) was a finalist for BC Book Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
Her sophomore novel Sodom Road Exit (2018) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the BC Book Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic
She is the editor of three anthologies With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (co-ed. Trish Kelly, 2005), Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire (2009) and Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry (co-ed. Justin Ducharme, 2019).
All of her books are published with Arsenal Pulp Press.
She currently teaches creative writing Douglas College, as well as guest mentors at several drop-in, community-driven spaces in the Downtown Eastside, an area impacted by poverty-related issues and beloved for its tenacity and creativity.
Comic: SFSX by Tina Horn
From notorious kink writer TINA HORN and featuring a diverse group of artists comes SFSX (SAFE SEX), a social thriller about sex, love, and torture. It’s SEX CRIMINALS in Gilead, Hustlers with a SUNSTONE twist.
In a draconian America where sexuality is strictly bureaucratized and policed, a group of queer sex workers keep the magic alive in an underground club called the Dirty Mind. Using their unique talents for bondage and seduction, they resolve to infiltrate the mysterious government Pleasure Center, free their incarcerated friends, and fight the power!
“SFSX shoves its sparkly stiletto heel right in the face of anyone who has ever tried to keep sex workers down. TINA HORN’s work reminds us how important sexual freedom is to the American spirit.” —Stormy Daniels
Comic: Sunstone Vol 1-7 by Stjepan Sejic
Sunstone is an adult (BDSM, Kink and Queer) webcomic series written and illustrated by Stjepan Šejić which was first published on DeviantArt in 2011. Seven volumes of the ongoing series have been collected and published in trade paperback format by Image Comics and Top Cow Productions since 2014.
Newsletter: The Bi-Monthly by Jen Winston
See above
Sex and Kink
Podcast: Why Are People Into That?!
Exploring sex, kink, gender, and love with Tina Horn. Subscribe to ACast+ for Exclusive Bonus Content!
Podcast: Ask a Sub with Lina Dune
Ask a Sub is an advice podcast for the kink-curious to take themselves from dreaming to doing. Our host Lina Dune is bringing wellness kink to the masses, and equipping every would-be kinkster with the tools to become their own BDSM BFF.
Author: Raven Kaldera
Raven Kaldera is a queer FTM transgendered intersexual shaman, as well as a pervert and slave-owner. He is the author of too many books to list here, including Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM And The Ordeal Path and Power Circuits: Polyamory In A Power Dynamic. He and his beautiful and useful slaveboy Joshua have been teaching and presenting workshops regularly for many years to the BDSM, Neo-Pagan, Sex/Spirituality, transgender, and a few other communities. He sees his physical challenges as just another obstacle to overcome in his quest to change the world whenever possible. His slaveboy Joshua refers to himself as "a wholly owned subsidiary of the vast enterprise that is Raven Kaldera." 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Newsletter: Deamonum X on Substack
Dae-mon-um X is a white, cis woman, femme, dyke, and Dominant living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). She came to polyamory through the intersection of anarchism and consent practices and has helped countless people navigate through the process of unlearning monogamy and romance culture. Daemonum X is invested in evangelizing ethical non-monogamous and/or power exchange relationships through an anti-oppression lens.
Kitchener-Waterloo LGTBQ Business
Good hair co
A full service salon and barbershop that is a safe space for everyone! Offering long and short haircuts, colours, beard trims and shaves. Prices based on cut and style - not gender!
Spectrum/ Rainbow Pages
SPECTRUM offers a safe place where LGBTQ2+ individuals can be themselves and find community and supports.SPECTRUM frequently receives requests for information about 2SLGBTQ+-friendly or owned businesses. You can find a free copy online on Spectrums website.
Jane Bond
LGTBQ+ friendly space. Offbeat, retro haunt since 1995 with veggie dishes & craft beers, plus DJ'd music & outdoor seating.
Cafe Pyrus
LGTBQ+ friendly space. Laid-back coffee shop offering organic vegan light bites & thoughtfully sourced espresso drinks.
Dyke Bar Takeover
At DBTKW, we create and support inclusive event spaces for queer cis, trans women, and allies, as well as non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers the experiences of women.
The Town of Elora
A cute local town with tons of queer owned and openly queer friendly businesses.
Polyamory/ Non-Monogamy
Book: Polysecure
See above
Book & Website: More Than Two by Franklin Veaux
More Than Two is the home of Franklin Veaux’s pages about polyamory and ethical non-monogamy. If you’re new to this site, a good place to start is by checking out the Polyamory FAQ. More Than Two is also the name of a book about non-monogamy that Franklin co-wrote. This book is a practical, hands-on toolkit for having happy, successful polyamorous relationships.
Book: Polyamorous: Living and Loving More
More people than ever are exploring the possibility of opening up their relationships — and not only that, they are fighting for their legal rights to love however and whomever they choose. In Polyamorous, reporter Jenny Yuen digs into how polyamory affects underrepresented communities, why these unions are becoming more normalized, and how relationships with multiple partners can be a practical alternative to monogamy and an intriguing expedition through uncharted emotional territory. Pairing off is no longer the default option for many. For some, polyamory is just a part of who they are.
Clementine Morrigan Zines: Fucking Crazy and Love is Not an Emergency
See above
Podcast: Multiamory
Multiamory offers support and advice for modern relationships. Whether you are monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we’re here for you.
If you want to deepen your current relationships, find your ideal romantic partners, or develop a better understanding of yourself, then you’ve come to the right place. Check out our podcast to discover more!
Instagram: @Polyphilia
Poly Philia is a meme page and personal blog about polyamory, non-monogamy, and personal growth in open relationships, and is run by Leanne Yau (she/her).
Apart from creating and curating humorous and educational memes, tips, and resources on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, Leanne created the #PolyamoryTipoftheDay series, narrated several polyamory audiobooks, and provides private support to non-monogamous individuals and couples worldwide. Leanne's work is influenced by her experiences as a Gen Z bisexual, autistic, and Chinese woman, and she uses her viral content to raise awareness about polyamory and educate others in a down-to-earth and entertaining way.
Instagram: @Shrimpteeth
Shrimp Teeth is a queer, kinky, polyam platform that encourages folks to reclaim and explore their sexuality and relationships. Shrimp Teeth aims to provide accurate and accessible information for folks who are curious to learn about ENM (ethical non-monogamy) / CARS (consensually alternative relationship structures), want to understand their sexuality through BDSM philosophies, or learn to write erotica. Open-minded folks only! They’ve got tons of free and affordable resources on their website!