When Ur Family Asks U Where You’ve Been All Day

shoutout to people who cant/wont turn in their abusers because

they dont have proof of abuse

abusers were upstanding members of society

their abuse was legal

no one believes them

their abusers are old, dead, disabled, ill, or on their deathbed

their abusers are family members

they cant remember details of abuse

they didnt uncover abuse until later in life

they were abused by organizations

they dont know the names of thier abusers

theyve been threatened into staying quiet

they arent mentally stable enough to endure the investigation

and whatever other reason. people dont have to turn in their abusers for their abuse to be legitimate. so many of us cant prove what happened to us and are only left with the disorders that came with the horror we dealt with growing up.

it makes me sad that im seeing so many trauma survivors feel that they have to justify not taking abusers to court. some of us cant, some of us shouldnt, and some of us wont. please respect all survivors regardless of how they approach legal justice over abuse.

Denver

Boulder

Portland

New York

Seattle

Detroit

Berkeley

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Dallas

Chicago

Miami

Expect more of this. We are uniting. We will be your worst nightmare if you take away peoples’ rights. We’re not fucking around.

Who made you this way? And do they still matter?

Don’t let someone who is no longer in your life affect you (via isaacwrites)

Following Trauma

More than 2.6 million servicemen and women have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. Many veterans return home from their service with symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury. These symptoms are also common among civilian trauma survivors.

Now researchers from Harvard Medical School and other institutions will embark on a five-year-long project, the Aurora study, to better understand and treat these disorders.  The research will utilize the efforts of 19 institutions and more than 40 scientists.

Trauma survivors will be enrolled in the study in the immediate aftermath of trauma and followed longitudinally for one year using sophisticated adaptive sampling methods to perform a comprehensive, state-of-the-art assessment of genomic, neuroimaging, physiologic, neurocognitive, psychophysical, behavioral and self-report markers.

In addition to its unparalleled scope, the study differs from previous studies in that it will assess neuropsychiatric effects of trauma broadly rather than focus on only one or a few diseases.

“We want to be patient-centered and not diagnosis-centered,” said Samuel McLean, lead principal investigator of the study and an emergency medical physician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Read more 

Funding: The five-year-long project is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Raise your voice in support of expanding federal funding for life-saving medical research by joining the AAMC’s advocacy community. 

This morning’s Bridges Not Walls in London, UK

As many of you know, I recently purchased an Uruk-Hai scimitar.

Well let me tell you, it was quite the pragmatic purchase. It has endless uses in my morning routine.

Such as making the bed:

Making toast:

Getting things off high shelves:

Making coffee:

Reaching the remote when it’s too far away:

And assisting me when I ran out of toilet paper:

I don’t know how I survived life without it.

Comics by Colleen Butters Perfectly Describe What It Is Like to Deal with Depression