Here

I’m more interested in actual rainbows than I am in rainbow flags. This is in large part because of the commercialization and pinkwashing of Pride in the last decades. But, this Pride month I felt a bit more tender at the sight of that colorful design flapping in the wind. One of the main streets near my house in Utrecht is lined with scores of them this month. As I cycled through them for the first time, my quiet Pride parade, my eyes watered as I recognized a simple fact within myself that the flag signaled some kind of safety.

Under the current US government, many rights of the trans and larger queer community are being challenged or taken away. In case you don’t know, trans people cannot renew their passports with their correct gender on them. X has been removed as a choice for genderqueer and non-binary people, and only M and F are accepted under Executive Order 14168. There are countless attacks on the dignity of queer people, including the editing/erasure of queer history and culture from public recognition and knowledge (the history of trans and queer people has been erased from US National Park Service websites, including on the Stonewall uprising!). Many LGBTQIA+ people have been leaving or trying to leave the country since 2025, and many of my dear trans and queer friends there are navigating life in more quiet ways in order to stay safe.

While it’s different here in the Netherlands, the fearful and disheartening effects are atmospheric – right alongside the rampant xenophobia, racism, religious ideology, and suppression of dissent so typical of fascist governments.

So, I just want to say: I am proudly queer. In my gender, my sexuality, my relationships, my family design in co-parenting our daughter Joan with four parents instead of two! My art, my spirituality, my thinking, my activism, and my care! Queerness completely enriches my life.

On this last day of Pride month, I want to recommend the LGBTQ+ Advance Care Planning Toolkit, an incredible, comprehensive guide created by Compassion and Choices and SAGE USA. It offers tips on advanced illness, palliative and supportive care, caregiver advice, healthcare resources, hospice services, memorial and burial options, and bereavement support for the LGBTQ+ community. Even though some of the resources are US-specific, it can still serve as an inspiring foundation.

I know it can be so challenging to engage with deathcare when in survival mode or without a clear vision for the future, but as queer people we deserve better care in life, death, and grief all the same, and it starts with thinking and talking about our wishes and plan for healthcare decisions.

Would you want to join a gathering where we walk through this document together? Reply with an emoji. If there’s enough interest from you, I would be glad to facilitate an online group!

Now

Then summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind down to their stalks.

The first recording of my summer care voice notes is up! It’s on more ways of connecting with loved ones and new ways of looking at things.

It begins with these sensory-bubbling lines from Toni Morrison’s Sula, which I read on the solstice (literally – I started reading it in the morning and finished in the afternoon, sitting in the sun while camping with Lotte – phew).

Keep the page open as a tab in your browser, as I’ll share two more voice notes over the next two weeks.

Close

Among advice on aging well, like diverse movement and nutrition, consistent sleep and social connection, there's something on “active hope” I've been sitting with, informed by reading Joanna Macy but also Roger Rosenblatt and Rebecca Solnit, not fully fleshed out, but here it goes:

Over time, you can either curdle into bitterness or crystallize into gratitude. Aging well is learning to love the world, in all of its beauty and complexity, through the cruelty and devastation, even when it may be really hard to do.

Then, with this commitment, living is a practice of conscious interaction with friction and awe. The practice is not something separate from you, just like you’re not separate from the world: you are the practice. There’s granularity and resolution in the quality of this to be explored across your life. Each day you practice yourself into the next.

Try it out: locate the thing that nourishes (that benefits your life or someone else’s) that you only feel like doing half the time. Start there! Lean into the tension, say aloud “I choose to do [the thing] anyway,” then do even a small part of it.

Then, marvel at the miracle that you are :) Seriously – from a scientific standpoint, it’s mind-bogglingly improbable that any of us exist!

Proud,
Staci

PS. Lesbian film collective Pottenkijkers has invited me to introduce an evening of films by Barbara Hammer. If you’d like to join Barbara Hammer – A Body Full of Work at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam on Wednesday, 8 July, 19:00-21:00, let me know and I’ll add you to the guest list. <3