5 Feminist Lessons Learned in 2015

2015 was hard. It was a year of empowering feminist activism, graduating, moving away from that community and starting anew, spiraling downward into the darkest mental health place I’ve been in years, and forgiveness. The hardships in the last few months of 2015 resulted in me staying rather quiet online and in feminist spaces. It’s been about a year since I last used my WordPress blog, and one of the changes I strive to make in 2016 is to write more truth. (Yes, it’s already February. I probably should’ve compiled this list before 2016! But I wanted to reflect on 2015 and here it is).

(trigger warning: I discuss mental health and briefly self-harm in this post)

1) Learn to value relationships with women.

I’ll be honest: the thought of being friends with other women terrified me. I started off 2015 feeling as if I could never be close friends with women, fearing I would be too clingy, too loud, not smart enough, in competition with them, etc. Graduating from Fredonia and moving to Brooklyn brought about two challenges: deciding what types of new people I wanted to fill  my life with in this new city and reaching out and strengthening the relationships I left behind after graduating.

A conscious decision upon moving was to seek out women (mainly feminist women, who is shocked) and learn to love and support each other through everything. That saying, “her success is not your failure,” is one I pushed myself to internalize. I ended 2015, for the first time ever, trusting in the importance and strength of my friendships. Putting in effort and self-reflection brought me closer to women that are brilliant, hilarious, and have helped me grown into the person that I am proud of.

2) Taking care of your mental health will be a continuous, life-long journey. And that’s okay.

In September, I had a mental break, where I had continuous panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and desperately fought the urge to not fall back into my patterns of self-harm. This had been building up all year long and finally broke the surface.

I was diagnosed with Panic Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder later that month; through psychotherapy and psychiatry, I began to recover.

But the phrase “mental illness” does not always sit well with me. Yes, the obsessive, violent thoughts that circulate daily and compulsions that follow make certain parts of my life harder. Then it struck me: I’ve been working on strengthening my mental health since I was 12. For the past ten years, I have been learning to love myself, respect my body by stopping physical harm and emotional distress. This is the biggest accomplishment of my life thus far.

2015 was about forgiving myself for the hate I’ve been carrying around for over a decade. And learning to love myself because of my mental health diagnoses. Having OCD has made me a diligent, hardworking badass that is productive, detail-oriented, and thoughtful. Having a complex mental illness means that daily, I have to be focused and keep myself healthy. It is not easy; it is a daily struggle. And that struggle has taught me to be intimately aware of myself, which is a gift. The latter half of 2015 has largely been spent discovering ways that OCD is a strength in my life, crucial work for myself that will continue in this new year, every single day.

3) Interrogate the ways of thinking that you have been socialized to believe as true.  

For the first few months of 2015, I had trouble fully accepting the concept of someone’s pronouns to be they/them. Of course I would always strive to use everyone’s pronouns as they identified them to me, but privately I was unsure of the concept of using a “plural” pronoun as a singular one.  Looking back on those few months, I am ashamed of how long it took me to confront my cis privilege and interrogate this way of thinking as destructive and harmful. As someone that prided themselves on being intersectional, my reliance on this cissexist way of thinking was lazy and more importantly, dangerous to those around me.

Society perceives mental illness as something to be fixed, a part of you that is wrong, at times seen as a disability that only keeps people from experiencing certain parts of their lives or succeeding, that is a “chemical imbalance”, etc. Reframing my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a complicated, nuanced part of my identity, not a separate entity that is oppressing me and should be corrected, has made me love my mental illness, struggle and all. In the year ahead I plan to help others rethink their mental health in this light.

Not taking care of yourself, whether it’s mental health, physical health and nutrition, spiritual health, hurts those closest to you. This is the hardest lesson I learned this year. I lost a handful of close friends because I was not taking care of myself properly. Poor self care on all levels caused me to lash out, intensely critical of others, and made others uncomfortable critiquing and being honest with me. Not dedicating myself to my well-being, particularly with my mental health, hindered my relationship with my family and loved ones, and ultimately I lost the person I love most in this world. Neglecting my own needs kept me from being the person that I love most, the “real me”, if you will. So 2016 is about continuing taking care of myself every single day.  

4) Live your values, don’t just tweet about them.

Aligning my views with my daily life practices has made my activism and existence more intersectional. I can’t just say I support the #BlackLivesMatter movement and ignore current events. I must stay informed, vocal and supportive of the movement everyday, while also reading Black feminist texts in my spare time to further understand these issues.

Another important change I made in 2015 was becoming a vegetarian. How the hell could I cry at videos of baby animals while eating animals for dinner? To me, that’s hypocritical and detrimental to my wellbeing and strength as an activist. In 2016, my next venture is to learn about where my clothing comes from, what materials it is made with, and who physically creates it. I’m aware of the poor working conditions of the people that work in factories to create my $10 cardigan from H&M. It’s time to do something about it.

5) You are not going to change the world by working yourself into exhaustion. TAKE A DAMN BREAK!  

Okay, let’s admit that 2015 was that year that “TREAT YO SELF” became the anthem of self care. This last lesson I learned is not exactly an original one, but applies deeply to myself as a feminist activist.

Our world is in pretty shitty shape, to say the least. Gendered and racialized violence is an everyday occurrence, slut-shaming and street harassment plague our streets, the list of issues we activists want to work to end feels, well, endless. During the first half of 2015, I lost myself completely to “The Movement,” so much so that when I graduate from Fredonia, I disconnected from virtually every activist outlet for months. Communicating with certain activist cohorts seemed exhausting to me and keeping up with current events made my head spin.

Balance is key to surviving as an activist and holding on to your own identity while producing social justice activism. This year I experienced the loneliness and pain of overworking my activism. Thankfully this caused me to learn the importance of work, enjoying friends and fun, and when to take a much needed step back in order to come back, ready to run the marathon.