You might remember Mugabi Byenkya from the guest post he wrote for Yopp back in 2022. He and and Denny Upkins, our resident interviewer extraordinaire, hatched a plan to add an Interview with Mugabi Byenkya to to Denny’s ongoing series, Uplifting Black Voices.
Category: Voices
A collection of personal stories and anecdotes showing the ways oppression affects us on a day to day basis, as well as our reactions to it.
Look for opportunities to submit your story to this segment in the near future.
Putting the “Chronic” in Chronic Illness: Lessons from 10 Years of Chronic Illness
Now that I am coming up on 10 years of chronic illness and dynamic disability, I wanted to reflect on some of the lessons I’ve learned during that time, and what I wish I’d known about chronic illness from the start.
Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gender, and Sexuality: The Intersection of LGBTQ Identities & DID
In honor of pride month, we decided to cover a topic we’ve wrestled with ever since our diagnosis: The intersection between our dissociative identity disorder, gender, and sexuality. How does it work? What language do we use? We’ll explore it all in this article.
Uplifting Black Voices: A Roundtable with 5 Black Youtube Creators
Continuing Denny Upkins’ new series “Uplifting Black Voices,” this week’s interview features not one, not two, but FIVE black youtube creators who have contributed to the Black LGBTQ entertainment community online.
Photos of My Alters: What It Looks Like When My Dissociative Identities Front
Many of you know by now that in the summer of 2020, I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. But have you ever wondered what it would look like to see photos of my alters?
Life After Abuse: An Open Letter to My Friend on Healing from Abuse
I originally wrote this letter for a dear friend of mine about the process of healing from trauma and life after abuse, in 2018. The blog that published it has sadly gone dark since then. I wanted to make sure that this piece could still be enjoyed and potentially shared with your own close friends if they’ve been through something similar.
Disclosing Disability: Why It’s Hard to Reveal My Disability to Strangers
I originally wrote this piece about disclosing disability in the early days of my grappling with the loss of dance as a result of my disability. Since then, my baseline ability has fluctuated many times but even five years later, this piece still resonates strongly with the complex evaluation process necessary to safely disclose a disability, and the grief that comes when the onset of disability is later in life.
My Sometimes Invisible Disability
In addition to my disability being dynamic, it also straddles the divide between a visible and an invisible disability, to the point that I can hide it if I want to. But moving between visible and invisible means I also have to make a choice between scrutiny and erasure.
Video: 5 Things That Improved in Our Life After Our DID Diagnosis
We’ve been vocal about how grateful we are to be out as a DID system so it should come as no surprise that our life after our DID diagnosis was significantly improved.
Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Divergent or Disordered?
I believe having DID falls under the neurodivergent umbrella, but at the same time it is a mental illness that can cause a great deal of distress. So, is Dissociative Identity Disorder divergent or disordered?