Mental Health & Wellness Resources for Queer Artists
Artwork detail: Clyde Petersen, 2014 Arts Innovator recipient
For this week’s Mental Health and Wellness Monday, we want to share a list of resources and tools for queer artists. Check out all of these resources below!
Community-Based Resources
QTPoC Facebook Group
This facebook group is for for queer and trans people of color.
Peer Support Group
Ingersoll Gender Center
Our trans led peer support group has been meeting every week no matter the weather or holidays for over 40 years. Our peer support groups provide a great place for trans folks, gender nonconforming and questioning folks, friends, family and community allies to come together for information and mutual support. The group meets Wednesday, 7-9pm PST.
TrikeoneNW
Trikone Northwest has been serving the South Asian community in Seattle for over 20 years. We are a vibrant, diverse group of individuals creating a social, supportive, educational, and political space for LGBTQ and differently-oriented South Asians and their family, friends, allies and community. We are a community based organization which is 100% volunteer run. To know more about some highlights of our history please scroll through the timeline.
Seattle Queer Health Facebook Group
This is a group for Seattle community members to post and share about healthcare providers, experiences, important information, and community events. Our physical, mental, and spiritual health affects our ability to function and to be whole humans. This group exists to provide is an explicitly anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ space to grow together.
Support Group
New BoyZ Club
This group is only open to people who are AFAB and who identify as FTM Transgender, Transmasculine, Non-binary, Gender-queer as well as questioning their gender identity.
Support Groups
Seattle Counseling Service
SCS support groups can help by providing a place to discuss your feelings, share information, and talk with peers and other members of our LGBTQ community. Including “Connexions,” a support group from queer and trans people of color.
LGBTQ-Two Spirit Workgroup
Indian Health Services
The LGBTQ-Two Spirit Workgroup offers advice to IHS leadership in order to ensure that LGBTQ-Two Spirit AI/ANs, their families, and the communities where they live receive equal access to health services by providing enhanced resources for LGBTQ-Two Spirit health issues.
Northwest 2-Spirit Society Facebook Group
This group is open to those who identify as Two-Spirit and our valued Allies. Two-Spirit people being those who are Aboriginal/First Nation/Native American/American Indian/Alaskan Native, Metis, Inuit AND Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender.
Tips, Tools, and Stories
11 Self-Care Tips According to Expert Queer Healers
Them
Through interviews with over a dozen expert queer healers — including traditional psychologists, sex therapists, personal trainers, reiki masters and hypnotists — Them compiled a guide for self-care during these scary times.
9 Strategies for Quarantining in a Non-LGBTQ+ Affirming Environment
Them
With help from queer therapists and experts from The Trevor Project, here’s how to endure isolation with those who might not accept your identity.
Rest for Resistance
A catalog of art and writing by queer and trans people of color.
Queer Community Conversations
Gay City
Conversations amongst queer and trans folks discussing concerns affecting their communities in Washington State during COVID-19. Conversations take place first and third Tuesdays, 12:30-1:30pm PST.
Mindfulness Meditation
Frye Art Museum
In this uncertain time, the practice of mindfulness meditation can offer a sense of calm amidst our to-do lists and more fully appreciate the gift of each day. The Frye Art Museum is offering virtual Mindfulness Meditation sessions throughout the summer.
Online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
Palouse Mindfulness
This online MBSR training course is 100% free, created by a fully certified MBSR instructor, and is based on the program founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Therapy and Support
National Queer and Trans Therapists Network
National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN) is a healing justice organization committed to transforming mental health for queer and trans people of color (QTPoC).
Indigo Mental Health
Many individuals who are in the LGBTQI community have worked through the coming out process and are comfortable with their sexual/gender identity for the most part. They may have sought therapy in the past for issues such as depression, anxiety, addictions, past trauma, or relationships and found that the therapist did not understand, or at worse pathologized their sexual identity. Indigo Mental Health is a warm and supportive practice that can help you to recover from many issues while affirming your sexual/gender identity.
Seattle Counseling Center
If the thought of therapy makes you uncomfortable or afraid, you are not alone. Despite increasing acceptance and public awareness, there is still a stigma attached to the idea. Therapy is a way of getting an experience outside perspective to help you gain insight about yourself so you can make better choices. At SCS, all counseling is LGBTQ-affirmative and is conducted in an atmosphere free from homophobia, cisexism, prejudice, fear, and ignorance.
My Trans Help
MyTransHealth is a free online directory that connects trans and gender non-conforming people with qualified, culturally competent healthcare providers. Our location-based search tool offers resources for medical and mental health services.
Fennec Oak Counseling
No one is broken. What does it mean to be you? What are your heart’s secret longings? What are the heavy parts you carry in your body and the hopes that you have yet to speak aloud? Healing is not a linear process. Let us explore the winding path that is you: in the memories of your past, in the experience of the present, and in the possibilities of the future.
Trans Lifeline
Trans Lifeline is a grassroots hotline and microgrants 501(c)(3) non-profit organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis – for the trans community, by the trans community. The hotline number 877-565-8860.
Podcasts
Ripe Podcast w/ Barry Lee
“Ripe” is a podcast hosted by Barry Lee where Queer folks personally share their stories on how they’ve navigated their mental health.
Queer Public Health
Queer Public Health (QPH) podcast is a monthly podcast produced by Tagg Magazine, a media company dedicated to serving “Everything lesbian, queer, and under the rainbow.” QPH is your resource for queer health and wellness in the news.
Queer MEDucation
Please enjoy a series of expert interviews featuring medical providers, mental health professionals, advocates, and community members.
Pride In Our Health
Join Fenway Health as we explore a different LGBTQ health topic each episode. We’ll discuss the latest care options, learn about lifesaving medical breakthroughs, and gather expert advice on how to be a happier, healthier you.
Queer Women of Color
Join Money and Nikeeta, two Black Queer Troublemakers, by listening to the podcast – an insurgent audio syllabus that unites, ignites, and excites the QWOC community. QueerWOC is a space for queer women and folks of color rooted in reimagining healing, organizing, and community.
Workshops
Coping with COVID: Centering Wellness and Self Care for Creatives
Creative Capital
In this online workshop Rhonda Wheatley leads a consideration of how this challenging period is highlighting changes artists might implement after the world settles into whatever new normal is emerging. Wheatley closes the workshop with a relaxing and grounding guided meditation and leave artists with wellness practices they may use on their own after the workshop.
Click here to view the workshop.
The Nap Ministry
The Nap Ministry engages with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. They facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing.
Mental Health and Wellness Mondays is a bi-weekly program from October 2020-December 2020 consisting of artist stories, resource sharing, workshops, and webinars that center self-care and encourage rest and resilience. Our goal is to provide a platform for Washington State artists to share the tools and resources they use to better their mental health and wellness, including how self-care might be incorporated as part of their artistic practice so that we all benefit.
Click here to learn how our staff engages in self-care!
