I was invited to imagine a world without heteronormativity for the podcast. You can also hear amazing interviews with people imagining worlds without injustice, ableism, single-use plastics, private transport, and many more to come. This is the trailer for the whole series:

The Parallel Effect

You can listen to my episode on The Parallel Effect Substack on the following links, as well as reading a summary there, and watching a video about the wonderful creation artist Audax Mrozik Gawler made in response: A kit to help young humans find their nodes of belonging and steward world-making between species, the KINNECT.

Substack link

Apple podcast link

Full transcript link

Below are the notes I wrote in preparation for my interview with Daz Chandler on the show. Read on for a little more written detail if you’re interested…

Just before we take a deep dive into the world you visited, how it looks and how it functions, would you mind elaborating a little on the concept of “benign variation”? How does it relate to the idea of normativity?

Benign variation is a concept from Gayle Rubin’s classic paper, Thinking Sex. It’s the idea that – instead of there being good and bad sexual identities, desires and practices – humans naturally have a whole range of sexualities (including asexualities) which are all equally valid & valuable, so long as they’re only ever acted on ethically and consensually.

Dominant cultural normativities create hierarchies between supposed normal and less normal sexualities, as well as genders, relationship styles, appearances, bodyminds, and all kinds of other things. Actually, the ways our bodies work, combined with the world we’re born into, and what happens over the course of our lives combine to form a vast array of different ways of experiencing and understanding things, including sex.

Benign variation is aligned with approaches like open normativities or pluriverses. In such approaches we recognise that people and communities will all have their stories, understandings and ways of doing things. But these are never imposed on others, and other stories and ways of doing things are held as equally valid and valuable. We might connect this to the ways in which ecological diversity is essential for ecosystems.

Sahana Chattopadhyay writes that pluriversal approaches regard many diverse, interconnected worlds, or ways of being, as coexisting, rather than a single, unified reality. Pluriversal approaches emphasize the value of multiple perspectives and experiences.

Alexis Shotwell defines open normativities as collectively crafted ways of being that shape our experiences and understandings, and are oriented toward widespread flourishing.

In terms of parallel worlds and alternative timelines, we know that many of the worlds we’ve visited so far have been almost identical to this one, until something happens that sets it on a different course. In this parallel world you’ve just arrived back from, were there any historical or cultural events that inspired this shift away from heteronormativity, or has it always been that way?

The world we visited was very much like ours until the point where people recognised – much earlier than we have – the links between personal and social disconnection and ecological crisis. They realised that if we didn’t address disconnection we would lose everything

This disconnection included any sense that some people, experiences, or ways of being were inherently more normal, valid or valuable than others. People realised that there is benign variation at all levels of experience. They woke up to the violence involved in disconnecting into better/worse, normal/abnormal, good/bad, etc.

In order for people to really get this – and to want to do something different – it was necessary to make it both global and personal. People had to see that we’d all lose everything if we carried on this way and they had to realise that normativities hurt them personally. 

This latter point involved understanding that normativities hurt both those who are excluded by them and those who are caught up in them. For example, normativities around sex hurt those who are sexually marginalised, they are a huge part of why so much non-consensual sex happens, and they are why people feel so unfulfilled sexually and have so much shame around sex. Normativities around gender hurt gender divergent people, and they hurt men and women who are trying to fit norms of masculinity and femininity. Normativities around how bodyminds should work exclude disabled and neurodivergent people, and they hurt those who conform to norms about how bodyminds should function, for example in education and in the workplace.

In the world I visited, people recognised that easing our suffering, others’ suffering, and the suffering of the planet were utterly interconnected.

What challenges has this world faced in implementing the benign variation model? Was there any significant resistance or unexpected consequences?

Two major challenges were around:

• Bringing new people up with this model, in families and education systems, and 
• Enabling those who had been brought up with the old model to shift to the new model

It was particularly challenging for everyone to face and forgive the personal and collective harms that had been done to them in the old model, and the harm that they had done or been complicit in themselves. 

Everyone was given a period of at least five years – over the course of a twenty-five year transition process – to really focus on making these shifts internally, with deep support from the people and systems around them, and flexibility to do this work in whatever way fitted best for them. Support included space to engage in solitary practices, mentorship from those who had already been through such periods, peer-support with others who were focusing on this work, and regular meetings in groups and communities engaged in similar practices.

Practically this period was enabled by things like: universal basic income, recognising all work as valid and not requiring unnecessary work, community living, and people downsizing to a much smaller sense of what counts as ‘enough’.

There’s so much to ask but I suppose my first question relates to your initial impression of the place. How did you know that you had travelled somewhere different? What immediate clues did this alternative realm provide?

I was immediately struck by the way that, in this world, people were encouraged to find the kinds of relationships, intimacies, life projects and so on that were nourishing to them and enabled them to flourish. They weren’t expected to fit others’ expectations, or cultural assumptions about how best to live, work and relate.

This meant that people were much more fulfilled, and more supportive of others being equally fulfilled. They weren’t trying to make themselves be a certain way in order to fit in, or to be what would be convenient or comfortable for somebody else. Nor were they putting pressure on others in that kind of way.

People seemed much less masked, more open and curious, and more okay with having periods of not knowing, of trying things out

I want to talk now about social structures and family dynamics…In a world without heteronormativity, how have family structures evolved? Are there new forms of kinship or caregiving arrangements?

All different relationship and family structures are seen as valid in this world. Care and domestic labour are valued as highly as other kinds of work, with everybody being given enough time to be with the close people in their lives. It’s expected that most children will have several adults involved in bringing them up, and all adults will be supported in how to parent well.

Also inner parenting and inner partnering is valued as highly as the outer kinds. Everyone is supported to get solitude for, and support around, their inner work. This means they learn how to be intimate and loving with themselves, honest and kind about their capacities and limitations, and able to ask for – and access – the support they need.

Everyone is seen as both needing of care and capable of offering care. They are supported to discover – and to communicate – what they need, and what they can offer. Again there’s a shared understanding that there’ll inevitably be benign variation in people’s needs and offerings.

How does this model affect parenting? What changes in how children are raised and educated about relationships and identity?

Children are raised that whatever shape their gender, sexuality, or self ends up taking is just fine, and it’s also fine when it shifts and changes over time. If physical or psychological support is needed for young people to feel comfortable and congruent in their bodyminds, that’s supported.

With heteronormativity gone, there’s a huge shift in how adults are with young people’s feelings. Instead of trying to programme boys not to be fearful, and girls not to be angry, for example, young people are encouraged to experience all their feelings. They are helped to learn how to be with themselves through tough feelings, instead of blaming out, shaming in, avoiding their feelings, or withdrawing from anything that risks bringing up pain.

Similarly all bodyminds and their capacities and limitations are valued, rather than some people being seen as better, more attractive, or more intelligent than others. 

What replaces traditional markers of adulthood, like marriage, in a society not built on normative ideals?

There are both celebratory and grieving rituals around key transition points. These recognise that different transitions will be meaningful to different people, and at different points in their lives. 

For example, key transitions might be major relationship formations, deepenings, changes or endings, with equal value placed on friend, family, erotic/romantic, colleague, and other kinds of relationships. Other key transitions might relate to major bodymind or life path decisions, struggles, openings or changes.

In contrast to our world where so many individuals struggle with normative ideas of desire and identity, it must be so liberating for folks – particularly children and teenagers – to be supported to grow into their authentic selves. How are young people guided in discovering and expressing their desires in a non-normative context?

This world is informed by Audre Lorde’s expansive concept of the erotic and a similarly expansive concept of intimacy.

This means that children and young people are encouraged to explore what ‘lights them up’ or ‘makes them feel most alive’ and to orient towards this in all areas of life. They don’t restrict desire to sex, or intimacy to romance. For example, this might include tuning into what gives them: a good feeling in their body, a sense of mental immersion/excitement, an experience of flow or being in the zone creatively, or a feeling of expansiveness, playfulness and curiosity, and/or safety, trust and comfort.

This has a huge impact on the world of work. All contributions that need to happen in this world do happen because there is benign variation in what people love doing, and because people are fully valued for what they contribute, including cleaning, serving, caring, and manual labour. It’s also totally okay to change direction in work through a lifetime, and just to try something for a while.

This also has a huge impact on the world of relationships. People go towards the relationship forms, and the people and other beings, that are a good fit with them and feel mutually nourishing. There is equal value placed on fleeting connections, long term ones, and everything in between. And there is a recognition of impermanence and loss in relationships without seeing this as a problem, or something to blame on others, or ourselves.

How does this world approach sex and relationship education? What does the curriculum emphasise to support the “benign variation” model?

A big shift is that relationship education is given at least as much time and energy as skills and knowledge education. It’s a cornerstone of the curriculum. 

It is recognised that people need teaching and practices about how to relate well with themselves, others and the world. Also, embodied and emotional learning is valued at least as highly as intellectual learning and learning practical skills.

It is also recognised that people have different ways of learning and different callings. Curriculums give a lot of time to play, and to helping people find the ways of learning and the kinds of work/play that are the best fit for them (e.g. learning through visual, audio, sensing, relating, etc.)

With benign variation there is no grading whatsoever! There’s just lots of support for people to find what ways of contributing are the best fit for their capacities and enthusiasms.

How does this world define and enforce the principles of consent and ethics?

This world moves away from capitalist-colonialist ways of relating with ourselves, others and the world. This is a deep shift because it means people are endeavouring never to speak or act from a place of trying to get something from someone, or to make them feel or behave a particular way.

There’s a valuing of all kinds of relationships. For example, there’s no hierarchy of biological over chosen relationships, romantic over friendship, or human over non human.

Non-consensual and unethical behaviours are understood to be rooted in personal and/or collective trauma. People are deeply supported to address this, both in themselves and in the systems they’re embedded in.

What role does language play in this society, particularly in relation to pronouns, labels, or identity terms?

With benign variation it’s possible to be more playful with language, rather than there being a sense that people have to use a limited number of words and agree on their meanings. There’s a culture of respecting the pronouns, names, labels and so on that feel the best fit for the person or community, and also of being open to this changing over time. There’s an open curiosity that asks ‘What does that mean for you (if you want to share)?’ rather than assuming. 

There’s also a valuing of non verbal forms of communication at least as highly as verbal ones: helping people to find the ways of expressing themselves that are the best fit for them.

How do art, media, and literature reflect this model of benign variation? Are there distinct storytelling styles or themes that emerge?

There’s a much more diverse range of creativity that is valued, and no hierarchies around high/low art, or what counts as ‘proper’ art. 

There has been quite a move away from linear storytelling which suggests people should be on paths towards certain kinds of ‘success’ or ‘happiness’ or ‘recovery’. Stories are often more cyclical and reflect the fact that there are inevitably times in our lives of more/less clarity, more ease and more challenge, endings and beginnings

There’s been a big move away from celebrity, towards recognising everyone’s value, and the value of small gestures, having/being enough, and easing suffering in simple ways

In a society free from heteronormativity, how is fashion affected? Do styles become more diverse, or is there a shift in how people use clothing to express themselves?

There are definitely more diverse styles and more diverse orientations to fashion. There’s acceptance and celebration of those who use clothing to express their energy or creativity, and those for whom it’s purely functional, and everything in between.

There is similar diversity in things like food and physical activity and creative pursuits: a recognition that it’s very meaningful and important to some, with support and community around that, but an acceptance that it’s fine for it to not be important as well.

How does the workplace accommodate or reflect this diversity in desires and relationships? Are there policies that support alternative family or relational structures?

Absolutely, for example there is a lot of support for people to take breaks from other forms of work to focus on outer/inner parenting or caring for themselves/others. There are some whose work is focused on these things.

People are always asked about who the close people and other beings in their lives are, rather than assuming any kind of relationship.

In housing, people are supported to find ways of living that are a good fit for them, with likeminded people. Support systems are embedded in these homes for when relational challenges inevitably come up. Such systems are viewed as vital as utilities like power and water.

How has this shift influenced global movements, such as feminism or LGBTQAI rights? Are these movements still distinct, or have they merged into broader frameworks?

With everyone recognising benign variation there are fewer movements around rights for particular marginalised groups. There are more movements towards everyone recognising and feeling their interconnectedness, and for addressing any remaining areas in the world where some are treated less well than others in any way.

Such movements are always led by those with lived experience, and the emphasis is on finding out what support they need around any challenges they still face and implementing that support.

When it comes to addressing any harms that still occur between people, and/or between people and other beings or the natural world, the emphasis is on hearing all of the stories and working together to heal trauma and to transform systems so that harm doesn’t continue.

In your view, what lessons can our current world learn from this other realm?

Everything! I want to live there! My only reservations are…

• We can’t ever really know for sure what would help. We need to embrace uncertainty and invite change, rather than creating new normativities to force on everyone in a further attempt to dominate and control. Even the kind of vision I’ve outlined here could lead to great suffering if it was made solid and static and grasped and imposed.
• Imagining such worlds can set up a gap between where we are and where we want to be. It feels really important to be with reality as it is, in order to be as wise and compassionate as possible with how things actually are. Otherwise there’s a risk that we end up constantly seeking for it to be how it was in some imagined past, or how we wish it could be in some imagined future (or parallel world). Can we recognise the deep pain and suffering that is present here without setting ourselves in opposition to this reality?

What would you say to someone in our reality, who is struggling to reconcile their sense of “normalcy” with this vision of diversity?

Start where you are. Whatever area you want to focus on (e.g. gender, sexuality, relationships, neurodiversity…), begin with deep self-reflection on the norms that you grew up with and those that are around in your culture at the moment. Explore how these have hurt you and disconnected you from yourself, others and the world. Then, instead of opposition, you can get alongside others who’re striving for justice and diversity in this area, and all areas.

The final chapter of the new edition of my book Rewriting the Rules, explores how we might take the first tender and tentative steps towards this kind of work, individually and collectively.

The post The Parallel Effect: A World Beyond Heteronormativity appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Life paths are diverse and unpredictable, as writer and illustrator MJ Barker observes: “Many, if not most, people fall off the normative escalator at some point in their lives.” Rigid social norms damage everyone: those who force themselves to fit them, and those who are marginalised by them. QUEERCIRCLE’s Queer Creative Health zine series explores tender, queer potentials for relating with ourselves, others, and the world in more expansive ways. Referencing artist Kit Green – creator of the multi-genre project ‘The Home’, about residential elder care – this zine asks what the ongoing process of ageing might open up and close down, for all of us.

The Coming of Age exhibition – on till November 2026 – explores age and aging across time and space, bringing objects from the Wellcome Collection into dialogue with modern day art and creative research projects.

Frances Williams from QUEERCIRCLE, Kit Green who is one of the QUEERCIRCLE collaborators, and myself were fortunate to be given a tour of the exhibition by its collections curator, Ruth Horry, last week. I then spent a good couple of hours going round again slowly, allowing myself to feel what came up internally in response to the various objects and artworks.

Centring Bradford

I was thrilled to see my hometown of Bradford play such a pivotal role in the exhibition. Ian Beesley‘s City of Research banner hangs near the beginning, in the Living Longer section, highlighting numerous Bradford public health projects including Born in Bradford. This is followed, in the Acting Your Age? section, by photographs and interview quotes from some of the young people who are part of Carolyn Mendelsohn‘s Age of Wonder project, linked to the Born in Bradford research. Finally, in the section on Connection and Care, there is information about the Hamari Yaadain: When We Talk Will You Listen?, and The Right To A Grand Day Out initiatives. These support dementia care (including for people with English as a second language), aging, and community connectivity, following Bradford’s year as City of Culture, 2025.

Life’s Courses and Queer Creative Health

My own zine was included in the Life’s Courses section of the exhibition, which interrogates the ways in which people have tried to map life into stages, suggesting predictable journeys with successful outcomes. The section begins with 19th century prints depicting life as a set of steps you need to climb up during life (and then down, as you decline in your later years). That’s followed by a 1980s version of the board game The Game of Life, which I remember well from my youth! In this version of the game you are represented by a pink or blue peg in a car, driving around to find your opposite peg, followed by a number of child pegs. To win the game you need to climb the career and property ladders, be productive, and accumulate as much wealth – and as many prestige possessions – as possible.

Queer Creative Health Zine: Queer as Non-Normative

I was completely unaware of the popularity of those 19th century prints when I made the Queer Creative Health zine, which depicts the ways in which most – if not all – of us are ‘queered by life’: falling off the escalator of what makes a successful self when we’re unable and/or unwilling to follow any of these steps. The point is that these normative models – as depicted in the prints and The Game of Life – harm all of us: those who are marginalised by them, and those who keep attempting to fit the rigid stages of a ‘successful’ life, work, relationship, and family.

I found it deeply affirming to have this page of the zine welcomed by Wellcome, as I find myself moving further and further from what’s culturally celebrated as a normal/successful life, as well as supporting others who are stepping off that normative stage model in various ways.

Queer Creative Health Zine: Queer Aging

The second pages of the zine which the exhibition included draws on Kit Green‘s work to ask questions about how trans people challenge normative ideas of aging, and how we might imagine ourselves as queer elders. As Kit says: ‘aging is the greatest transitioning process’. It was great to see these themes taken up, later in the exhibition, by artist Flo Brooks (who explores the experience of a second trans puberty) and poet Harry Josephine Giles (whose zine, Lines, explores how the pressures of aging for women are intensified for a trans woman),

My zine is followed by some beautiful videos about diverse experiences of aging in an indigenous Canadian context: Aging Vitalities, co-created by Nadine Changfoot. In this section there is also the written manuscript of Jenny Joseph‘s famous poem which starts ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple’, and a fab collage drawing from Magic Me‘s project. In this project, young and old people critiqued the messages about age in standard birthday cards and created the own instead.

Finally, in the Life’s Courses section of the exhibition, there are examples of artist Makoto Toya‘s artworks, which he revisits and reworks across the decades of his life. This one resonated for me as I’ve just finished revising my book, Rewriting The Rules, for a third edition, mostly by adding new reflective sections to each chapter, and to the book as a whole.

I love the idea that we might continue to revisit and rework our creativity as we – and the world around us – changes. This challenges any sense that we should perform some kind of impossible timeless perfection through our work, and acknowledges the inevitable and vital role of mistakes and misteps, wrinkles and wrong-ings, struggles and setbacks. This was highlighted later in The Coming of Age exhibition through projects reflecting artists’ experiences of menopause, falls, and dementia, and through the wonderful Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, which employs people with dementia as floor staff. What could it be to embrace the inevitability of ‘getting it wrong’ this thoroughly?

Zines

Finally, I thought it was wonderful that Wellcome included two of the zines from their zine collection in The Coming of Age, following their Zines Forever exhibition – which centred disability zines – last year. Check out Wellcome’s zine collection if you want to read their collected zines, or find out more about zines and zining.

I’m just starting work on a third zine in the Queer Creative Health series, with QUEERCIRCLE. The first zine is the one that was included in the Wellcome exhibition. It explored what queerness, creativity, and health are, and how they can come together. The second zine focused on ‘researching ourselves‘ at the levels of embodiment (our inner experience), entanglement (our relationships), and embeddedness (our community/culture/ecosystem). The third zine will draw on the current QUEERCIRCLE season on countermapping to consider how we might go about ‘mapping ourselves’ at all these levels of experience.

One thing I hope to explore in this zine is mapping our lifecourses, drawing on some of the questions raised in The Coming of Age. Frances and I wondered about inviting readers to make their own (queer) version of The Game of Life!

Check it out

If you’re London-based, or travelling through London in the comings months, do check out The Coming of Age exhibition if you feel to. If you can’t make it in person, you can  see images of some of the exhibits on the Wellcome website, and access all the exhibition text here. You can read an interview about aging with exhibition curator Shamita Sharmacharja here. The State of Aging infographics, included in the exhibition, highlight how experiences of getting older in the UK are highly varied and reflect wider social inequality. You can find these at the Centre for Aging Better.

You might also like to check out the current season at QUEERCIRCLE: Desire Lines and Counter Mapping Queer Creative Health. If you can’t make it in person, you can read the excellent new QUEERCIRCLE publication Fragments of a Queer Radical Mapping Praxis, co-developed by researcher and theatre practitioner River Újhadbor.

The third Queer Creative Health zine should be available in Autumn 2026. It will aim to make the queer mapping practices highlighted in the QUEERCIRCLE report – and season – available to a wider audiences.

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Daniel uses ‘spacious‘ as an acronym for the following words, each of which is a good one to linger on for a while in relation to how we’ll approach specific plans and potentials, as well as – perhaps – the coming year/s in general: Self-consent, Plurality, Alignment, Changeable, Outer World, Inner World, Underworld, and Slow.

Check out his post for more detail of the kinds of questions you might ask yourself to feel into whether you’ve given enough attention to each of these vital aspects. We made an image for the spacious acronym to illustrate what each word means…

This seems a good time to mention a couple of other people who are now writing on substack: our writing partner, Alex Iantaffi, who we published How to Understand Your Relationships with last year. Also  Mel Cassidy whose book Radical Relating we are huge fans of. Alex reflects on the turning of the year here.

There’s still time to sign up to Daniels’ Coming Home course about nervous system regulation for therapists and other practitioners, and Alex and Sophia’s course about mapping y/our relationships – details here.

Finally, if you’re not already aware of it, the Year Compass is another great free resource for reflecting on the past year and the year to come.

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It feels appropriate that I have an addition to our Plural Tarot project, from last year, to share with you at this time. Back then we ended the Plural Tarot zines with the final card in the major arcana – The World – which showed me, Fox, heading out into the world to re-engage after our seven years of crisis and collapse, and our five years of deep retreat. The other plural selves in our system were very much in the background of that card, as that’s how I experienced them at the time. I wondered whether it would just be me, with Ara’s support, going forward, given that we hadn’t been able to connect with the others vividly – in the way we used to – for a whole year.

Turns out that – thankfully – this wasn’t the case. We head into 2026 feeling deeply connected as all seven of us (having had several years of just five, and one year of just two). I’m particularly spending a lot of time with our ‘critic’ (Morgan) and fearful one (Jonathan) helping them to know what essentional members of the team they are. It still seems to be me, Fox, who needs to engage with the outer world, but my ‘council of four’ are close by, informing all that I do, and I feel James and Ara holding us all. Here’s the new card which is the best depiction I can manage of how it feels inside Team MJ at the moment…

I’ve updated our Plural Tarot Companion, and Plural Tarot, zines on this website to include the new World card. All of this bodes well to finally writing the book we’ve been hoping to write in 2026: a book sharing the learnings from our plural path, expanding on the zines we’ve already written and exploring how this kind of work/play relates to mental health, relationships with others, social justice, and spirituality.

However, creating this new card also reminds us of how things can – and do – change and change again. Perhaps we’ll need to make further ‘World’ cards in future to represent new selves configurations. Being open to what unfolds – rather than resisting it – is certainly one of our biggest learnings. And, relatedly, this may not be the year for that book. We have a strong sense that we’ll need to be in a certain place, ourselves, before writing it, even if that won’t ever be any kind of end point. There’s a draw to various fiction projects too, as well as to writing about writing, and we’ll hopefully be making a third Queer Creative Health zine with QueerCircle as well.

In more certain news – for those who want to read our writings! – there will be new editions of two of our old books out in 2026. Routledge asked me to do a second edition of The Psychology of Sex, as they are relaunching their Psychology of Everything series. Managing that project back in Autumn gave me the confidence to revisit Rewriting the Rules (the book this website is named for): also for Routledge. That felt like a much greater challenge as the book is so personally meaningful to us, being the first self-help style book that we (or rather Max) wrote, and a book that sets out one of our most pivotal philosophies (that it’s important to rewrite our rules, the other ones being that ‘life isn’t binary‘ and that we’re all ‘incorrigibly plural‘ – the title of our next book!)

So watch this space for updates on those two new editions. The second edition of The Psychology of Sex includes a whole new long chapter about un/conscious sex and trauma, as well as updates about sex and tech, and queer/intersectional sexualities. The third edition of Rewriting the Rules includes a foreword addressing recent and current crises, new afterwords where I reflect on each chapter from where we’ve got to now, and a new afterword to the whole book about the importance of Rewriting our Rules (plural) at the level of ourselves, our relationships, our culture, and our ecosystems.

The Psychology of Sex is already available for pre-order, and I’ll update here as soon as Rewriting the Rules is available too. A few chapters in edited collections on love studies, neuroqueerness, and madzines should also come out this year…

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Read on to find out more about their work, and their current – and upcoming – online courses on mapping your relationships (for everybody) and emotional/nervous system regulation (for practioners).

Love Uncommon Collective

A bunch of great folk are now collaborating with Sophia Graham from Love Uncommon on various projects including:

• Our co-author of books like How to Understand Your Relationships, Alex Iantiffi
• Mel Cassidy, author of the highly recommended new relationship book Radical Relating
• Jaï Bristow, who we’ve been interviewed by many times, and who runs the excellent Power, Privilege and Prejudice online course
• Some of the folk who also work with the excellent Art of Consent

In particular, there are two online courses currently available, and coming up, on Love Uncommon that readers of Rewriting the Rules might be interested in:

Mapping Your Relationship Ecosystem

Available this week at a 50% discount with the code Holiday50

Sophia and Alex present a wonderful course – for everybody – on how to relate with greater awareness, intentionality, gentleness, and clarity about relational values.

The core concept is creating a visual map of all the significant connections in your life—your inner circle, your community, your relationship with creativity, and even your companion animals and environment. It’s an exercise in taking an honest, holistic look at your world (and there’s an interview with us about mapping inner relationships included)

• You can find out more about the course here.
• And sign up here.

Coming Home for Practitioners

The fabulous Daniel Morrison is putting on an online course – over eight weeks in the new year – specifically aimed at therapists, coaches and similar practitioners. It’s all about emotional regulation and mapping, navigating and shaping your autonomic nervous system. Here’s what he says about the course.

You’ll be led through structures to map your own system and learn to recognise states of protection and connection.

We’ll adventure together through your inner landscape, find the ways to navigate and the paths that lead you home.

In this course specially adapted for therapists and coaches, you’ll learn how to bring this important work to clients through deepening your understanding of your own system.

• You can find out more about the course here.
• You can sign up here (GBP), here (Euro) or here (USD).

A version of this course should be available more widely in the future – watch this space.

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Our article brings together several of the research projects carried out at QUEERCIRCLE about the kinds of creative health practices they offer there. We explore what a more intimate and expansive understanding of research might look like, than the one most of us are familiar with. We suggest it could be valuable for all of us to engage in research into ourselves (embodied), our relationships (entangled), and our communities and wider cultures (embedded).

We invite a TenderQueer approach to research and practice, recognising just how painful, vulnerable, and loving it is to stay with the trouble in ourselves, our relationships, and our world through such hard, hard times.

• You can read our Polyphony article here.
• You can read the rest of the QUEERCIRCLE takeover articles here.
• If you’re interested, you can also check out our QUEERCIRCLE zines about Queer Creative Health, and Researching Ourselves. There’s a review of these zines on The Polyphony here.

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Sophia Graham from Love Uncommon – who has so many great resources on self-consent among other things – and our beloved co-author Alex Iantaffi have put together an amazing programme of handouts, videos, recorded exercises and more. The course helps you to:

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It takes the form of an interview between the self who created it – Fox – and another self – Ara. If you haven’t read one of our plural blog-posts before and aren’t sure who these people are, feel free to check out our other Plural Selves zines, and our free books about Plurality. But hopefully you don’t need to get that part in order to find the content here interesting.

Location: Fox’s favourite cafe.

Food: Lemon and almond cake, with black americano.

TLDR: Fox has made a new zine about plurality and they have all the feels about it. You can find that zine, and a companion zine with more information, here.

Ara: Well here we are.

Fox: So many different ‘here’s since last time we did one of these.

Ara: Geographically different, plurally different, and perhaps more here-and-now than we’ve ever been. Have we ever shared a conversation between us before?

Fox: I don’t think so. I always did these interviews with James in the past: About my monster feelings zine three years ago, and my triangles and circles zine a year and a half ago. In the plural conversation blog posts we did back around 2020 I think we both talked to other selves but never to each other.

Ara: And you and I probably talked the least overall too. There’s a strange sense that the most subsidiary characters are running the show these days. Which is reflected in your new zine of course.

Fox: About that…

Ara: Yes, about that. D’you want to start by saying what it is?

Plural Tarot Zine

Fox: Sure, oh so many things to say!

Ara: Maybe start with the basics.

Fox: Ok, so this zine is an almost purely image based zine, and it is made up of a set of drawings based on the major arcana of a tarot card deck. It tells the story/ies of our plural journey through those cards.

Ara: What made you decide to draw tarot cards?

Fox: It’s a funny one. I think we’ve had the idea to do a creative project based around the tarot since we were a teenager and we first came across tarot. We were always drawn to magical, mystical things: ghost stories, folklore, fairy tales. And we also always wanted to draw pictures, and write stories, from our imagination. At one point we created a whole notebook with the headings of the major arcana characters, thinking we’d come up with stories relating to each one. 

Ara: Ah so this project represents a kind of return to both themes and processes that we disowned and disallowed over the years.

Fox: Right! I guess we never completely let go of the idea that we might draw pictures and write stories, but we found kind-of ‘acceptable’ ways of doing those things in the worlds we inhabited, like using creative methods in academic research, or publishing graphic guides illustrated by someone else, or using supernatural themes to explore aspects of human struggles. 

Ara: We’ve continued to gradually allow ourselves to return closer and closer to those early passions – topics we’re fascinated by and creative practices we love – as we’ve returned closer and closer to you, our littlest one.

Fox: I hadn’t seen that. So this zine is big for me, being purely based on a kind of mystical storytelling, and entirely using pictures.

Ara: I also love that sense of a slow, slow journey to finally complete this project, over the course of our whole life. We waited till we finally knew the shape it needed to take, and then it just flowed.

Fox: Watch this space for our book of fairy tales, and ghost stories, which we’ve also imagined for nearly as long.

Why Tarot?

Ara: Back to the tarot. Can you say why it particularly appeals to you?

Fox: Well it’s interesting because we don’t generally practice tarot in the conventional sense. We have occasionally done tarot spreads – where you shuffle the deck and see which cards come out – in order to explore a particular question or issue. But generally I don’t tend to do that. I find it’s more aligned, for me, to choose a particular card – or cards – deliberately to have on our altar as a reflection of something we’re going through, or a quality we want to cultivate for whatever we’re facing. A bit like we do with Pema’s compassion cards.

Ara: There’s something about the range of cards that there’s always one that seems to match where we’re at, or what we’re working on.

Fox: Right. And I guess the Major Arcana cards particularly represent archetypes: particular kinds of characters that recur again and again in stories in many different cultures. And we have the sense that the selves – and parts of selves – that we’ve met in ourselves are both unique to us (our life, our culture) and resonant with the selves – and parts of selves – that we’ve met in others, and hear about other people grappling with in themselves. 

Ara: Mm, so these cards are a particularly good mechanism for representing one particular journey, and for depicting a journey that others may find something familiar in.

Fox: I think/hope so. And as always it’s so fine if this doesn’t resonate with others. People have different ways of taking in information: visual images certainly don’t work for all bodyminds. And people will have different feelings about tarot: they might struggle with anything ‘woo’, have bad experiences with them, or prefer other systems that are more aligned with their faith or spirituality, for example.

Ara: Interesting that you chose tarot when our primary spirituality is Buddhist/non-dual.

Fox: Yes. I did have that in mind during this project actually. When we wrote our book about Mindful Therapy we did an illustration of the Buddhist ox herding picture (included in the Plural Tarot Companion Zine). I feel like it has a similar vibe to tarot. It depicts someone setting out on a journey, the challenges they face along the way, the ways the path isn’t perhaps what they expected at all, and then this kind of return to the beginning. That’s something I like about both the ox herding pictures and the tarot, that they are circular rather than linear.

Ara: The ox herding pictures end with the character returning to the marketplace with helping hands, and the major arcana with The World. There’s a sense that these journeys fetch us right back where we started, but perhaps – hopefully – a little more able to be in our worlds, our relationships, our projects in helpful ways.

Fox: Right, there’s a common image of a spiritual path taking people up the mountain, away from everyone else, to a place of transcendence. But teachers like Pema and Adyashanti say it’s much more about going down into the depths and the mess and the pain where everyone else is. Learning how to be with all that in ourselves, and in others and in the world.

Ara: It reminds me of those blog posts we wrote about Stephen King’s It: Reading it as an invitation down into the storm drains, to address our personal and collective trauma. That’s what you’re depicting in these cards.

Fox: Right. We really did it, these last five-to-seven years. So another way of understanding this zine is as, kindof postcards from the end of the world: both literally in terms of what the world is facing, and metaphorically in that when you go down into your personal hells and underworlds it feels like the end of the world. That’s the feeling you’re confronting, and you really don’t know if you will be able to survive it.

Ara: A way of depicting what we’ve been through, and being alongside others who are going through such times, perhaps offering a kind of solidarity, even hope.

Fox: Right, and not like hope as in a linear narrative, like ‘follow this path, or set of steps, to get to a better place’. It’s more queer/neuroqueer/mad than that, challenging narratives of healing, recovery, or happily-ever-after. But it does show that things are impermanent, that there is movement, through these experiences, especially if you can meet them, and be with them, rather than resisting them (and that is a big if, a lot of the time it’s more being with the fact you can’t help resisting them!) Am I saying too much?

Ara: Just the right amount of saying. 

Fox: It’s like it’s this huge project that is all of these things to us, and about everyone and everything (all at once). And it’s also just a way of saying ‘this is what we were up to the last few years’, and ‘we’ve moved (literally and metaphorically)’. Heh moved and returned. Full circle.

Ara: Of course we have. We’ve recently marked a kind of ending, or transition, from our five years of deep retreat, by moving back to Yorkshire, where we’re from originally.

Fox: Which the last card in the deck represents, but it’s also a return to the first card, and it kindof holds all the other cards, and selves, in the one card, and in you-and-me.

Ara: Maybe we can dig into some of the specific cards in a bit. For now I guess we’re saying that, for us, this zine is a way of honouring our journey, and all of our selves, as well as communicating something to others which they might find useful or resonant themselves.

Fox: Thankyou. Yes. I can get tangled in the words.

Ara: Words can be tangley. I love that you communicate so well through pictures and stories.

Fox: They’re good for the feelings.

Inspirations and ideas

Ara: Can you say a bit about your inspirations for this zine, how you came up with the idea?

Fox: Mm, yes. Like I said, something had been lurking since we were young. But we hadn’t actually worked/played with tarot much until a few years back when we got the Wild Unknown deck. I think it was around the time we came out as non-binary because we were drawn by a deck that was all animals and plants rather than humans. Not completely without gender-ing, but definitely more open when it came to gender. Since then we’ve seen a few other decks that represent more gender – and other – diversity, or which don’t have humans in them, but the Wild Unknown remains our favourite. I guess these kinds of decks got me thinking though, whether – rather than depicting differently gendered people – a deck could depict the many-gendered sides of the same person.

Ara: We are indeed a many-gendered thing.

Fox: Heh. Now you are sounding like James!

Ara: *smiles*

Fox: So playing/working with the Wild Unknown got me thinking in these directions, especially when I discovered Carrie Mallon’s writings about them which really clicked with me. But the thing that made me realise I could do this was receiving Lea Cooper’s Mad Tarot zine. Lea uses the Major Arcana to explore/honour a mad journey through a period of their life. That helped me realise that (1) I could just do the Major Arcana rather than creating an entire tarot deck, (2) I could do it as a zine rather than creating a deck of cards, and (3) I could use it to honour this intense period of our neuro/queer/mad/plural journey.

Ara: Lea’s writings about zines, madness, trauma, and disability were also helpful, including questioning linear narratives.

Fox: Definitely. Then another click moment was thinking about sevens. We are seven selves. Well we are other numbers but seven the most. I realised that each suit of the tarot has fourteen cards – so two sevens. Also there are four suits which map onto the four elements, and our four initial selves, the two who were most living our lives, and the two who were most unconscious/underneath/traumatis-ed/ing. I wondered if the Major Arcana also had sevens, and then I realised that there are 21 cards – if you take off The World which is a kind of encompassing everyone/everything card. So three sevens. So I could use the first seven cards to introduce each of us, the second seven to depict our journeys, and the final seven to depict the ways we’ve transformed during the process. 

In some ways that is a linear story – or stories – beginning, middle, end, but it also challenged and complicated that, the way some of the later cards appear in the background of earlier cards, and the way things that happened in one ‘third’ overlapped things that happened in the other thirds. Or we kindof knew where things were going, even when we struggled like hell to believe it. In many ways each of the faces of each self that we depict were always already there, as well as evolving over time. Phew. Many words.

Ara: You’re doing great love.

Fox: It was fun gradually playing with which cards would go with each of us.

Ara: That gets into our process. Do you fancy talking about that next?

Fox: Yes please. Always my favourite. Makes me feel like a proper artist.

Ara: You are. So proper *smiles*

Our creative process

Fox: Ok, so for a while it was very much an idea I was playing with. Like we’re still playing with our fairy tale project. That’s another one that tells our seven stories through familiar narratives and archetypes. We’ve written two of them but we’re still playing with what the other five stories will be. With projects we tend to get immersed at the point that enough of it clarifies.

Ara: And that happened with Plural Tarot?

Fox: Right. It happened once I had enough of the cards mapped onto each of us, at least in the first and second third of the deck, plus quite a clear visual of how some of the cards would look.

Ara: And did you draw them in a linear way?

Fox: Heh you know the answer to that (yes it did feel right to do them in order somehow, except the two that are deliberately out of order). And I do include you on the cover as a co-creator because it wasn’t just me drawing them.

Ara: It feels like it was mostly you, but I would step in occasionally when you were struggling, either to help you step away, or to take over on a tricky bit of inking.

Fox: Urgh the tricky bits!

Ara: We can come back to those. I’m wondering which cards you got clear images for first?

Fox: *grin* well Robin’s cards all came first. I remember having such a clear image of The Devil while we were out walking one day. It was always going to look like that. And Robin as The Fool was obvious, because his leaping in (to us, to the world, and to specific situations) was the beginning of our whole journey. And Robin and Morgan were always going to be The Lovers, of course.

Ara: Of course. That’s such a good card.

Fox: Thank-you. I think I actually got started properly partly because I had some sense of the whole first seven cards, and partly because it felt like such a good way of honouring everything and everyone in the run up to our big move.

Ara: It felt like we wanted a project for that time that would be personal (not something for somebody else), and that wouldn’t be returning to an old project, or starting something too big and new.

Fox: That’s it. This was a good fit. And I generally find drawing projects quite gentle to incorporate into our days when things are intense. Even when we’ve got a lot going on internally, there’s usually a time when I can draw for an hour or two, or ink a previous drawing. Inking can be quite soothing if I’m struggling, and easier if I’m not in such a creative place.

Ara: Can you say a bit more about your process with each card?

Fox: Right. Well generally I don’t start till I have a pretty good mental image of it. If I reached a card which I hadn’t quite figured out yet, I would look at the classic Rider Waite version of the card, and the Wild Unknown one, and read Carrie’s words, and online stuff, about the meaning of the card. Even if I did already have a sense of the card, those often helped clarify it. A bit like Easter Eggs I enjoyed adding in elements that were a nod to the Wild Unknown or some other deck, as well as to previous projects we’ve done.

Once I had it pretty clear I’d generally sketch it out rough. That helped to plan where everything needed to go on the page. Then I’d look up online any features that I wasn’t confident about how to draw. I’m so grateful to all the artists who put up easy to draw ‘how to’ images. Then I’d pencil draw the card. Often I’d only need to do it once, but some cards took several goes before I got it right in pencil.

Ara: What about feelings?

Fox: Right! Sometimes when a card wasn’t coming right, I realised I wasn’t in touch enough with the feelings I was trying to convey. Interestingly sometimes that was the key when something wasn’t coming right. Like it was hard to draw Robin and Morgan on the bed in The Sun, and I tried over and over looking for online images of people sitting in that position. But what finally sorted it was feeling in my body the kind of loving holding that I was trying to get across: the kind we remember them doing. So sometimes being able to see what something actually looks like helped, but often it was more about fully feeling it.

Ara: And then?

Fox: Once they were pencil drawn, we went over the lines with pen, and rubbed out the pencil. After that there was sometimes a bit of tweaking needed before we scanned them. Like we needed everyone to look roughly the same from card to card, so we had to go back and redo your Empress because we realised from Death that you needed to be wearing a hooded robe. 

Ara: Tippex comes in handy.

Fox: It does, and in The Devil card we really struggled to get the top half and the bottom half both right on the same page, so we ended up cutting it in half and gluing it on: a lot less pressure. I found it very affirming at the Steven Appleby exhibition to see how some of her original comics have tippex and glued on bits. I know we probably could put our images on a drawing computer program and alter them there, but for me part of the joy of making comics and zines is doing it all by hand.

Relationship with Previous Zines and Comics

Ara: You mentioned the Easter eggs to your previous work. Can you say a bit more about how Plural Tarot relates to our other plural zines, and other zines?

Fox: Absolutely. It’s a bit different from our other plural zines (Plural Selves 1, Plural Selves 2, and Triangles and Circles of Selves) because it’s all pictures, and there’s no element of it being a work/play book with suggested activities for the reader. But it does kind of go with Plural Selves 2 because it introduces the same selves that we introduced there, except with more of a sense of their journeys over time. The zine it’s most similar to is Welcome Monster Feelings because that is all images, and it has the similarity that the images come from really tuning into the feelings and putting them on the page. The difference is that Monster Feelings was depicting emotions, whereas this zine is more explicitly depicting each self (in the emotional states that we’re familiar with them being in).

Ara: What about the chalkboard comic?

Fox: In a way it is full circle back to chalkboard, because we made that comic seven years ago when we first realised that Jonathan was stuck in this horrific place internally: the chalkboard room. That comic imagined how the rest of us might help him get out of that room. Whereas this Plural Tarot zine depicts how we did get him out: how he got out, and how the rest of us helped by doing our journeys. So the first image of Jonathan in Plural Tarot – The Hierophant – is him in the chalkboard room. I had a lot of fun with that card because, if you look carefully, you’ll see that all the boards represent diagrams that we’ve made – at some point along the way – to try to understand or explain our plural system.

Ara: So meta.

Fox: I know right!

How readers might engage with the zine

Ara: I know that this zine doesn’t explicitly include any guidance or activities for readers of how they might engage in a similar process: any kind of self-help component like a lot of our work has. But do you think there’s an implicit invitation there?

Fox: Hmm, well I know that the few people we’ve shown it to already have definitely resonated with the cards. I guess it’s that thing that sometimes when creators share the most personal things those end up being the ones that the most people connect with and see themselves in.

Ara: I was also thinking, does it invite people into imagining their own selves, or parts, or journeys, through the tarot?

Fox: Oh it might well do. I mean that’s what Lea’s tarot zine did for us. I’d love it if it sparked other people to make their own tarot zines, or images, however made sense to them.

Ara: Have you got any suggestions how readers could engage with the zine, if they wanted to go further than just appreciating it as artwork?

Fox: Mm, well certainly it could be interesting to take some time with each image to reflect on it. What feelings come up when they look at it? Does it remind them of any part of themselves, or experiences in their own life, or things happening in the world? Or they might consider which cards they feel most drawn to (and/or repelled by) and do some journaling around that. Or people might want to take one card and imagine what their version of the card would look like, perhaps drawing it, or collaging it (like Lea’s cards), or going to another medium if they prefer. The Welcome Your Monster Feelings zine and Queer Creative Health 1 and 2 zines give a lot of ideas on how you can adapt visual art to a different medium. You could make plasticine or lego models, for example, or write short poems, haiku, vignettes, or stories, or make a playlist or a recorded soundscape, or dance.

Ara: And people could make it a long project of working through the whole major arcana, or even the whole tarot deck, or just pick a couple of relevant cards and play with those.

Fox: Right. And even if you do a whole section of seven, or all twenty two, you may find certain cards dominate and find their way into the others, like The Tower did in ours. Really it was all about how we went through The Tower time.

Ara: Maybe if we did it again it at a different time in our life, another card would dominate more.

Fox: So interesting. And of course how people make their cards will depend on their experience of self/ves. Some plural systems might have different selves for each card. Some people with a more singular experience might depict the same self through all the cards. Carrie Mallon’s own tarot deck is fascinating for showing the cards from the perspective of the characters, rather than depicting the characters themselves. There’s so many different ways to do it.

Ara: Might you cover some of this in the companion zine? The way you did for Monster Feelings?

Fox: Yes. Maybe a page or two of suggestions for how people might work/play with our zine, and/or create their own. But the companion zine I have in mind is more of a set of brief paragraphs about what the cards meant to us. And those read a bit more like poetry or memoir: a kind of in-words version of the cards themselves. I’d like to share that for people who want a bit more about the meanings of each card: What they mean to us and what they mean in general. And I’m thinking of including a couple of poems Robin and Morgan wrote, and a song playlist to go with the cards: a few bits and pieces like that.

Ara: I love that: like patchwork, or one of those old kids’ annuals.

Fox: Exactly. When I imagine a whole book on this theme it makes sense to write it more like an annual, with lots of different sections.

Where next?

Ara: Is that the direction y/our creativity is headed in d’you think?

Fox: I think so. It’s definitely still a work in progress. I know that I love these more creative projects: drawing and telling stories. For a while I wondered if we needed to let go of the other kinds of creativity we’ve done in the past: the more academic writing, maybe even the self-help style writing. Now I’m not so sure. I still love the idea of mashing up these things together. And I have a sense of wanting to honour Max’s past projects by curating them into new editions where needed, as well as wanting to write some more formal pieces for therapists who are working in the areas we write about, for example. Lately I thought it’s a bit like Dunbar’s number for relationships.

Ara: Go on.

Fox: Well we value all the relationships in our life – all the people – and we recognise that we can’t spend as much time and energy connecting with everyone. So we have that concentric circles idea where we place our closest, kin-type, relationships in the nearest ring, then the next layer of close friends, and so on. My sense is similar with creativity. The inner circle projects are the ones that feel closest, most aligned, the kind of deep love projects, like this one, but we also value – and spend some time and energy, with the next layer out ones, and the ones that just come around once in a while for some attention, and so on.

Ara: With people and projects, connections and creativity, endeavouring to bring the same quality of presence, valuing, at/tending, to all of them, and recognising some will be woven more closely into our lives, some less so.

Fox: Yes!

Ara: Do you have a sense which projects might be next for you/us, after this?

Fox: Mm we keep making a start on a whole book about plurality – Incorrigibly Plural – and we have some good stuff but it still doesn’t feel like we are quite in the place we need to be to write that whole book. Maybe getting closer, but still not there. I think I’d like to at/tend to some of the fiction projects we have done, finishing those off, before returning to try that book again.

Ara: We do have two chapters on plurality coming out in Nick Walker’s collections – about plurality – next year, plus all these zines and collected blog posts.

Fox: Yeah. I am itching to weave it all together in one book, and share some of our more recent thinking and practices. I think we’ll know when it’s time for that.

Ara: So meanwhile some fiction?

Fox: Yeah and maybe curating one or two of our/Max’s older books that are coming around for new editions. We’ll feel into it.

Ara: We will. Okay last question, the one we’ve been waiting for. Not that we’re into hierarchies, but do you have a favourite card?

Favourite cards!

Fox: I guess it depends how you define ‘favourite’.

Ara: How would you define it?

Fox: Mm, a kind of ‘rightness’. There were cards where we finished and it was just like ‘that’s it’. Like it captured the self, and the feeling, all of it spot on. All the cards managed it well enough, but with some we were left questioning certain elements, wondering whether we might return to them and rework sometime.

Ara: It was helpful to remember that many tarot deck illustrators do rework the cards over the years. Which ones were like that for you?

Fox: The Wheel of Fortune I wasn’t completely sure of. I was trying to depict all the different sides of Robin and Morgan, and those faces don’t quite capture some of the anguish, or the feral-ness of the two who were ‘down the bottom’ of those subsystems. Plus I wasn’t sure if Max and Jonathan ought to be on the wheel as well, at the top and bottom like in the shame compass (as avoid and withdraw). But after reflecting I realised I like the simplicity of the eight faces. It could get over complicated if we did it those other ways. 

I also wasn’t sure about your Empress card. We had to tippex you out to put you in the right outfit, with the right hair, after we did your Death card. I’m not sure if it’d be better to glue on a new bit of paper and draw you in fainter lines because you’re far away. But I kind of like how you look a bit ragged, like the moon on that card.

Ara: And what about the ones that felt totally right?

Fox: The first card I remember feeling like that about was The Lovers. Not an easy thing to draw but almost everyone I’ve shown it to has said ‘that’s so hot’! And then when I drew Justice it was like ‘oh no, this is The One’. It meant a lot, that one, too, because Morgan is our (reformed) inner critic: our rejecting/rejected self. For so many reasons it felt important to me to depict her right. I think that card captures her beauty and rage and pain, all of it: the complexity of all selves like her who are capable of great harm, but comes from such places of hurt and trauma.

Ara: It’s a stunning card. You did her proud.

Fox: Thankyou *smiles* The next card that felt very right, for me, was your Death card.

Ara: I love it.

Fox: We’ve tried to draw you many times and it’s never felt quite right, but that was it. That’s what Ara looks/feels like *exhales*

Ara: It feels so good to have that sense of me. I remember when Morgan very first came through as a self – Beastie we called her back then – and one of the first things she did was to ask you to draw her.

Fox: ‘Give me form’ she said *smiles*

Ara: You did such a good job love.

Fox: It was super hard drawing her on her transformations cards. I really had to work at dropping what I thought she should look like on those cards and letting her look how she needed to look, if that makes sense. She ended up being lot more delicate somehow.

Ara: Because she is deeply vulnerable too, I imagine all critic/rejecting/raging selves are.

Fox: The Strength card was another spot on one, and makes us laugh. We managed to get our weird secret love of Firefighter dramas (like Station 19 and Chicago Fire) in there, and James is ridiculously Mr Steady Endurance, ‘I can handle anything’!

Ara: *Chuckles*

Fox: And then the last three cards. Those were such a surprise. I knew exactly what I wanted to draw for the previous ones in that section, but had no idea for the last three – our cards really – you and me. So I thought they’d take ages, but we did one a day for three days with hardly any preparation. They just flowed out.

Ara: And the feeling again. You just tapped into the feeling.

Fox: Heh I guess they were easiest because they are all my feelings – direct – not me remembering how the other selves felt. My frightened vulnerability (The Moon), my grief and forgiveness (Judgement), and my ‘back in the world’ feeling.

Ara: What is that feeling would you say?

Fox: Hm, is there a feeling word for gratitude, delight, trepidation, wariness, determination, creativity, connection, coming full circle, total not-knowing, alertness, relief, stillness, motion…?

Ara: I think they’re all in there.

Fox: What about you? What’s your favourite card?

Ara: I do like Judgement. All those three, but Judgement particularly. I think it gets our love – yours and mine – our relationship really well. I love how all the transformation cards are all about our inner love relationships, and capture the quality of those. Like how James loves Morgan and Robin, how they love each other, how Max and Jonathan love each other, how we love all of them.

Fox: Ah yes. I didn’t consciously intend for it to be that, but that’s what it is. And it feels good. A big part of why we set out on this journey in the first place was to learn to love ourselves, because we/Max didn’t even really know what that meant, or what it could feel like.

Ara: And here we are.

Fox: Here we are. Loving.

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The JKP Writing Prize is a competition for aspiring writers from underrepresented backgrounds. The theme this year is: Everyday Disability and Chronic Illness: Stories of Joy, Resistance, and Anti-Ableism. 

The voices of disabled and chronically ill people remain vastly underrepresented across many sectors, including the publishing industry. JKP are looking for a short 3,000-word submission and the winners will get their work published in an anthology and receive a £150 winners fee.

Please do share on and/or consider entering. You can find all the information you need here.

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