Hello! Welcome to the Fat Queer Blog, by Meg everyone’s favorite fat queer therapist. This first post is an intro to me and my perspective on the world. I attempt, with moderate success, to surface the places where privilege and oppression show up in my life. I will be updating at a minimum monthly (hopefully more frequently than that) and entries will be related to mental health, fatness, queerness, and other social justice-y topics.
I showed up in the world white and financially privileged in the very liberal state of Massachusetts. My queerness and fatness revealed themselves in my early years. I came out as queer in high school to the surprise of absolutely no one. Shockingly being president of the gay straight alliance for years did not create a very sturdy closet. I went to private high school, private college, and a private masters program. I bought my first car for a dollar from my parents. Despite that privilege I have crushing student debt and credit card debt which has accumulated from years of compulsive shopping and occasional mania.
My mental health issues showed up early and often. I didn’t get much help, besides an ADHD diagnosis at age 13, until I was 17 and landed in an inpatient psych ward. I’ve been inpatient twice more, and also did two day hospital programs. I've been in therapy since that first inpatient experience in high school.
College was wonderful but complicated because of the mental health issues. I love to learn but the stress often left me dysregulated.
I did two years of AmeriCorps in Seattle after college on an explicitly anti-racist team. I then worked at a middle school as a special education para-educator. I spent a whole lot of my time in Seattle broke. I say broke not poor because I always had a safety net there for the moments when I landed in the hospital with pneumonia or when my meds were too expensive.
I moved back to MA to pursue a teaching degree but I realized quickly that teaching wasn’t what I wanted. All the things I liked best about working in schools were the counseling bits. The parts where I talked to kids one on one about their struggles and successes. So I pursued my MSW. After grad school I worked at a (semi-evil) agency that served mainly low income clients. Once I was independently licensed I pursued private practice.
I spent a lot of time trying to be the most perfect, most flexible, most open, most self-sacrificing, therapist. I’m an eclectic therapist and I thought that meant doing everything for everyone. I’m good at what I do, and over the last few years I’ve realized I can’t do everything for everyone, I can’t be the perfect blank slate. I have a personality, I use self (carefully) and emphasize lived experience. I have a progressive political slant and I am no longer interested in pretending that’s not true. My whiteness, my fatness and my queerness influence my work immensely, my mental health influences my work, being cis, coming from financial privilege, being neurodivergent, and being disabled all influence my work.
I believe in modeling for my clients what it means to be multiply marginalized and move through a world that is often unfriendly. I do not ask clients to do things I would not do. I don’t have everything figured out and I don’t pretend to know all the answers. I believe in vulnerability, I believe in empathy, and I believe the liberation of self is only achieved through the liberation of others.
And now I’m blogging. See you soon.
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