This project aims at creating space for stories of queer, trans, bipoc and marginalised people, regarding how we (also) received and carry love, from ourselves and from others, throughout our lives.  If we carry trauma, we’re here because we also carry love, in our flesh, in our soul, in our heart, in our somatic bodies. The project started as a mutual interview between Mikki Bradshaw and Goldjian Charlo. The intention is:: – to publish a book, or a podcast (or both) – to build a structure to host other stories, from other queer folks. This project wants to be an invitation to share how we also carry love in our body, how we had to love ourselves in the midst of adversities and hatred, and how we also received love, and how it is still palpable in our bodies, our souls, our embodied memories.

The intuition is : – that by allowing queer, trans, bipoc folks to tell there stories of love, it will give them opportunities to pause and feel, where love is still present in their bodies – that by making space for the diversity of our stories, we will recognize each other, but also grow our capacity for compassion, understanding and mutual learning.

By love, we refer to the multidimensional forms of interdependencies, that connect us to each other and to this planet, including, relations to friends, animal, plants, lovers, chosen family, elders, youngsters, teachers, shangas, guides, elements (…). And of course, we connect to all the many writers who wrote about love before us, among them:

bell hooks. 2000, All about love

Audre Lorde, 1984, The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”

Alexis Pauline Gum, 2020 , ‘Love at a scale where we can survive’ Undrowned. Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.

Kai Cheng Thom, 2019, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

Resmaa Menakem, 2017, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2013 , Islands of Decolonial Love