No I’m genuinely asking. Because in light of the LB Health scandal brought to light to me at least, by Kali, or Blackspectrumscholar on Threads, I am genuinely curious.
If someone as powerful as Lauren Howard and Dr. Jonathan Hinds can weaponize the police against patients who are asking genuinely fair questions about their practice, what’s to stop any provider from doing such a thing? What are the fucking rules?
I need to know how to choose a practitioner, who isn’t also an abuser. The last time I looked for a therapist, I subconciously chose the man who raped me, who was masquerading as a therapist through a private clinic even though he works for Fraser Health.
Now, I thought that was a red flag, but it took me three sessions to figure out why he felt so framiler, and why the framiler felt safe.
I had spent a lifetime literally being raped, abused, tortured, and branded by men who either directly abused me, or knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it. I thought I was choosing my tattoos, but most of them except my two arm tattoos, were chosen by men raped me so they’d be able to find me as an adult.
I’m tired y’all. I am tired of not having autonomy over my body. I am tired of feeling like someone is always touching the parts of me that I wish didn’t exist.
I am grossed out by my own reflection, because my reflection is that of a body that fought a war I wanted no part of. I was by myself, I was probably twenty-eight when I finally learned that I wasn’t alone.
And by then it was too late. I didn’t care enough to stop it, I was too drunk to notice when it happened, and due to brain damage from both abuse and the drugs they forced into my system, my brain was too chaotic to make sense of it all. At first.
But now I remember everything, and all I’m left with, is the knowledge that when I went to Surrey Women’s Center for help, they told me they only way they could help is if I went to the police.
So I did that, at their request, repeatedly, and I told my story. In return the cops had me classified insane, and had me repeatedly put into the hospital where I was given even more drugs that were supposed “help with the bad thoughts.” A direct quote from a nurse who said that to no less than thirteen patients in one night. I was there.
I’m tired.
I’m tired of telling my story and having people tell me it’s too uncomfortable. If it’s uncomfortable for you to hear it, imagine how traumatizing it is for me living it. Because until we get help with our mental health issues, we are still living in the battle zone.
The memories don’t go away because we want them to. They don’t stop coming just because we want to look foward, because the memories affect everything about our behavior going forward.
You bet your ass I have cameras, and an alarm system, and a safety protocol to protect myself, my family members and my neighbours.
We have so few places that we can turn for help. And even when we find a space that we are promised is safe, there are warnings that tell us if we don’t keep the mask up, then the police will be called.
I don’t think – even after COVID, enough people understand just how dangerous masking is for people. Because when it slips, and it inevitably does, people are suddenly ready, willing, and able, to pick up the phone, call 911, and be the end of our lives.
How many times over the last few decades have you heard or seen the phrase, “The family called 911 for medical attention…” or “The family called 811 for support…”
Often times mental health providers are not safe spaces for people, specifically people of color and Black folks, who are neurodivergent, and who hyperfocus on the details that signal red flags to us.
When we do find safe spaces, like being in the woods, or out in the desert alone where we can scream and be wild and roar and be free as women are intended to be, we’re called crazy, insane, uncontrollable.
This world was built by men who love control but don’t understand how to control. Balance in all things brings serenity, this I understand deeply, but you can’t have balance when you don’t have a safe space to take off the mask and be your true self.
I can promise you, if it were socially appropriate to grunt and swing our arms like apes, that’s precisely what humans would be doing.
Mental health issues however, don’t give a flying fuck about societal pressure or politics or policies, all they care about is destroying as much of your life as possible.
Not one person on this planet grew up saying “Well gee golly whiz, I want to be depressed and filled with anxiety when I grow up.” We grow up hoping we can overcome the issues that made our parents what we thought was insane behavior.
In truth parents who raised kids in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, were incredibly neglectful. They were the first genrations of parents who didn’t have nannies raising their kids, the first generation of children who didn’t have Black women in America, raising their kids.
In Canada it was very similar, but not quite exactly the same, but mental health at the time was something that only affected “Insane’ or “Crazy” people. Folks who drank too much, did too many drugs, or were born with birth defects, were all coralled into the same horrible hospitals where they were treated with less kindness than rats.
To this day the fact that they want to open Riverview Hospital makes me sick to my stomach. People were tortured, experimented on, and deeply forever traumatized in that place, but because they want a place to house the chronically unhoused, they want to lock them up in the same places we write nightmares about.
People with mental health issues don’t need to be locked up, they need a space where they can release. Many of us are living with trauma and it’s eating away at our bodies, minds and souls.
In the 1990’s I’ll never forget there was a study, and I wish I could remember who authored it, but basically it said that cancer is a symptom of stress, and that the more stressed you are the worse the cancer gets. Which is ironic as fuck because cancer’s pretty fucking stressful.
I think that we need to start taking patients seriously when they say they have chronic, irreversable, and physical pain because yes, physical pain without treatment can absolutely have an affect on your mental health.
And for many there isn’t an opportunity to “rest until you feel better.” I read a story the other day about a woman who had given her boss a fucking kidney, and then they fired her because she took too long to recover.
The “Machine” will let you die to protect itself, but I just don’t think this society is worth dying for. I think that if we’re going to send armed soldiers into the world, it should be for a purpose, it should be to end war, not to participate in harming the most innocent among us.
I’ve long since the armed machine is a lying flying cunt with twelve thousand talking heads all saying the same thing, “Believe me, I promise…” and then they follow it up by a bunch of shit they don’t actually promise to achieve, and time and time again we fall for it.
We say that we’re more evolved than those who lived in Ancient Egypt, Africa, Rome, or Greece, but are we really? We follow the same rules they did, “Occupy, control, kill,” like it’s not changed since back then.
What has changed is that human beings feel more comfortable sharing their diagnosis then ever before, and at long last we can create our own platforms to share our stories instead of waiting for someone else to do it for us.
So the only question that remains is…what are you waiting for? Go create.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl
Post Script:
I deliberately left out certain screen grabs from proof about the accusations made against LB Health because of all the issues the community has had deciding what belongs to whom. If you would like a comprehensive and throughlly done essay about what LB Health has been accused of please read this by Lovette Jallow.
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 