Powerful quote by Rachel Camille Terrell / Richard Oscar Terrell

"It can be easy to assume that your worldview is everything that exists in the world and that something outside of your own experience isn't real, however, it's important to remember that there are ways of experiencing the world that you're not going to have any concept of and that if you aren't experiencing the world that way, you are not in a good place to judge the needs and difficulties of people who are. No one is making up labels for attention. The attention is not positive. No one is asking to have a life that is more difficult. If a person is going through the danger, discomfort, and difficulty of telling you or anyone that they are an identity that falls outside of the heteronormative range of acceptability, it's likely that it's a core part of who they are, important enough that pretending to be something else is more painful for them than all of the trouble that society is going to give them. Please, take it seriously. They are likely facing trouble on a lot of fronts. Please, at the very least, don't add to the trouble, and if you can do something to make their lives easier, choose to do that. If you want to have a conversation about someone's experience of gender, let it be a conversation, not a debate or an argument, and remember that no one is obligated to explain who they are to you either. If they are taking the time to talk you through it, listen, learn, and say thank you."*

By Rachel Camille Terrell / Richard Oscar Terrell 
*This was written in a post for the Stonewall Employee Affinity Group, which is a group that promotes inclusion and awareness of the LGBTQIAP+ community in the workplace.

Pep talk, by Erin Brook

"Pep talk from a singing teacher (me):

"I don’t know if you have talent. I don’t know what talent is. To me, talent is just desire. Do you want to do the thing? Does it make you feel sparkly? Great. That’s enough talent for me. Everything else is skill, and that I know about."

By Erynn Brook (@ErynnBrook)

(See full thread: https://twitter.com/ErynnBrook/status/1235917243856412672)