Queer St. Louisans Speak Up!
Through our storytelling initiative, we heard queer St. Louisans unapologetically speak up about queer joy, mental health, chosen family, and more. Explore this site to read the stories of our queer & trans community, and support SQSH’s work to create liberated spaces for queer St. Louisans to speak our truth.
Read our Stories
Queer Identity
How do queer St. Louisans conceptualize gender & sexuality, and navigate the expectations & structures imposed by these social constructions? Queer St. Louisans share their stories around fluidity, pronouns, family, acceptance, self-exploration, Blackness, ballroom, aromanticism, and more.
Mental Health
What gaps exist in our mental health system?
Queer St. Louisans share their experiences around policing, psychiatric wards, therapy, insurance, waitlists, and virtual community.
Beauty & Fashion
“Beauty” can be a loaded word for many queer & trans folks. What does it mean to be beautiful; to be worthy of being seen and loved? Queer St. Louisans speak up about aesthetics, transience, gender expectations, Black hair, desirability, experimentation, nature, jewelry, clothing, authenticity, and more.
Chosen Family
A family of choice is a non-biologically related group of people forged to foster relationships of mutual, ongoing support. Queer St. Louisans tell us about friendships, queer culture, kindness, COVID, representation, Black women lineages, growing up in a rural area, and more.
Joy & Liberation
Queer Liberation is a vision and transformation of society to eliminate identity-based oppression and advance collective freedom, so that people of all genders & sexualities can live with safety, power, and abundance.
Queer St. Louisans share their thoughts on transformative justice, abolition, internalized shame, colonialism, white supremacy, dancing, breathing, authenticity, hope, dysfunction, utopia, institutions, crime, art, education, queer theory, electoral politics, and more.
NOW AVAILABLE:
Dreaming Towards Liberation: Queer Futurist Manifestations
Did these stories resonate with you? Check out more art, stories, and voices of queer St. Louisans in our Community Anthology! Support local queer community organizing work by purchasing a copy of the Anthology for yourself or a loved one!
“Trauma or addiction can put people in a space where it's really difficult to grow. Having quality housing, access to good food & nourishment, and quality time [with the people we love], are all important for queer people to thrive.”
– Mac (they/he)
Our Storytelling Values
SQSH's mission is to facilitate healing spaces and providing holistic support for queer St. Louisans to thrive. We aim to uplift queer St. Louisan stories based on the principles of oral history and intersectionality. Our storytelling aims to uplift queer & trans voices and ways of being, especially those marginalized by White supremacist, Eurocentric, ableist, and fatphobic structures & norms.
5 reasons to support SQSH’s Work
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“What role does your chosen family or community play in your life? What is most important to you in creating a chosen family or community?”
“Chosen family”, i.e. family groups constructed by choice instead of biological or legal ties, play important roles in queer people’s lives, as 39% of queer adults have faced rejection from birth families. Having a supportive peer group protects against mental health problems for LGB emerging adults who lack support from our family of origin (Parra, Bell, Hastings, 2017). LGBTQIA+ St. Louisans already turn to our LGBTQIA+ peers for information and support; there is a clear need for increased investment in peer support structures. However, peer counselors need robust professional support throughout our work with peers, as we often bring our own trauma history or mental health conditions to our roles (Worrell, et al., 2022).
Unlike traditional peer support groups, SQSH’s work incorporates holistic healing, professional mental healthcare, local neighborhood structures, structured curriculum, and skill-building. Our variety of programming modalities provide multiple avenues for pod members to participate, heal, and form long-term relationships. Our partnerships between queer St. Louisans and mental health professionals incorporate peer-based, community-centric healing modalities that challenge traditional, hierarchical relationships between “expert provider” and “client”.
SQSH’s programs addresses health disparities faced by the St. Louis LGBTQIA+ community by empowering queer St. Louisans to:
Provide each other with safe, supportive outlets to process barriers to wellbeing and heal from everyday injustices. We offer a range of emotional support services, empowering users to call outside of crisis moments.
Strengthen our connections to vetted resources trusted by local queer-led groups. Unlike national hotlines, SQSH’s volunteers are familiar with trans-competent services specific to St. Louis.
Amplify our voice in local socio-political systems by using call data findings to identify community needs and advocate for LGBTQIA-centered changes in culture, policy, and services. As the only community-led organization collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on the lives of queer St. Louisans, we offer a much-needed, evidence-based assessment of the local LGBTQIA+ population.
Donate to support SQSH’s work as we aim to change practices, resource flows, relationships, power dynamics, and mental models to improve equity for queer St. Louisans’ mental health.
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“What does beauty mean to you as a queer person? How has your definition of beauty changed over time?”
We heard from our community that beauty comes with expression, authenticity, and connection. SQSH’s programs work together to create safe, non-judgmental spaces for queer St. Louisans to mutually support each others’ journeys towards identity-affirming expression. Donate to SQSH as we continue to shine a light on the queer and the beautiful.
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“When was the last time you were affirmed in your gender or sexuality?”
For many queer St. Louisans, trauma and internalized shame around our genders and sexualities are often rooted in relationship rupture and interpersonal rejection. SQSH works to create spaces that gently soothe the internal wounds that obstruct healing.
SQSH’s Peer Support Helpline provides free, confidential, identity-affirming emotional support and resource referrals, by and for the St. Louis LGBTQIA+ community.
Callers reach out to process emotions, explore resources, and brainstorm ideas. Since queer youth often live in unsafe spaces, we call from an anonymous number, allowing them to reject/hide our call if they’re not safe to talk. Since BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People-of-Color) and mentally ill callers face higher risks of police brutality, our policies avoid non-consensual police contact.
We provide 10-15 Peer Counselors with 48+ hours of training in LGBTQIA+ issues, mental health interventions, and peer counseling techniques. This training empowers SQSH Peer Counselors to effectively support both Helpline callers and fellow community members.
Knowing that LGBTQIA+ populations are underrepresented and undervalued in research, we use our call data findings to inform our trainings for partner organizations and advocate for LGBTQIA+ needs among policymakers and service providers.
Donate to SQSH to support our work towards queer liberation, until St. Louisans of all genders and sexualities can live with power, safety, and abundance.
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“What forms of mental health support do you seek out or rely on? What gaps exist in our mental healthcare system? If you had a magic wand, what would be one thing you would change about mental health for queer St. Louisans?”
At SQSH, we believe that traditional, carceral mental health systems are not equipped to serve queer St. Louisans’ mental health needs:
First, current systems tend to take individualistic, Westernized approaches to mental health that de-emphasize people’s connections to their own communities, cultures, and histories.
Second, current systems tend to take a generalized approach to mental health that do not effectively address queer St. Louisans’ intersectional experiences and specific needs.
Finally, current systems tend to focus on crisis response and medicalized approaches to mental health, instead of holistic health and wellness.
To shift the above systems, we need to support and integrate chosen family, peer support, consciousness-raising, skill-sharing, mutual aid strategies, holistic wellness, and somatic healing into mental health models. We need to develop culturally relevant and identity-specific approaches to mental healthcare for queer St. Louisans, including processes for vetting, recruiting, training, and evaluating healthcare providers.
Donate to SQSH so we can pilot LGBTQIA-centered mental health models rooted in healing justice, community care, and chosen family.
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“What are your personal experiences with queer joy or resilience? What gives you hope despite the systems of oppression that we live in? How does queer liberation intersect with the liberation of other communities you are a part of?”
At SQSH, we are a group of queer people working toward our collective liberation by creating anti-oppressive community spaces and radically reimagining our systems of healing and support. We work towards a world in which queer people (and all people) are powerful, have autonomy over the narrative of our lives, and are free to form liberated, non-hierarchical relationships with others in community. We grow towards our collective liberation by:
Harnessing the inherent power of peer relationships and support to build new systems of emotional healing outside of hierarchical, highly surveilled, and carceral institutions of mental health;
Building spaces in which queer people can tap into our own strengths, create our own narratives, and be seen and uplifted by our community;
Creating shared leadership structures that model our values of transformative justice and community accountability.
SQSH’s strategies incorporate the mixed grassroots feedback in response to 988’s launch; the research calling for healing justice approaches (Bosley, Harrington, Morris, Le Dantec, 2022); and the demonstrated benefits of somatic work in treating mental health issues (Van Der Kolk, Porges, Levine). The urgency for SQSH’s work is heightened by recent anti-trans legislation in Missouri and nationwide.
Given provider shortages and burnout among mental health professionals amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, SQSH’s peer-based healing modalities are a powerful resource and innovative model that deserves timely investment now – donate to SQSH today.
Ways to Support SQSH
Donate Directly to SQSH
As a grassroots, community-led organization, we need your support to continue the work that we do. All donations to SQSH will be directly invested in supporting the St. Louis queer community through our key programs. If you value the work we do to strengthen LGBTQIA+ mental health, please consider a donation to keep SQSH going! Any amount is welcome and equally appreciated.
Join our SQSH Stars
Our monthly donors are a vital part of SQSH, just like stars are a vital part of our galaxy! As a SQSH Star, you are not only supporting SQSH’s life-saving services, but joining a powerful movement of people committed to queer liberation.
Learn more and join today →Buy SQSH Merch
Check out our shop for vibrant, queer-themed t-shirts, tote bags, water-bottles, magnets, and stickers, designed by local queer artists! Buying and wearing SQSH merch helps to boost SQSH's visibility, show your support for the St. Louis LGBTQIA+ community, and send a message about queer St. Louisan power.
Visit the SQSH Store →
About our Annual Community Healing Event
Curious about where these stories came from?
On Nov 5 (2022), we hosted our first ever Fall Community Healing & Open Mic Event, which is turning into an annual tradition! We gathered queer St. Louisans at Tower Grove Park to share their stories through postcards, interviews, open mic, a photoshoot, art therapy, reiki, and other healing approaches.
As a community celebration focused on queer & trans visibility, our outdoor social gathering featured face painting, peer-led interviews, an open mic & runway, a photoshoot, and more – with the goal of promoting peer support, mental health, and solidarity among the St. Louis LGBTQIA+ community.