There’s a current of queerness running through the definition of alchemy:
1. a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way;
2. an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting.
Queer and trans people are alchemists. We are mysterious, impressive, inexplicable and powerful. We are skilled in the art of transformation.
– Zena Sharman, Queer Alchemy: Perverting the Health System, Fighting to Win

Late last year, a beloved friend gave me a bang-on birthday gift: The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (2021). Edited by Zena Sharman, it’s a collection which brings together several of Zena’s own essays alongside guest contributions from other writers, and functions as a sequel-of-sorts to The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Healing (2016), an anthology of stories from queer and trans people on their lived experiences of navigating health-care systems. Part chronicle and part call-to-arms, The Remedy invited writers and readers to imagine what individual and collective resources we might need to create healthy, resilient, and thriving LGBTQ communities.

Five years on from The Remedy being published, The Care We Dream Of brought together some of Sharman’s writing with an incredible range of other voices, weaving together essays, interviews and even poetry to ask questions like…

✨ What if you could trust in getting the health care you need in ways that felt good and helped you thrive?
✨ What if the health system honoured and valued queer and trans people’s lives, bodies, and expertise?
✨ What if LGBTQ+ communities led and organized our own health care as a form of mutual aid?
✨ What if every aspect of our health care was rooted in a commitment to our healing, pleasure, and liberation?

Months after I first got my mitts on it, I’m still making my slow way through the collection, diving into essays on queering death, disability, ageing, harm reduction, sex work and suicide intervention. I’m usually a fast reader: it’s common for me to devour books whole in a single sitting. But this one is so incredibly rich, thoughtful and thought-provoking that I’ve been deliberately taking my time.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to share some personal highlights — literally, because I was only a few sentences into the book before I realised a lot of fluorescent underlining would be happening as I read — from Shaman’s essay, Queer Alchemy: Perverting the Health System, Fighting to Win:

Following on from reflecting on the queerness of the above definition of alchemy, Sharman quotes trans and intersex scholar Hill Malatino on redefining resilience as “not about bouncing back, nor about moving forward, but rather a communal alchemical mutation of pain into possibility.” Zena expands: “Queer and trans communities have long histories of mutual aid because the circumstances of our lives — and of our deaths — demand it of us. We understand that resilience isn’t an individual property, it’s shared and interactional. As Malantino so astutely observes, we know how to move together to mutate pain into possibility. We innovate to survive. We expect more than we are given, then we alchemize our dreams and desires into being.”

And I loved these reflections about the influence and impact of the queer kink and leather communities on Sharman: loving, poignant and pragmatic, with a much-needed acknowledgment of how embodiment, pleasure and desire can be essential, political components of trauma healing and recovery:

“Queer perverts and leatherdykes have taught me many lessons, both profane and practical, about health, healing, and what it means to show up for your people. Ready for anything, they know how to band together and get shit done. Queer perverts and leatherdykes are ingenious, highly skilled, and wildly, often diabolically creative. This is who I want to be with when the apocalypse hits. They know how to stay calm under pressure and will just happen to have on hand an array of tools, rope, a knife, a well-stocked first aid kit, allergy-safe snacks and bottled water. I learned about queer and trans health and healing in dungeons, play parties, workshops, hotel rooms, and bedrooms, bearing witness to and participating in the countless ways we embody our desires. Queer perverts and leatherdykes understand there are many paths to healing and there is power in choosing your trials. […] They showed me what it looks and feels like to be trauma-informed by demonstrating an adept awareness of how our past experiences can show up in our bodies and in our interactions with each other. We can’t make our past traumas go away, but we can learn to hold them and each other more skilfully, and we can heal together. Queer perverts and leatherdykes invited me into a continuous process of discovering new facets of myself and naming my desires, no matter how weird or shameful those desires might feel. They showed me what it looks like to be generous in sharing your knowledge, expansive in your definitions of family, and proud of your identity as a sexual outlaw.”

Then there’s this, which reads like a love letter, a vision for the future, a rebel yell, a protest chant and a spell:

“Queer and trans health and healing is sacred and profane. It is magic, altars, and do-it-yourself rituals. It is intimacy with death and grief. It is knowing who your queer and trans ancestors are and honouring them. What is remembered, lives. It is dungeons and alleys, bathhouses and parks. Queer and trans health and healing is figuring out how to fuck and experience pleasure more safely during this pandemic and the next one, and sharing what you learn so other people can do it, too. […] Queer and trans health and healing is embodied. It is erotic. It is wild. It will gush out of you like a river or drip slowly, transfixing. It has knives, fists and fangs. It will hold the softest parts of you with more tenderness than you imagined possible. […] Queer and trans health and healing is do-it-yourself and do-it-together. It’s sharing knowledge and information that doesn’t exist in medical textbooks, clinics, or doctors’ offices about how to honour and care for ourselves, our identities and bodies. […] Queer and trans health and healing is a legacy of resistance, creativity, innovation and valuing bodies and minds in all their shapes and manifestations. […] Queer and trans health and healing is knowing that activism happens in bedrooms, kitchens, meeting rooms, on the internet, in psych wards, jails, doctors’ offices, play parties, overdose prevention sites, forests, gardens, massage parlours, on stages, in classrooms, bookstores, via text message, and in every other place you can imagine. It’s coming up with strategies to help you or someone you love survive another minute, hour, day or year. Queer and trans health and healing is knowing that, in spite of all the systems that try and kills us, we are worthy of being alive, we are loved, and there are ways for us to exist joyfully in the fullest expressions of who we are.”

You can find more details about Zena Sharman and The Care Dream Of via the links below.