Affirmations for Queer People

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bi Pod, A Podcast About All Things Bisexual. I'm Evan and my pronouns are Vae and Nem. And I'm Christina, my pronouns are she and her. We welcome anyone who has any kind of relationship with or curiosity about Queer Miss.

[00:00:14] The Bi Pod is an ad-free community supported podcast. You can support us for as little as $2 a month. To join the community, or get more information about the podcast, visit patreon.com slash the Bi Pod.

[00:00:25] This podcast is one piece of the long history of bisexual and queer discourse. We don't know everything at all. We're here to be part of the conversation. Let's get into it. Hi Christina! Hi Evan.

[00:00:58] The listeners are getting this episode in a different month, but for us on this timeline, it is the first day of pride. So happy pride. Happy pride. And we have a very special guest with us today. Welcome to the show, Jess Vositag.

[00:01:15] Thank you, I'm so excited. We're here. Yeah, we're happy to have you. We're here talking about your new book. So I get into that. But before we get into it, we always like to ask our guests

[00:01:25] to tell us who you are and what your relationship to Queer Miss is. Sure. So my name's Jess. I have the handle Jess Vositagram. And I am a freelance illustrator. I'm from Fort Collins, Colorado originally, and now I'm kind of in the Boulder Dunever area.

[00:01:46] And then I went to school for art at CU Boulder and graduated from there. And then kind of worked my queerness into my art. And that's kind of what I mainly do now. So yeah, my arts are just very queer positive. Uplifting, colorful. Yeah, it's a beautiful book.

[00:02:05] We were talking about affirmations for queer people. 100 plus positive messages to affirm and power and inspire. It's a beautiful book. We'll put some pictures on Instagram. Yeah, it's adorable. And it's empowering and beautiful and excellent gift for all the queer folks in your life.

[00:02:26] So it's full of affirmations. And I thought maybe you could talk a little bit about why you decided to put this book together specifically for queer people and what you hope your readers and specifically your queer readers will take away from it.

[00:02:39] Yeah, so I feel like for queer people, especially we kind of need that extra little like confidence boost sometimes because, you know, we're living in a world where we are minority and there is a lot of discrimination against us.

[00:02:54] So having the tools to kind of replace those negative self-talk aspects is really helpful. So I kind of created the book as a way to give back to the community and kind of be like, here's something that you can all use to kind of empower yourselves.

[00:03:11] I love that. How did you get into affirmations in the first place? Like how did that format find you? Yeah, I think I just kind of had heard about them like people post them online and stuff like that.

[00:03:24] I never really integrated them into my own life until kind of recently and I've been thinking about like my own mental health and like what would help me and kind of just how I was kind of saying it replaces the negative.

[00:03:38] So I do like a lot of negative self-talk and spiraling. So kind of using affirmations as a way to break that up and replace it with positive is kind of been helping me a lot so that's kind of how I started getting into them and then

[00:03:51] just realizing how helpful that is for me as a queer person and how a lot of people could benefit from that. Yeah. Is that kind of how the book came to be that you started using affirmations and then started creating them with images or was that process like?

[00:04:06] Yeah, I actually kind of got approached by the publisher to create the book but it's really like what I already do with my art. So I've just spent like most of my art career kind of creating positive affirmations to

[00:04:21] post online anyway so it kind of all just fit together. I love when that happens. Yeah. I appreciate the the querying of the affirmation game. I feel like a lot of like I think of my mom when I think of kind of like a lot of

[00:04:39] like affirmations that you see on Instagram which you know there's nothing wrong with that but it's not necessarily always like what I am looking for or like what it's not always speaking to things

[00:04:52] that are like a for me in my identity and I just really love that you have you have queer affirmations for us. Thank you. Yeah, I agree affirmations I feel like on that base level are kind of like cringy

[00:05:08] sometimes. So like I was coming from that place so I kind of tried to make the book like the opposite of that. Yeah, yeah, I'm just like thinking of so many of my head that I've seen.

[00:05:25] Yeah, I know but I did not have that experience with the book it's not cringy. You also have a really helpful kind of like introduction to how to use affirmations in the book.

[00:05:34] So if you know someone is unfamiliar or if someone is like but those are for my mom. There's a bridge in the beginning of the book. So you get there? Yeah, I felt like that was pretty necessary to kind of put it to the beginning so that everyone

[00:05:46] could kind of go into it with like the right mindset. Yeah, absolutely. So I would love to hear you talk a little about a little bit about how your approach intersectionality or just sort of like the variety and differences in queer identities in the book

[00:06:02] because affirmations can be deeply personal but also you had to write something that would appealed to like or make sense to more than one person and I think that you handle it really

[00:06:12] well, I'd love to hear you kind of talk about how you how you did that and how you hope that that lands. Yeah, thank you. In my normal day today, are I try to like really be intersectional with

[00:06:23] it too because my goal is always just kind of make everyone feel seen and heard no matter what your identity is. So in the book I really tried to make sure that everyone could kind of find themselves

[00:06:36] in at least one aspect of it which would also result in some people reading things that's not going to apply to them but I think you can still kind of share those with the people around you

[00:06:46] or your friends or your family or someone that you know like if you're not trans and it's like a trans affirmation, you can share it with somebody else. So I kind of try to approach it that way. Very like community-minded also queer approach too putting something together.

[00:07:02] Hmm, I want to go back just a second because Christina you talked about the introduction to the book. Kind of bringing people into how to do affirmations and just you kind of alluded to having a

[00:07:20] little bit of a personal practice when it comes to affirmations and I think it would be great just to like give people a little preview or like talk a little bit about like okay so what what is the

[00:07:32] affirmation process look like so that you know if you're thinking of your mom right now. Reorient. Yeah I throughout the book kind of give some specific ways that you can use them.

[00:07:48] I can't think of like an exact example right now. I think at some point I say like I have the affirmation listed and then there's a description about what that kind of means and how

[00:08:00] it applies to you and then I think one of them is like you could write the song stick you know and put it on your mirror or something. So like for me if I'm having a weird like body image

[00:08:10] day or like dysphoria I would write like a little affirmation kind of being like I love my body or whatever I don't know specifically what but and then put that on my mirror so I like see it

[00:08:21] repetitively you don't necessarily have to like sit down and have like a whole mindful session of like repeating it but you could just like have it around your space where you see it and I think

[00:08:31] that's pretty helpful. Yeah yeah I have one here that I think our listeners will appreciate if I can share it. The affirmation itself is I don't have to have experience to be valid in my

[00:08:46] queerness. So that's you know the phrase you can take with you or the state need to take with you and then underneath that you have an explanation about just a little bit more detail some additional

[00:08:57] kind of affirming like queerness is not defined by specific experiences or milestones it's valid because it's who you are and some instructions about you know praying yourself from these expectations and then it says use affirmation as a mantra whenever you feel self-doubt

[00:09:14] about your queer experiences so every affirmation has a suggestion for integration which I appreciate I was weeping reading the book. Oh that's so sweet. Our listeners will not be surprised I cried about a lot of things but I was very moved. Well that's good to hear.

[00:09:37] But yeah I think one's like that specifically for me when I was writing it I was like thinking about when I was younger and it would have been nice to hear something like that more often

[00:09:45] and so now as an adult you can kind of put that into your own daily life and like almost reparent yourself with it sort of thing. Yeah I've been thinking about that a lot recently of like

[00:09:58] just seeing the world that queer youth are growing up in now for better and for worse not that everything is you know perfect now obviously here we are but just like seeing the resources and the representation and the stories and the like opportunities for community and

[00:10:20] possibility models is really moving and it also I think invites us as I don't know a queer elder I'm not that old but you know to to repair it or to like still be open to things like that

[00:10:35] still be open to affirmations still be open to those kinds of resources and spaces very healing. Do you have an affirmation from your book that holds special meaning for you personally or do you have a favorite one that you find yourself going back to?

[00:10:51] I feel like a lot of them apply to me personally I mean I wrote all of them so I obviously had myself in mind for a lot of them but one that I like really like is I paved the way

[00:11:03] to a more inclusive world and I feel like that just speaks to me because of the art that I do and sometimes it's nice to kind of have that affirmation to go back to where I'm like okay I am

[00:11:14] creating change and me sharing queer stories and putting positivity and inclusivity out there does make a difference so I like find that one to be really comforting. I love time. And again an affirmation that is applicable to the individual but it was also very community oriented

[00:11:33] I feel like a lot of them you can kind of take at like a wider level and then kind of make it more specific to you. I love that. That affirmation feels like very evocative for me and is making

[00:11:45] me think a lot about a lot of people in my community are artists I guess myself included and it sometimes feels kind of silly to be like everything's on fire and I'm just going to make my

[00:12:03] little art thing and like the idea of like existing in the world as a queer person putting queer art into the world like showing up is valuable and meaningful and yes they're like lots of

[00:12:21] other there's lots of other work to do but the world doesn't benefit from from hiding our queerness or from stopping our art making like we're a pathway forward. Yeah that one makes me

[00:12:37] think of like the phrase existence as resistance to because like you know you existing as a queer person is creating inclusivity just like by being you you're putting that out there for someone

[00:12:49] who probably wouldn't have seen that before so it kind of makes me think of that too. Yeah I think like queer art often it can be but it usually does not feel escapist to me like it's a way

[00:13:03] of engaging in the world and like maybe experiencing some levity or some connection or some like relief from everything going on around you and worldwide but to me it feels like really affirming

[00:13:16] of being in the world um I don't know if that makes sense but that like distinction feels very real for me. What are the kind of art to you do? Or kind of what is your what is most of

[00:13:31] your kind of portfolio or or work look like? Yeah so I do like freelance stuff so I work through an illustration agency my agency is good illustration so they kind of come to me like here's

[00:13:44] this project from this company or you're interested and I'll say yes or no so I've worked with like a lot of different brands I've worked with like Doc Martens Facebook, Miss Foundation for Women,

[00:13:56] Altabudi so I do a lot of stuff like that and I've done a lot of like young adult book covers which is really fun. I love doing that it's like so fun to make like queer YA book cover because

[00:14:09] I used to love that as a kid so yeah it's kind of a lot of what I do. Evan's face lit up when you said queer YA book covers. I am the fan of queer YA novels so now I'm like have I seen any covers

[00:14:23] that just has worked on? Maybe before we started recording you mentioned having some markets do you do like products of your art? Yeah I have prints and stickers and like little

[00:14:39] pins I have like some pronoun pins which is fun. I have like key chains and stuff so yeah I have like some products that I like to sell I sell it on my website and then at certain markets.

[00:14:51] We love queer goodie. I was gonna say never bellia and then I was like it's not never bellia exactly anytime Christina and I go somewhere we're like oh I bought you a button oh I bought you a sticker

[00:15:03] like here's a picture of this shirt yeah yeah love a queer bird. A queer shrink yeah absolutely there's never too many. The limit does not exist. I'm curious about we I'm Evan and I are both writers um and we have talked in the show before

[00:15:27] sort of like about our writing process and experiences sharing our work in the world. Some wondering if you talk a little bit more about kind of like what what putting the book together looked like in relationship with the publisher um it's sort of a different kind of book

[00:15:44] I have a poetry collection that is out in the world which is not the same as an affirmation book but similar in that you have like many small pieces together rather than one kind of coherent story

[00:15:57] so I'm just curious you know what that like relationship or creative process looked like to get us to the beautiful final product. Yeah it was definitely interesting because I am not

[00:16:06] really much of a writer in my daily life so um I was approached with the project and I was like ecstatic about it because it's kind of everything I already do with my art and stuff so

[00:16:17] I was like so excited about it but I wasn't sure how the writing process was gonna go um but yeah they like had me come up with the whole list of all the affirmations first

[00:16:28] to kind of get an idea of like the organization of the book and where we're gonna go with that kind of thing so it's spent I spent like so much time coming up with like all the different affirmations

[00:16:40] and trying to make them not like super repetitive and like apply to a bunch of people so that was like the majority of the the process there and then I have illustrated affirmations

[00:16:51] throughout the book so then I kind of worked on which ones do I feel like could be cool illustrations um so I picked and choose kind of which ones I would want to draw and then did sketches for

[00:17:04] that and did the drawings for those and then after all of that stuff we did like the introduction of kind of how to use affirmations why they're important why they're important specifically for

[00:17:16] queer people all that good stuff was kind of the last writing bit that I did as you were putting your affirmations together or like generating them um whether just like come to you in the middle

[00:17:28] of the day and he had like stop what you were doing and write them down it was like what was that like kind of um so at the time it was working like part time as a receptionist at a salon

[00:17:38] so I had a lot of downtime and so I would just kind of like sit with my little notebook and just be like what could I write down yeah um and I kind of tried to like mind map it almost for you

[00:17:49] like start with a big idea and then you kind of like do offshoots of that to kind of get like more specific with it so I would kind of try to work on it like that and then just write like as many

[00:18:01] as I could come up with and then I'd kind of read them through and be like this is too similar or like that doesn't make a lot of sense or I could reword that so that was kind of the process.

[00:18:10] Yeah I love a hastily scribbled writing note in the middle of something else. Yeah if you were walking this is a lawn and I'd be like oh that's not a way. That's what the best writing happens when you're supposed to be doing something else. Right?

[00:18:26] I would like to try to ask my friends and family too like what do you guys want to have in a book basically like what would you like to hear as a queer person so that was helpful.

[00:18:35] I'm just like thinking about all the times I've like been I've had a part-time job where I was writing poems instead of what I'm supposed to do. Yeah. So funny.

[00:18:46] Do you have any advice for other queer creatives who want to share their stories in their art with the world? That could be um like encouragement and affirmation or it could be tangible advice.

[00:18:58] Generally I would just say that every queer voice is important so you should just share as much as you can and the more voices we have out there, the better for sure. And like especially since it's Pride Month everyone should be uplifting queer voices and sharing and supporting

[00:19:17] all that good stuff um and then like specific advice. I'm trying to think for queer creatives. I would just say like get really involved in your community and find people who do like minded things and learn from them and try to find somebody who's doing what you're doing

[00:19:34] and kind of talk to them and get their insight on it. I feel like that's really helped me. I would love to know what is inspiring you right now, what is um making you happy like what what feels good these days.

[00:19:53] Yeah um so me and my best friend have like kind of recently gotten super into the world of drag so we've been like super excited about drag and we've like watched all the shows and we've done some

[00:20:07] drag ourselves and like go out and drag and go to the club sometimes. So it's like really fun. We love makeup and stuff too because we're both artists so it translates pretty well for us.

[00:20:19] So that's been really fun to do with her um and just like yeah I don't know I guess just getting into like the local drag scene and all that good stuff and kind of

[00:20:31] going out more into the queer community and like the Denver area has been really fun. I love that. Yeah so yeah just other queer artists inspire me and my friends inspire me all the time. And I'll go back to community. It really does.

[00:20:44] If someone was like I also am interested in drag or curious about drag do you have do you have a recommendation either like a preferred show or uh starting place? A three point um a TikTok like what do you have any wrecks.

[00:21:02] Yeah I mean I think I'd probably say the best thing to do if you really want to like get into the community is just go see local drag. If you can um because it's just so fun to watch and

[00:21:15] like the community is just amazing and so supportive but if you want to watch like a show I really recommend we're here. I think that's been like soap on for me to watch. It's just like really

[00:21:26] community focused which is really great to see and it's just like they go to small towns and kind of like put people in drag and like throw a whole drag show and like it creates all this discourse

[00:21:39] the community and like really empowers people and so it's just really great to watch that happen. I'm like having warm fuzzy feelings. It's so good you guys should watch me. Yeah that just moved to the top of my list. It has been on my two watch list but

[00:21:53] I know I don't think I really knew like what it was about and then I sort of watched again and I was like oh my god this is combining everything I love so yeah it's a good time for sure.

[00:22:02] It's very emotional so get ready to cry. Great. I was gonna say I'm already anticipating Christina cry. Yeah I can just be like already. Yeah it's just like so warm and fuzzy but also like

[00:22:13] doing a lot of really good work and talking about things that need to be talked about so I've been really enjoying that show. That's a great entry plan. Christina should we tell the people

[00:22:23] about um about the giveaway. Yeah um so we have a beautiful copy like I said of the book that we're gonna be doing a giveaway over on our Patreon. All of the details will be on Patreon

[00:22:36] and it is available or the giveaways open to paid subscribers and on paid subscribers you can subscribe for free to get our free content. All of the details will be over on that post and

[00:22:47] I'll put the details in the description as well just so if you're listening to this episode lately you know what your timeline is but we're excited to get to gift this book to one of

[00:22:58] our lovely listeners. Yeah you can see all of Jess's beautiful art. Mm-hmm yeah and be affirmed. Jess is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to talk about or any other

[00:23:09] anything else you want to put into the world today? If anyone's interested I have a terror that that just came out too so yeah I didn't write that one but I did that illustration for it so

[00:23:21] if anyone's interested in terror stuff I would check that out. Absolutely and it's called terror for you and me and it's by a Gary DeAndre and it's like a queer terror deck so if you're into

[00:23:31] terror and you're into queerness it's a good time. Wow. Excellent. Now I have many questions about illustrating in terror. Oh yeah um if you're open to talking about it. Yeah totally um

[00:23:43] do you did you have a relationship with terror before you took on that project or was it new for you? I was pretty new for me. I like had had some friends that were into terror on stuff but I was never

[00:23:56] really in that world and I really understand a whole lot of the cards and stuff so it was pretty now. Mm-hmm yeah um what was that creative process like like did the author or did the the writer have

[00:24:11] like specific instructions for what they wanted or were you kind of you know looking at what the the cards usually mean and making your own images based on that meaning or what was not like.

[00:24:22] Yeah it was kind of a mix of both of those things um the author gave some specifics on some of the cards where they were like I want this to look like this and have this in it but some of them

[00:24:33] were really open-ended and I kind of just made them up on whatever I thought it should be and so I just did a lot of research on like with the original card looked like and why it had certain

[00:24:43] images and all that good stuff. I love divination? Yeah it's really cool. I like wasn't super into it before I did the project but now I'm like diving into that a little bit which is yeah

[00:24:54] yeah I feel like once you um in any modality like once you sort of learn uh uh learn the pieces of it you're like okay great let's do it. Yeah so the terror deck and the affirmations I'm like I

[00:25:08] feel like it all kind of goes together it's like in the same realm. Yeah yeah absolutely um and specifically making um some people might think of their moms when they think of terror cards as well uh trust

[00:25:20] everybody but um specifically like taking these um spiritual tools I guess they're both spiritual tools and um and querying them and making them specifically for a queer people I love them. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Do you have any um exciting upcoming projects that you're allowed to talk about

[00:25:39] or anything kind of next on the horizon for you? I'm gonna be doing some more young adult book covers so if you are interested that be on the look for those. Yeah I guess that's kind of it right now

[00:25:51] and then I'm always just making our own Instagram. Yeah well we will put um your Instagram and your website in the episode description so that folks can uh find you connect with you check out your work

[00:26:02] it's been so great to talk to you. Yeah it's been so great to talk to you guys too. Yeah thanks for coming on the show. We have a very silly tradition at the end of every episode where we try to say

[00:26:13] good bye in unison it's funny because we're bisexual and it's good bye. And the best jokes of course you have to explain um and um some people might think we have a system for that but we

[00:26:28] don't it's just vibes um which is great especially when we're recording over video um and the vibes have to pass through the screens um results very but it's always a good time. Are you interested in

[00:26:41] partaking in this tradition? Oh absolutely I feel like that's just it needs to happen. It does it does great yeah so there's there's no um there's no secret system. No we'll just down okay there's no count we'll just feel like okay well good bye! Perfect no notes

[00:27:08] thanks for listening to this episode. The biopod is made possible by our patrons. You can find us on Instagram at the biopod and on our website the biopod.com. This show is produced and edited by me and our theme song is coming home by snowflake