“I came across the LOVE Project, ACON’s ageing initiative, to empower older Queer communities through my mental health counsellor Russ Gluyas. I found both ACON counselling and LOVE Project very helpful for me. A respectful approach to counselling tangled with community fun time, socialisation and lifeworld revelation – it centres us as the experts in our own lives. It’s a therapeutic space and may I say healing justice.
With intersectional identity as dark non-White Queer, I/we feel racism as lateral violence perpetrates to Queerphobia in a settler colonialist society. LOVE forms a Queer tree of life where yearning can be expressed as yarning. We feel our queer skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments, abilities, desires, relationships, interests – all gain richness and thickness in relationality. And, through our intimacy as we can learn to break barriers to intimacies. In this ancestral land of wisdom and aboriginal care, we feel caring as poesy of life. Poetics of Queer life. Our heartbeats, our healing threads, our binding with care and affection, our expression of life, our weaving of dreams – they flourish in art of love.
In the LOVE events, we watch film, we dance, dine together, get aged care info, even basic amenities as treatment and housing assistance counseling. ACON is a safe place for us, and our healing is letting go of fear and we become love finders.”
