Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 18/01/2026The things we do for community. Let’s gooooo!! 🏳️🌈 020
Reposted by Sam Dylan FinchSam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025“Now they’re taking up a lot of space speaking on trans issues on TikTok.” Phew. Let’s unpack this. ⤵️letsqueerthingsup.comI Think My Friend is a Transtrender. What Do I Do? - Let's Queer Things Up!Everyone has the right to explore who they are and let their journey unfold, even if it’s messy. 002
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 04/12/2025“Now they’re taking up a lot of space speaking on trans issues on TikTok.” Phew. Let’s unpack this. ⤵️letsqueerthingsup.comI Think My Friend is a Transtrender. What Do I Do? - Let's Queer Things Up!Everyone has the right to explore who they are and let their journey unfold, even if it’s messy. 002
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 27/05/2025We’re waiting on test results and I have so much more to say about this, but in the meantime, I know a lot of folks have followed my journey and supported me (many of you for YEARS 🥹). It felt weird and hard to not share what’s going on, so here I am. 030
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 27/05/2025And guess who got FOUR IRON INFUSIONS last fall before I knew any of this? 🥴 Anyway I am, understandably, not feeling well! (Understatement.) 120
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 27/05/2025It’s a long story but after making the connection that iron supplementation makes my symptoms and my blood values really bad, we might have unmasked a chronic form of blood cancer called polycythemia vera, or I have some kind of rare genetic mutation around how my body deals with iron. 130
Reposted by Sam Dylan FinchJess (they/them) @jess-ifs.bsky.social · 07/04/2025Sharing this excellent post by @samdylanfinch.bsky.social around the questions to ask when you are looking for a new therapist or coach...a lot of us queer neurodivergent folx have experienced harm in lieu of help in therapeutic relationships. letsqueerthingsup.com/2025/04/06/t...letsqueerthingsup.com3 Key Questions to Ask a New Therapist or Coach"I experienced a harmful therapy relationship a few years back... I can't help but wonder if I asked the right questions." 051
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 12/02/2025(I also know this is fraught bc there are marginalized folks who cannot disappear themselves in these sorts of ways, because of how they are racialized, disabled, fat — I understand and I’m holding that too.) 030
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 12/02/2025That’s why I think it’s important for us to commit to being relentlessly affirming of one another, knowing that this is the climate. And for allies to interrogate how their understanding of gender may make this feel harder to internalize. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 12/02/2025You may think I’m just talking about trans folks… I’m not! There are cis folks who may not neatly conform who are choosing to present differently under this level of scrutiny, too, and who may feel certain aspects of their queerness or gender expression are being erased for the sake of their safety. 120
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 12/02/2025It’s always important not to assume someone’s gender identity based on appearance or pronouns — and to be cautious around how “out” someone may be — but it’s worth repeating as there are a lot of folks feeling increasing pressure to amend their gender presentation for their safety right now. 162
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 05/02/2025The full thing is on the gram and the clock app, but I’m sharing this clip with the hopes that it reaches the folks who need it. ❤️🩹 151
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025I am in this process / will be forever. I would invite folks who are bewildered by advocates who are wildly out of touch with the harm they’re enacting to choose what they won’t or can’t choose for themselves. Which is to say, choose to be in the mess. Find the armor within yourself; dismantle it. 050
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025We need to be with the discomfort that survivors are not innocents immune to harming others, and abusers are not contextless and inherently poisoned. We need to forsake the part of us that needs to be Good to survive, and embrace the part of us that is brave enough to be vulnerable. 170
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025To be truly and truthfully in the mess of it all, we have to grapple with the fact that perpetrator and victim, survivor and abuser, even supporter and grifter are not opposites in the ways we wish they were. 130
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025And yes, all of this is… IMO. I don’t want to talk about specific individuals who are engaging in this, so much as focusing on what we can collectively learn from it, and how to resist the urge to recast survivors who “fail” as having been secret perpetrators all along. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025Too many folks step into advocacy work and take on a survivor identity without examining what it even means to them to be a survivor, and how these stories of “us versus them” are rooted in systems of oppression that seal their fate — to repeat the cycle — long before they gain a following. 150
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025If you’ve chosen to make survivor advocacy a part of your life’s work, you must have the courage to dissolve the binary and the separateness you’ve constructed between survivors and abusers, while tending to the younger and hurting part of you that will absolutely feel betrayed when you try to. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025And some of us were more empowered and resourced than others to face ourselves. That doesn’t make us better than. It simply makes us able and willing (and almost certainly in community with folks who have taught us how it’s done). 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025THIS is how cycles repeat. Not with bad people scheming and determined to do bad things. But with fragile, armored, defensive, reactive, scared, ashamed people protecting the story they have about themselves above all else. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025We have to reckon with how deriving our sense of worth from being Good and Not Them sets us up to be unwilling and unable to offer others the same accountability WE deserved when we were harmed. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025As survivors, at some point we have to go beyond this dichotomy and realize that we are not Uniquely Good in ways that guarantee we will never harm someone else. 130
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025Otherwise we won’t be able to receive feedback — no matter how loving, gentle, righteous, and valid it is — that we’ve harmed someone else. We will just keep pushing others who challenge us into some adjacent category of Bad, Abuser, Narcissist, Toxic… whatever keeps our survivor identity in tact. 150
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025To create a world in which we no longer expect “perfect” from victims, we have to be willing to confront the parts of ourselves that aren’t perfect. Including parts of us that are capable of harm. And parts of us that, under different circumstances, have more in common with our abusers than not. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025And it makes sense that this is intolerable to you, because pushing your abuser into that category is what helped you access some shred of healing and agency and purpose. But the world survivors deserve can’t be built on these binaries. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025Because the moment you harm someone and have your helpfulness challenged, it will land as if your survivor identity is being revoked, and you are relegated to the same category as the person who nearly destroyed you. 150
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025If you’ve made your work and public identity about survivor advocacy, but “survivor” to you is only synonymous with “harmed helper,” you WILL hurt someone *and* you won’t be prepared to be accountable or repair it. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025Anyone who steps into the public arena as a survivor advocate needs to be willing to hold these complexities — not only that there isn’t a perfect victim, but that these categories of victim and perpetrator aren’t opposites, and that we can only confront in the world what we’ve confronted within us. 150
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025And… the truth is, if we create these categories of victim and abuser as dichotomies, in which there is no overlap, it makes it difficult for us to recognize our own capacity for harm, and the ways in which abuse is not just about individual malice, but larger systemic and cultural forces. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025So many of us had to villainize our abusers to finally access our rage and hurt. We needed to draw a clear line between them and us, to untangle ourselves emotionally so we could root into the truth of our experience after being invalidated and even gaslit. I have lived this. I empathize. 140
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025The truth is, when we view survivor and abuser (or predator) as a binary, with two opposing sides, asking a survivor — esp one who has made advocacy a big part of their identity — to recognize their capacity for harm can feel like relinquishing their identity & ceding commonality with their abuser. 150
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 02/02/2025What’s keeping me up tonight: It’s difficult but unsurprising to watch public figures who have built their platforms around “uplifting survivors” enact harm be absolutely unwilling to reckon with their impact. Unsurprising in ways that I think we (collectively) can learn from. 🔑 131
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 01/02/2025I need all of my autistic pals (and plush adoring adjacent peers) to tell me your favorite online stores that sell stuffed animals. Prefer: Small businesses, unique characters, cute aesthetic. 🧸💛 4196
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 25/01/2025Hey. It’s okay if you’re a yapper. 💌letsqueerthingsup.comVerbal Processing: Why You 'Think Out Loud' And 5 Neuro-Affirming Tips to Support You"When I'm trying to untangle a problem, I have to talk it out." 031
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 15/01/2025The best way I can describe this blog post is a hug. I hope you can feel it from wherever you are. ❤️letsqueerthingsup.comHow to Heal Your Inner Child When All You Remember is Trauma“I’m not even sure I have any happy memories. Does that mean this inner child stuff isn’t for me?” 031
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 14/01/2025I am sleep deprived and maybe used too many emojis but please enjoy the guide regardless 010
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 14/01/2025🧊 Mountain of tasks and deadlines leaving you frozen? 🧽 Cognitive load feeling too unmanageable, like your brain is a totally full sponge? 🧠 Or just overwhelmed as a neurodivergent person trying to keep up? 🔖 I created this for you: letsqueerthingsup.com/2017/07/22/a... 110
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 12/01/2025The overwhelm-shutdown cycle is a very real thing for ADHDers (and many other neurodivergent folks). I created this resource to help folks design a system that supports them through it. letsqueerthingsup.com/2017/07/22/a...letsqueerthingsup.comADHD Shutdown: 3 Ways to Manage Overwhelm & ProcrastinationThat’s when I knew: I didn’t want to live like this anymore. 063
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 08/01/2025"Grief helps retrieve us from the past, where our younger selves are still living in the hope that this will secure the love we need, and shifts us away from the future, where our younger selves are still living in the fear that we’ll be abandoned in the end." 🍃letsqueerthingsup.com3 Questions to Meet and Release Your Fawn Trauma ResponseGrief helps retrieve us from the past, where our younger selves are still living. 010
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 01/01/2025Yes!! I am working on moving most of my Twitter threads as part of this project. The one you’re thinking of is probably this: letsqueerthingsup.com/2019/06/01/f... Does that link work for you? ♥️letsqueerthingsup.comPeople-Pleasing Can Be a Trauma Response, ‘Fawning’ — Here’s How to Recognize It“I avoided those relationships where love was free and easy. Because it didn’t feel ‘earned,’ so I didn’t feel worthy.” 100
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 01/01/2025Hey, 2025. ♥️ We aren’t apologizing for who we became to survive anymore.letsqueerthingsup.comWhy I’m No Longer Striving For My Best, Highest, or ‘Healed’ SelfWe don’t have to compensate anymore for who we became to survive. 163
Sam Dylan Finch @samdylanfinch.bsky.social · 20/11/2024“I intend to embody my best approximation, through my mannerisms and general demeanor, of precisely what it is you are, or what I could discern based on social cues and their adjacent queer cultural scripts: Which is to say, what I understand to be ‘cunt.’” —Spock Roan or something 010
