Queer Joy Is Resistance.

This month’s session of The Remedy was nothing short of soul work. The evening brought together a room full of hearts wide open, ready to listen, reflect, laugh, cry, and be changed.

At its core, this conversation was about joy. But not the fluffy, fleeting kind. The kind of joy that defies erasure. That breathes through grief. That rebuilds what oppression tries to tear down. The kind of joy that queer people, especially Black queer people, have long made a home in, even when the world tried to lock them out.

Our panel featured three powerhouse voices who did more than speak- they opened a portal.

Kenneth Something is a spoken word artist, educator, and longtime community organizer whose legacy in Baltimore’s Black and queer arts spaces is undeniable. His words reminded us that protest isn’t always a march. It’s also in the poem, the breath, the refusal to disappear.

Ti Malik Coleman is a Black trans facilitator and comedian who lives and leads with radical vulnerability. He spoke with tenderness and grit about being a "pioneer Black, pioneer queer," and how the stage has become his safe place, a space where he can say the things the world often doesn’t want to hear.

Ashley Lakayla Yates, known as Black Assets, set the room on fire with her truth. She shared how community has literally kept her fed and how she’s used her art and her voice to affirm that joy, music, and storytelling are not just gifts. They are survival. They are wealth.

We explored the painful tension of being “the first.” Of being the one in your family, your job, your community to live out loud. Of choosing visibility even when it costs you love, safety, or understanding. There were stories of rejection from family, of entire audiences walking out when someone dared to speak their truth, and of still choosing to get back up and do the work again and again.

"It hurts to be in community with people you’ve sacrificed for, only for them to say, 'I don’t want to hear your story.' And I still do this work for them."

We talked about what it means to be fully seen. To have someone look at you and agree with your becoming, even before the world does. About how queerness is not solely an identity, its a daily act of crafting liberation.

"My people agreed with me before they could see it. That’s love. That’s community."

But perhaps the most urgent and moving part of the night came as we turned to the topic of rest.

So many of us in the room, panelists and attendees alike, wrestled with the guilt of stopping. Of not producing. Of laying down and letting others hold us. We shared how rest often feels dangerous, even shameful. How deeply it is tied to survival, lineage, and inherited pressure.

"Rest isn’t in our nervous systems yet. We were beat for it. We learned to survive by doing."

"Sometimes the revolution is sitting down. And letting someone else fight for a while."

It was a truth that hit hard. Many of us don’t rest because we don’t feel safe enough to receive.

Yet even in that discomfort, we found healing in each other’s reflections. We began to reclaim rest not as a reward, but as our right. We remembered that celebration isn’t a distraction from the work: it is the work.

"You can’t pour from an empty cup. But you also can’t refill a cup you won’t let anyone touch."

What made this session so special wasn’t just the depth of what was shared. It was how held we all felt. The Remedy has always been about more than conversation. It’s about communion. And that night, we were reminded that we don’t have to perform strength to be powerful. That thriving is a form of resistance. That softness is revolutionary.

As I shared during the session, I wasn’t sure I had the capacity to hold space. I’ve been grieving. I’ve been tired. But this community, the love in that room, carried me. I didn’t have to perform. I just had to show up. And you all did the rest.

To every person who attended, witnessed, wept, laughed, and clapped through the tears, thank you. You made space for a healing that none of us will forget.

Keep choosing joy.
Keep choosing each other.
Keep choosing rest.

See you next month!

With love and in purpose,
Jasmine Garland
Founder, The Remedy