Quick Treats For Repair & Resilience

An antidote to inbox tedium for parents torn in too many directions

Raising Luminaries Quick Treats! featuring a hand holding an ice cream cone with bright sprinkles across the whole image

Hey friends!

Are you feeling a little rough around the edges? Between winter holidays and the upcoming inauguration, I can understand needing a break to lick your wounds before bracing for another 4 years of battle.

So, with that… New Year! It feels disingenuous to say ‘Happy New Year,’ but at the very least, I can shout ‘NEW YEAR!’ in your direction with enthusiasm. In the darkest, coldest days of the year while you retreat into a pile of blankets, I’m willing to be loud enough for both of us.

2025 sure will be a…year…when things will happen! Yup.

Here’s to making 2025 an adventure when no matter what comes, we’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeves.

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January 2025 Quick Treats

Instead of demanding action, these treats are for you - with no expectations, no obligations, and no guilt if you’re not up for it right now

1. Good News

2. Cool Things That Exist Now

3. Oh, Hey We Found The Helpers

4. A Goofy Thing Just For You To Enjoy

5. Helpful Stuff To Keep In Your Pocket For Later

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Four disability advocacy pigeons celebrate the downfall of Autism Speaks with sparklers and party hats.

1. Good News in Disability Action

First up - huge news. Autistic neurodiversity advocates successfully forced Autism Speaks Canada to shutter this month after years of community education and disability advocacy.

Second - a program employing blind medical tactile examiners highlights the skills of people who aren’t reliant on sight to circumnavigate cultural taboos in preventative cancer detection. (Specifically: feelin’ up those boobies.) Showing that the skills and expertise of disabled people are valuable and unique.

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A very hip pigeon uses a phone to text his representatives in congress.You can tell he’s hip because he’s got cool headphones, a nice beanie, and a lot of jackets on. I think the youths call it ‘drip’? Anyway, many plainly bedecked pigeons look on, saying “wow so easy” and “all the cool birds do it!”

2. Cool Things That Have Existed For Quite A While, Actually

You probably already know how to annoy your representatives by now. But with the renewed front of shocked and appalled people blindsided and panicking about the upcoming inauguration, you probably have a few friends who talk about resistance but don’t do much about it.

5 Calls and Resistbot offer easy, stress-free ways for those new to advocacy to make their voices heard on urgent legislation.

Share them with that friend who posts BLM banners on Facebook but doesn’t know who represents her in Congress. Walk your cousin through the process every time he threatens to move to Canada.

• 5 Calls gives you a quick summary of contested legislation along with an easy script - so there’s no excuse to stay silent out of fear you’ll ‘say the wrong thing.’

• Resistbot makes sending messages to your elected officials super easy, directly through texts. Both are free, require zero understanding of civics, and take less than a minute to use.

Start a challenge with your friends and family - whoever manages to poke their elected officials for the longest number of days in a row gets bragging rights.

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Two pigeon library volunteers wearing cozy knit hats protect the stacks at a local library. One wears a name tag that says “Hello, my name is Hemingway Tomefeathers (get it?) and the other’s nametag says “Coolette Pagesworth (GET IT?!?!) Because they are birds! In a library! Who says library defense can’t be fun? (No one. I’ve never heard this from anyone ever, actually.)

3. Oh Hey, We Found The Helpers…

The Leftist Library Project provides resources, guidance, and hope to help you protect and strengthen your local public library against defunding and censorship.

Activities for adults and kids are as simple as signing up for a local library card or as exciting as joining your local library board. There’s something in there for everyone who loves libraries.

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4. A Goofy Thing For You To Just Enjoy

As the year of the snake approaches, I’m embracing the intention to coil up and build a strong, solid foundation of resistance, along with the willingness to shed busywork bullshit that no longer works for us in the spirit of mischievous adaptation.

And this animation by NaturalHabitTok really captures that vibe.

[Video description: Oh what a cute little cartoon of this cute yellow lizard girl with her adorable pink bows enjoying a make-pretend tea party. But huh… her tea party guest appears to be a horrifying, gray, dried hust of discarded skin named Mr. Sheddingskin. Our little lizard friend, Ashley, starts monologuing with a quite and proper chat quickly escalates into an unsettling realization that Mr. Sheddingskin has designs on her man. Oh crap - has Ashley poisoned the tea?! Now she’s smashing crockery, is it time to throw hands?! Only one way to find out…]

@naturalhabitokFun Fact: Lizards, amphibians, and other reptiles shed their skin and eat it in order to avoid wasting any valuable nutrients. 🫖🦎🍽️ Big thanks to Bubs for voicing Ashley! 🎀 #naturalhabitatshorts #naturalhabitat #naturalhabitok

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5. Helpful Stuff For When You Need It

Raising Luminaries Social Justice Snow Day Activities padlet. Stuck indoors with kids climbing the walls? Invite your kids to choose from a range of free social justice activities using stuff you already have. I ran out of space in the graphic, but also it’s good to know that I tried to choose activities that require a minimum of supervision and busywork on your part as a caregiver. Seriously who has the time to coordinate that. I’m not an art teacher! I’ve got other shit to do.

Stuck at home with kids bouncing off the walls? Need something to occupy your kids, but don’t want to head to a store, buy one of those expensive brain-building STEM toys, and your recycling bin is overflowing with junk?

Enjoy a wide range of kid-friendly activities for kids of all ages (except newborns, honestly all they really want is to look at a black and white pictures of daisies during tummy time) that don’t require a complicated set-up or a ton of oversight.

Even though the kids have a snow day off from school, we live in a capitalist hellscape and your work deadlines and chores aren’t going anywhere. So enjoy these kid-driven activities to occupy them for a few minutes while you hide in the closet stuffing your face with goldfish crackers.

Our snow day activities are a direct result of the shenanigans we get up to in the Luminary Braintrust. Join us for even more helpful tools to make parenting easier when annoying things like like snow ruin your carefully laid plans.

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Coming up next:

I’ll be back next week with kids books and activities to help kids smash ableism and fatphobia with a toolkit celebrating all kinds of bodies.

with you,

Ashia