🌈LGBTQ+ Mental Health & Resistance 🌈

By Dr. Keonna "Cookie" Watson

September 17, 2025

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There are so many people, places, habits, and beliefs constantly trying to chip away at our lives or erase us altogether. And yet, they dress it up as “just a difference of opinion.”

We’ve heard it all before:

• “People can believe differently.”

• “Political views don’t have to align.”

• “Women don’t need rights.”

• “LGBTQ+ folks don’t deserve rights.”

• “Black people exaggerate history.”

• “Talking about Black history causes division.”

• “White people have nothing to do with what their ancestors did.”

The list never ends.

But let’s be real: discrimination, erasure, and denial of existence are not opinions. They are ignorant. They are whitewashing. They are narcissistic. They are sexism, classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and queerphobia; plain and simple.

And yet, the world tells us: “Give people grace.”

But grace at the expense of our well-being? Grace, when our identities are questioned, our histories erased, our rights denied? No. Not even Grace deserves her name here. As a matter of fact, Grace who? Sometimes, refusing to extend grace to hate is the only way to protect our mental, emotional, and physical health.

As a Mental Health Professional and Educator, I ground my work in two guiding frameworks:

• The Sociological Imagination (C. Wright Mills, 1959), which asks us to step outside of our personal experiences and see the ways larger social structures, politics, culture, and history shape our daily lives.

  
  

• Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), which reminds us that multiple, overlapping environments shape human development, from our families and communities to broader systems of power and policy.

  
  

When we combine these lenses, the truth is undeniable: our mental health and well-being are not just shaped by what happens inside of us, but by the social and structural forces around us. Understanding this is the first step toward change.

But while we wait for others to choose fairness, dignity, and unity, while we wait for hate to be unlearned, we must take care of ourselves, rejecting liabilities and embracing assets.

We must resist. We must build community. We must find and protect safe spaces. We must ground, meditate, pray, chant, sing, breathe, dance. Because we cannot bow down. We cannot hand our peace over to ignorance. And if today’s reflection feels like a vent, then let it be one, because venting is part of healing. And healing, for us, is resistance. Peace! 🌈

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Dr. Keonna "Dr. Cookie" Watson: Owner, Holistic Mental Health Provider, & Spiritualist at FreeLee Integrated Health Wealth, an inclusive and sacred healing space for LGBTQ+, Men, Women, and BIPOC

Founder and Warrior of FreeLee Foundation (FreeLee Life Services), a nonprofit organization committed to dismantling the inequities faced by LGBTQ+, Women, and BIPOC communities in accessing essential resources and support.