digital rooting garden

the rooting garden is a dream of mine. i have been working on the idea for years and years in notes on my phones, in daydreams, in speaking it aloud to manifest. the dream is big: a collective or co-op of people wanting to create something large to help themselves, and others.

the rooting garden will start as an online hub. hopefully, this blog, a resource garden of helpful (hopefully organized) links, a fediverse server, a chat server, as well as a place for streaming. eventually, a shop, to help creators showcase and sell their work.

the streams would be games, art, workshops, or just talking. the blog would be for long-form posts and topics, similar to streams, but for the written word. official rooting garden postings (votes, code of conduct, etc.) would also come from the blog.

topics covered would be anything that could be thought of, anything of interest to those within the garden walls, what people might need to hear or learn (trans voices, Black voices, disabled voices, etc.), or just to show joy still in the world, and build some community. both members from within the garden walls and those who are not members could run workshops, and be compensated for their work.

after a lot of work, and likely many years, to create and maintain this online space: i would want to (slowly, carefully) turn it into a physical space. a large plot of land where an actual garden, some animals, and people could live, grow, and work together. the rooting garden members would both learn about caring for the land, and help others to learn as well.

workshop spaces for makers; a large general purpose room or building to rent out for topic workshops, movement workshops, a market, cooking classes, fundraising events, group work, or host garden to table dinner parties to raise funds; safe and affordable housing, for those in need, hopefully multiple houses.

the dream is big, it’s the only way i know how to dream. i hope that a team will join me in this creation, but for now it is just me and my dreams, slowly making their way into this reality.

i have been disabled my whole life, but really never knew it or had been part of the community. i was born with a hole in my heart, asthma, and allergies. i had nose bleeds often, and needed a nebulizer pretty regularly. i was fortunate to have great friends—they would encourage and run with me in school during fitness exams after they had completed their times (they were much more athletic lmao).

around puberty, the hole went away and was confusing to doctors, but i have not had any heart issues otherwise. my asthma went away around that time as well. around that time my GAD/OCD came out, along with my food issues and i had heartburn often (GERD), couldn’t sleep, and missed school often due to these issues.

once i went to college, i experienced more trauma (my home was also traumatizing for various reasons) and i have considered myself disabled, and noticed my disability since then. i developed PTSD, and was in a constant state of hypervigilance for nearly ten years, without exaggeration. this caused more stomach issues—i had diarrhea literally every single day, for two years (2017-2019) before i was able to get tests done by doctors. they claimed food allergies, but it’s more extreme sensitivity in my gut (as most don’t make my mouth/throat itchy and swollen), after talking to an allergist of other allergies. i was diagnosed with GERD. i am bloated and in digestive pain Constantly, because i cannot afford a diet that is free from the top ten most common food allergies, and a few others that aren’t as common.

somewhere in that hypervigilant period i also got some sort of joint/nerve damage or just the stress causes me to be in constant join pain. some of it may be arthritis or carpal tunnel from desk work, but it is not limited to just my wrists. my entire body hurts always, usually feels like bone pain but sometimes muscular.

now, in the past few years my asthma has returned with vengeance. combined with it being exercised induced, it is also influenced by my air-borne allergies (dander, dust, mold, certain pollen, etc). i had a period of time in the past year where just literally out of bed took me out for 30+ min. then i had to walk down the hall, down the stairs, and take care of the dogs… i am now on more medication for this than i have ever been before. my own nebulizer, two inhalers i take daily, and a rescue inhaler, plus three allergy medications i take daily. i have not needed the nebulizer or rescue inhaler since i started the two daily ones, but previous i was using my nebulizer every six hours.

i still struggle with air in my own home (due to it being neglected before i even got here, but also my pets and the house is full of smokers) but outside of it is easier. i still struggle to walk or stand for long periods. i still have issues with my OCD/GAD/PTSD.

i haven’t taken the time to write this all out, but have been thinking about it a lot and how not being considered disabled when i was younger impacted how i view disability now. it has been difficult, but really i have been in this position for my whole life and just never knew it.

my name is victoria, but you can call me ginger~

i was born the middle of five children in 1993 to a witch turned into an evangelical christian mother, and a sociopathic and abusive father in the eastern USA. i won’t go much into all of this, but it is an important part of myself, and i have been learning more and more about how growing up the way i did impacts me today.

i was very tomboyish in my youth, and since one of my older brothers and i were closest in age, we often had shared friends from church (rarely at school). most of my friends tended to be boys, but i made a few lifelong friends who were girls starting in middle school and onward.

i spent most of my free time online in forums, in chats with friends, on cute animal and gaming sites like neopets, or playing video games. my brothers and my dad were heavily into shooters, or the risk board game—but i was not always welcome in that sphere so i played legend of zelda, or co-op or competitive games (mario games) on the N64 with my younger sisters. gradually, i moved onto xbox, and the wii as time went on and siblings left the house more often.

my parents had a rather nasty separation and divorce in my middle school into high school years, and we all lived with my mother and did not need to leave our home. however, she then took on the role of caretaker and money maker—which was excessively tough on all of us.

i went to college, as we were pressured to do, and studied psychology—a huge passion of mine. as someone who did not always understand others and was constantly told i was too cold, too blunt, too much, i wanted to know more about not only my brain and emotions, but the brains and emotions of others.

in college, i was sexually assaulted, and that pushed me to learn about Title IX, trauma, and i began to organize on campus. i helped change policies and procedures, got a new administrative position added dedicated to this, and a fellowship position was also created and given to me to continue my work, as i was graduating. my fellowship position also helped write a 300k grant that the college did get, but i was let go after two years.

i started in a masters program for counseling, and made it almost all the way through but an unpaid internship was inaccessible to me for many reasons, and i dropped out of the program with six credits remaining (both semesters of internships). throughout my years i have grown more and more critical of psychology as an institution, and have stopped working in the field.

i have learned a lot about myself through psychology, and astrology. i love personality measures and assessments, even if they are not always valid (in the statistical sense). i think these tools are helpful for self analysis, and for me i feel the results are often accurate. i have discovered i am autistic, and relate heavily to my sun/moon/rising in astrology. i have been learning more about enneagram and human design recently, and they are quite interesting: i am 5w4 and a projector.

as i continued to spend more time online, i found myself hating corporate social media and ads which is what drew me to the fediverse. i jumped around before i ran my own instance for a few years, but now i am back at kitty.town and moderating there. i have always loved blogging and writing, so to find write.as was such a joy!

i hope to continue expanding my knowledge, and use this digital garden as a home for the knowledge to be shared and added to.

you can usually find me on kitty.town