QUEER WELLNESS ROUNDTABLE LAUNCH
Referencing Harvey Milk’s signature slogan, “You gotta give ‘em HOPE,” The Queer Wellness Roundtable explored Harvey’s vision in the context of today’s political climate. Speakers Colton Reid, Family Nurse Practitioner, Paul Johnson, Somatic Body Worker, and Will Conner, Associate Marital & Family Therapist offered perspectives and tips on how to maintain a hopeful outlook during difficult times.
Colton Reid, Family Nurse Practitioner www.mercure.life
Informed Consent vs Gatekeeping:
The informed consent model treats the patient as the authority on their own body — the provider's role is to give complete information about risks and benefits and support autonomous decision-making. The gatekeeping model requires patients to prove, justify, and wait before receiving care. The research consistently shows that informed consent produces better outcomes, higher treatment adherence, and lower rates of regret — and it removes significant financial and logistical barriers that disproportionately affect queer patients.
SDOH Through a Queer Lens: Social Determinants of Health are the non-medical conditions of daily life that shape how healthy we are able to be. All five domains — social context, healthcare access, economic stability, neighborhood environment, and education — intersect in the queer health experience in compounding ways. The Castro itself is a protective factor. Geographic belonging has measurable health effects. Spaces like the one we created last night are not just community — they are clinical interventions.
The questions to ask a potential queer-conscious primary care provider:
1. Do you have experience providing care for gay and queer patients?
2. Are you familiar with PrEP, sexual health, and the specific preventive care needs of queer people?
3. Will you approach my sexual health without assumptions or judgment?
4. Do you have referral relationships with other affirming providers?
5. How do you handle it if I need to correct you or push back on something?
Things to notice in the first appointment:
— Did the intake forms feel like they were written with you in mind?
— Did the provider ask open questions rather than make assumptions?
— Was your sexual health discussed matter-of-factly — without alarm or shame?
— Did you leave feeling more at ease than when you walked in?
Things to reflect on for yourself:
— Have I avoided care in the past because of how I was treated?
— Are there things I've never told a provider because I didn't feel safe enough to?
— What would a provider relationship look like where I feel fully seen?
Informed Consent vs Gatekeeping: The informed consent model treats the patient as the authority on their own body — the provider's role is to give complete information about risks and benefits and support autonomous decision-making. The gatekeeping model requires patients to prove, justify, and wait before receiving care. The research consistently shows that informed consent produces better outcomes, higher treatment adherence, and lower rates of regret — and it removes significant financial and logistical barriers that disproportionately affect queer patients.
Through a Queer Lens: Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) are the non-medical conditions of daily life that shape how healthy we are able to be. All five domains — social context, healthcare access, economic stability, neighborhood environment, and education — intersect in the queer health experience in compounding ways. The Castro itself is a protective factor. Geographic belonging has measurable health effects. Spaces like the one we created last night are not just community — they are clinical interventions.
Download Colton’s Presentation
Will Conner, Associate Marital & Family Therapist www.WillConner.care
Harvey Milk's 1978 "Hope Speech” was a landmark address in the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Its core message is that visible representation is the only way to break down prejudice and provide hope to those who feel disenfranchised.
Milk’s Legacy
His speech was delivered during a time of intense anti-gay campaigns led by Anita Bryant. By focusing on hope, Milk sought to mobilize the community to move forward despite the "anger and frustrations" of the era.
Key Themes and Arguments
The Importance of Visibility: Milk argued that "friends" in elected office are not enough; the gay community must elect their own leaders to dispel myths and stereotypes.
A "Green Light" for the Future: Milk described his own election as a signal to a young person that the world is open to them.
Challenging the Narrative: Milk disputed the media's claim of a nationwide "movement to the right.” He highlighted his own election and the decriminalization of marijuana in Mississippi as evidence of a “movement to the left.”
Intersectional Justice: Milk addressed broader social issues, labeling a tax initiative as "racist" because it would lead to layoffs primarily affecting minorities.
Where We are Now
While the sources of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric have changed in the last 47 years, the national discourse is openly hostile toward any group that isn’t aligned with the conservative, heterosexual white male patriarchy.
Systematic Erasure of Symbols and Legacy
The Trump Administration took the symbolic step of stripping Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. Navy ship, an intentional attempt to erase LGBTQ+ contributions from the historical record.
Targeting Schools and Youth
”Protecting children"has again become a central rhetorical pillar for restrictive policies with the administration issuing executive orders aimed at gender-affirming care and eliminating "gender ideology" in K-12 schools.
Military Service Bans
The Administration is utilizing the military as a site for excluding LGBTQ+ individuals.
Coping Strategies
Cognitive distortions are irrational, habitual thought patterns—or "thought traps"—that skew perception of reality, usually reinforcing negative emotions and self-beliefs. These biases often fuel anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem by causing people to interpret situations negatively without evidence.
Download a deck of Cognitive Distortions for your development of a mindfulness practice that identifies these cognitive distortions so you can maintain a sense of agency over your emotional responses.
Paul Johnson, Somatic Body Worker www.KinkyCoach.com
Hope and Body
When Milk talked about hope, he was not talking about wishful thinking. He was speaking to queer people who knew fear, rejection, shame, invisibility, and danger. Hope has often been part of how we survive. It is what lets someone in a small town, in a hostile family, in a hostile workplace, or even in their own private despair feel that there is another possibility. Hope is not just a thought we hold in the mind. Hope is something the body has to be able to feel/access. When we lose hope, the body may contract or stiffen up. When hope returns, even in a small way, the body begins to mobilize again. We breathe differently. We stand differently. We reach differently. We act differently. Hope is the spark that helps shift us from collapse into movement, from numbness into choice, from survival into connection.
1. The anatomy of hope: More than an idea
Many of us have been taught to think of hope as an attitude. But from a body-based perspective, hope is also a nervous system experience. When we face marginalization, threat, or chronic stress, the body may protect us by shutting down, bracing, appeasing, or disappearing. These responses are not failures. They are survival intelligence. When we feel unsafe, we may go into:
Freeze: I can’t move.
Fawn: I have to please or appease to stay safe.
Collapse: Why bother? Nothing I do matters.
Hyper vigilance: I have to scan constantly for danger.
Hope is not the absence of fear. Not frantic actions. Not panic. Not forced positivity responses. Hope is what becomes possible when the body begins to feel enough safety, support, and connection to move again.
2. Presence as a physical act
First, we have to get present in our bodies. "Come out!" was a demand for physical presence. Milk understood that visibility changes the world. Coming out was not only a personal declaration. It was also a physical act. Somatically, "coming out" is the act of taking up space and allowing oneself to be seen. But many of us have learned the "protective curve"—the habit of shrinking the body to avoid being a target. Shame and fear often show up in the front of the body — the chest, belly, throat, and face. We round the shoulders. We tighten the belly. We make ourselves smaller. We pull the heart back. We hide the parts of us that might be judged, rejected, or targeted. To take up space and become visible, we need to feel the support of the backside of our bodies. Not just our spine, but also our history, our ancestors, our community, and our own lived strength. These hold us up so the front of our heart can be soft and open. When the back body supports us, the front body does not have to armor so hard.
Posture and Presence Exercise: Let’s try to get this idea into our body awareness
Take a moment and let your body find the shape it takes when it is trying not to be seen. When it feels threated or rejected. No need to exaggerate. Just notice. Maybe the shoulders roll in. Maybe the breath gets smaller. Maybe the belly tightens. Maybe the eyes drop. Maybe the head leans forward. Pause. What does a breath feel like from this position? Now, without forcing anything, begin to feel the backside of your body. Your feet on the ground. Feel the chair under you. Feel your spine and your neck. Now, push down firmly with your feet and feel your tailbone lift slightly. Roll your shoulders up and pull them back towards each other. Let there be a little more length to your spine. A little more room across the chest. Feel the back of your heart shift forward. Take a breath from this position. This is not about performing or “faking it until you make it.” It is about occupying your skin. Embodying hope means moving from a "protected" heart to a "proactive" heart. Not an unguarded heart. Not a naive heart. A heart that has support behind it. This supported heart allows us to be present and, more importantly, allows us to stay centered.
3. Resilience: The "Blade of Green Grass" Concept
We often confuse resilience with hardness. We imagine resilience as being tough, armored, unaffected, impenetrable, or able to “take it.” But somatically, that kind of hardness can become brittle. It may protect us for a while, but it can also cut us off from breath, feeling, pleasure, connection, and support. I like to think of resilience as green grass. Grass survives because it bends. The wind moves through it. Feet may press it down. Weather may batter it. But because it is rooted and flexible, it can rise again.Queer resilience is about cultivating the Nervous system’s capacity to oscillate—to come back to center. We move into stress, and then we come back. We feel fear, and then we reconnect. We get stretched, and then we return toward center. It’s about building a "wider window of tolerance."
4. Hope and Resilience is about Community
Harvey Milk’s movement was never about solitary heroes. It was about the power of the “us.” Hope became powerful because it was shared, spoken aloud, and carried by a community. Think of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. “Hope” was the cornerstone of his political message and visual identity. When we are under stress, our individual nervous systems can move quickly into reaction. We may tighten, collapse, withdraw, get angry, appease, or go numb. That is part of being human. But when we can return to center, even briefly, we create a small space of choice. We become less driven by fear and more available to dignity, connection, and intentional action. And we do not have to do that alone. We help regulate one another. When we gather, breathe, listen, soften, and stay present, our bodies begin to take cues from each other. If one person is grounded, it becomes easier for the person next to them to find their own ground. We do not simply coexist in community; we co-regulate.
Embodiment practice: the shared pulse
I’d like us to feel this collective anchor right now. No one has to be the 'strong one' here; we are just going to share the air." Let’s take a moment to feel that. Notice that you are not alone in this room.Without needing to stare at anyone, let your body register the presence of other people here. Feel your feet or your seat. Feel your own breath.
• Take three slow, audible breaths together.
• Count them out: “In for four... out for six.”
• On the final exhale, invite everyone to make a soft "hum" or "ha" sound.
Notice the shift in the room. A room full of separate nervous systems begins to find a shared rhythm. We move out of isolated survival mode and into something more connected, more intentional, and more visionary. We don't just carry hope; we are the hope for the person sitting next to us."
Conclusion
Hope is not something we wait for someone else to deliver. It is something we practice, embody, and pass between us. Many of us learned to shrink for good reasons; that protection was wisdom, not failure. The invitation now is to gently explore what becomes possible when we expand — not as performance, but as liberation. Our community already knows this. We have been practicing embodied hope for generations — in chosen families, on dance floors, in protest lines, in recovery circles, in living rooms, in bedrooms, in bars, in clinics, and in kitchens. Every place where one queer person has turned to another and said, “You are not alone.” These ideas are not about learning hope from scratch. Perhaps it is about remembering a skill our bodies and our communities already carry: the ability to find one another, regulate one another, stand one another back up, and keep imagining a future large enough for all of us.