Plural Acceptance Week Events & Plural Positivity World Conference
What is Plurality?
"Plural" is a community-based (non-medicalized) identity term for anyone who experiences being "many" in any way. The (inclusive) plural community is a big umbrella that includes DID, OSDD, and all other types of plurality from any cultures. The idea is to have an inclusive umbrella community and term so that various pockets of plural cultures have shared spaces in which to compare notes, share terminology, propagate news throughout the community, create tips for newcomers, brainstorm ideas, figure out what works for the unique issues this community faces, etc.
Many of the folk who organize events & inclusive materials within the plural community (like us) are also DID- or OSDD-diagnosed with a variety of histories and experiences. We've taken an inclusive approach because everyone deserves community, safe spaces to explore identity, support in the process, and frankly our understanding of ourselves one day may change another day. Excluding people due to their understanding of their experiences, or how they frame their experiences, is eliminating opportunities to learn, share resources, and pours energy into divisiveness. Many plural spaces & events may discuss issues very relevant and important to folk diagnosed with related disorders, but as an inclusive community we also welcome voices of those with other, different experiences. It's also exceptionally important to hear about and recover non-Western Medicine points of view about plurality especially from people of color, Indigenous experiences, and other cultures around the world. We personally have a motto: "Plurality has been around longer than therapists." We know plurality in various forms, similar to hearing voices, has been framed very differently at different times in various cultures.
Thus this is somewhat similar to Hearing Voices groups — groups for folk who hear voices where they are not centered around whether someone has a medical or mental health condition or not. Hearing Voices groups may include folk diagnosed with schizophrenia, plurals, and indigenous folk who speak to spirits, etc. so cultural explanations for hearing voices are not judged or promoted in their community. In a similar way, the inclusive plural community does not hold to the idea that the only way that someone can be plural is through trauma, or that it had to happen by accident, or that it's always undesirable, etc. The plural community comes together to create spaces where it is safe to share the experience of being plural, whatever that means for you&.
Thus, even if you have never considered whether to be part of the inclusive plural community before — you are always welcome to participate in plural community events so long as you're respectful of other folk's experiences in the community. Whether you fully participate, watch some videos, seek out support from the community, or choose this time to come out to new people as being (insert some type of plural here) — this is the time of year we have chosen as a community to help further knowledge & acceptance of "plural" (as a whole, and the myriad subsets under it) as an increasingly-recognized identity label.
Side note:
There's a good bit of friction between "inclusive" community vs "exclusive" community — much like there are in other spaces in the world. I guess a big frustration being someone 100% dedicated to building inclusive communities — both internally and externally — is being told I shouldn't and belaboring all the points as to why I shouldn't promote or support the idea of inclusion.
Plural Acceptance Week (PAW) & Plural Pride Day
Folk in the community will be posting events on social media, putting up videos on YouTube, holding online events, etc. throughout the week of Monday July 11th through Sunday July 17th.
Plural Pride Day is Saturday the 16th (3rd Saturday of July), and PAW always wraps around it. On Plural Pride Day, The Plural Association((Disclosure: We are not affiliated with The Plural Association (TPA), which is an international non-profit based in the Netherlands. We do present at their events or table at their events from time-to-time, and we created the PPWC with Stronghold System, the founders of TPA, in 2019. We no longer run the PPWC — it's now run by the TPA. TPA is using some of our materials to help train their warmline volunteers. We still admin & host the Plural Events website & share the back end admin of the YouTube library for the conference — which is a succession plan safety measure to ensure the community doesn't lose access to the PPWC's free open-access video channel.)) will be hosting an online gathering/meetup, which is also kinda part of the conference — see below.
Plural Positivity World Conference ("PPWC")
Started in 2019, we Crisses & Stronghold organized a 3-day multi-track free online conference as a counter-conference to the expensive in-person NYC-inaccessible ISST-D conference. The idea was based on the idea of "Nothing about us without us" — as they were holding a conference about us but making it difficult for the people they were talking about to even attend.
We had the idea before we both attended the Healing Together 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida, USA — and we had 2 informal focus groups in-person before & after Healing Together to discuss the idea with other plural systems who were in attendance at the conference. We decided to do it with 7 weeks to prepare for the conference, put out a call for presenters, and went for it.
Our idea was a conference without barriers, as much as we could do in 7 weeks. Here's a list of past conference sessions, all still available on YouTube. We got presenters, recordings whenever possible, had 2-3 tracks, 28 sessions (in 2019) — many of which we managed to do caption corrections on before the conference launch.
Now we maintain a library of about 53 sessions from the 3 past years of the conference, and this year's conference will be 2-days, several tracks, and include a French track. The conference dates were changed to happen during PAW as well.
Attending PPWC
Now there's 2 ways to attend the PPWC conference. You can register for in to the TPA's online conference venue via Airmeet and participate in moderated chats & visit booths, and watch/listen to live content & Q&As all through that platform — or you can watch the prerecorded conference videos on the YouTube channel (make sure to subscribe and click the bell icon — but note that the number of notifications you can get from 1 channel per day is limited! so set your own alarms for the sessions you want to see too — or come back and watch them another time) without having to log in to Airmeet.
If you're able to join us on Airmeet, we look forward to seeing y'all there.
If you're unable to join us in the conference venue, we hope that you're able to enjoy PAW activities, exercise great care, watch some extra videos, etc.