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Urvashi Vaid, A Long Legacy Long in the Making

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Rest in Power, Urv.  Urvashi Vaid passed Saturday, May 14, 2022. I am lucky she took me under her wings as a fellow Co-PI of the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey. Overseeing the analytical responsibility for the survey, I was also lucky to have the remainder of my comrades-in-arms with me in Atlanta for a long-awaited in-person research meeting when we learned Thursday morning that she had been moved to palliative care.  We were all supposed to meet in-person at the Creative Change conference in New Orleans this past Spring, where she was to be awarded the Susan J.Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. However, covid got the best of all of us -- and, it was clearly safer for us all to meet online.  Nonetheless, below is a small tribute to Urvashi Vaid -- the world starves for her energy.  Just like the community organizer she was, Urvashi Vaid invited two of her Co-PIs for the National LGBQT+ Women's Community Survey -- J'aime Grant and myself -- to join the stag

Honoring Our Queer Mothers

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Today, I am paying a tribute to my Queer Mother, Robin G. White (Bobbie). She is the sole reason I became a co-principal investigator of the National LGBTQ+ Women*s Community Survey ( https://www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org/ ) -- the first-ever large scale study of women who partner with women. I met Robin as a budding runaway dropping in at Vox, Atlanta's teen newspaper. She was the creative writing director then, where I would eventually find a tactile way to use my voice. As I aged through young adulthood, Robin was a constant source of the I'm-gon-come-get-you! kind of love. She fed me, gave me a job, published my first poetry chapbook, let me drive her car, and eventually would just save me over and over and over again.  In September 2015, I asked her to sit my house until I was able to figure out to do with Atlanta. She did, and in so doing, she began a process of discovery for me to identify why the corner my house held in the neighborhood was so sick. We were able to source th