Tuesday, September 9, 2025 at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Stories Books & Cafe, Los Angeles
Reject the stigmas of trauma and chronic illness by fostering queer forms of intimacy—and embracing the many ways humans can care for one another. The writer behind the popular @softcore_trauma Instagram offers a deeply personal memoir for folks seeking healing and better care. The forms of intimacy and care that we’ve been sold are woefully inadequate and problematic. In a world that treats those who are sick and traumatized as problems in need of a cure, nonbinary writer, artist, educator, and Instagram creator Margeaux Feldman offers a different story. Trauma, which all too often manifests as chronic illness, tells us that there is something deeply wrong with the world we live in. A world that promotes individualism, fractures us from community through violence and systemic oppression, and leaves us traumatized. That is what we need to cure. While unveiling their own lived experiences caregiving for their sick father, losing their mother, surviving sexual abuse, and grappling with their own chronic illness, Feldman provides roadmaps for embracing queer modes of care, or “hysterical intimacies,” that reject the notion that those who have been labeled sick are broken. Feldman looks at the lengthy history of branding girls, women, and femmes—and their desires—as sick, from the treatment of hysterics by Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud in the 19th and 20th centuries. What emerges is a valiant call for rethinking the ways we seek healing. This compelling blend of theory, personal narrative, and cultural criticism offers a path forward for reimagining the shapes and forms that intimacy, care, and interdependence can take. Margeaux Feldman (they/them) is a writer, a public educator, and an artist. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts and a PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto. Their essays have been published in The Sonora Review, GUTS: A Canadian Feminist Magazine, PRISM, Rabble, and The Ex-Puritan, amongst others. They also run the popular Instagram meme account @softcore_trauma where they write about their experiences living with trauma and chronic illness. They currently live in Los Angeles with their 2 elderly cats. You can learn more about them on their website www.margeauxfeldman.com. In conversation with: Natalie Amber is a Certified Canadian Counsellor (C.C.C), working from Treaty 6 territory, Edmonton/ Amiskwacîwâskahikan / ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ, homeland of many First Nations and Métis peoples. She offers psychotherapy services to clients across Canada, with an Internal Family Systems and parts work lens. She believes that nature is our most wise teacher, and when not working as a therapist, devotes herself to her decades-long passion for organic gardening. One of her main goals in life is to be as nerdy and informed about roses and rose care as possible, and to take a full account of all the different kinds of bugs who've made a home in her backyard garden'. She's delighted to be here to celebrate her dear friend Margeaux's memoir, and to discuss the important topic of illness and intimacy. Varia Erochina is a somatic teacher and practitioner dedicated to personal and collective healing. Queerness, immigration, class struggle, and lived experience of complex trauma orient their work towards justice for all. Varia takes an integrated approach to long term healing, combining their training in Alchemical Alignment trauma resolution, Gestalt psychotherapy, spirituality and somatic parts work. Their popular course How to Feel offers practical education and embodied practice for feeling your feelings. They are the creator of Cards for Self-Care and offer 1-1 and group support, lead workshops, retreats, classes and more. Varia lives as a settler on Dish With One Spoon treaty territory in Toronto, Canada, and spends their free time making ceramics, taking road trips, walking in nature, and pulling tarot cards. Learn more at their website.