This is our philosophy of survival. Not the inspirational kind. The real kind — gritty, communal, unfinished.
We keep on livin’. Not because systems get fixed or pain disappears. Because we show up for each other. Because survival is an act of resistance, and resistance is contagious.
This page holds the words, music, and testimony that carry us.
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
Content Warning: This page is hopeful and heavy and hits in the feels. Prepare to cry but also feel hope and togetherness. You are not alone. We’ve been there too. Now we’re all here, and we’re doing our best to keep on livin’, together.
Real help against the onslaught.
I would like to honour all the autistic people who survive the care system somehow.
Ann Memmott
All those who survive extreme ‘therapy’.
All those who are brought to their knees, reading hellish descriptions of their loved people.
And all who did not survive this onslaught.
Keep on Livin’ — An Anthem for Trauma Survivors
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
Look up to the sky, sky, sky Take back your own tonight You'll find more than you see It's time now, now, get ready
This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and
You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Keep On Livin' by Le Tigre
We use music all over our website to help us tell our stories. “Keep On Livin’” is a song by and for trauma survivors. It’s the theme song for our mission.
Le Tigre released “Keep on Livin’” in 2001 on Feminist Sweepstakes. Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman made it as a direct address to survivors of sexual violence and trauma — a song that refuses to let people be alone with their pain.
The song is built on urgency and collective address. “Look up to the sky / take back your own tonight.” Not advice. A hand extended. A chorus to sing together.
It became an anthem not just for survivors of sexual violence, but for anyone surviving systems that were supposed to help them and didn’t. The queer community heard it. Disabled people heard it. Neurodivergent people heard it. The song’s power is in its specificity: Hanna wrote it for real people in real danger, and that specificity travels. Survival anthems do that. They’re written for one wound and they find all the others.
Hanna has spoken about writing the song during a period of processing her own trauma. The music is relentlessly propulsive — there is no space for giving up in the sonic architecture of this song. It pushes you forward even when the lyrics are sitting with hard things. That tension between weight and momentum is the song’s gift.
We chose it as our foundation because Stimpunks is built on the same refusal. The refusal to let broken systems have the last word. The refusal to frame survival as exceptional. The insistence that you are not alone, that your life matters, that keeping on livin’ is worth it and worth fighting for — together.
Activists in the early campaign for AIDS awareness created a powerful slogan: “Silence=Death.” Silence about trauma also leads to death—the death of the soul.
Stimpunks rejects the good cripple mythos. We’re here for “the bitter cripple, the uninspirational cripple, the smoking cripple, the drinking cripple, the addict cripple, the cripple who hasn’t ‘tried everything’”.
Some people with disabilities call themselves “crips.” “Crip” used to be a mean word for disabled. It is short for “cripple.” But some disabled people call themselves “crips” on purpose. The word “crip” belongs to disabled people now.
Disability Visibility anthology (Plain language summary) – Disability Visibility Project
Resilience
As long as we're getting killed for our differences
We have to keep living, keep living through it
And how many strangers will I upset today with my existence?
Skip through it I guess, keep resisting
We’re gonna live.
I watch you dancin' and
I watch you cry
I watch you look up and
Scream out why
Oh now my dear you got
So much to give
I heard them talkin' and
You're gonna live
So hold me closer and
Hold me tight
A little closer till we're
Into the night
Cause you and I we've got
So much to give
I heard them talkin' and
We're gonna live
That's right
It's alright
Last Song, The Bobby Lees
Peer-run warm lines – staffed by people who have lived mental health experience – have been shown to reduce loneliness and participants’ use of mental health crisis services. Additionally, a review of several studies found that digital forms of peer support improve the lives of people with serious mental illness by “enhancing participants’ functioning, reducing symptoms and improving program utilization.”
WARM LINE GIVES PEER MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT – NC HEALTH NEWS
Omega hai foleet.
Omega hai foleet
Are you awake or are you sleeping? Are you afraid? We've been waiting for this meeting We have come here for you, and we're coming in peace Mothership will take you on higher, higher This world you live in is not a place for someone like you Come on, let us take you home It's time to go, you are infected Come as you are, don't be scared of us, you'll be protected (Protected, protected) I guess you are a different kind of human I guess you are a different kind of human Omega hai foleet, Omega hai foleet There is a flaw in man-made matters But you are pure, and we have to get you out of here A Different Kind of Human by AURORA
“Don’t be scared, you’re okay, you can come with us and you’ll be safe, you’ve spent time on this planet but it’s not the place for you, you have a better place where you will feel more at home, we will take you there.”
AURORA on Twitter: “Track number 8: A Different Kind Of Human.”
Omega hai foleet
Just like in her song “Forgotten Love” from her previous album Infections of a Different Kind (Step I), AURORA has once again made-up an imaginary language for the title track of her third album and it’s probably the language from the afterlife place she has created specially for this track, as she explained:
“It’s a new place I created […] what if those people [the dead ones] came to a different planet, like a safe place, and they were collected by these aliens that came to the world and kind of took them with them, and they said:
“Don’t be scared, you’re okay, you can come with us and you’ll be safe, you’ve spent time on this planet but it’s not the place for you, you have a better place where you will feel more at home, we will take you there.”
And then, they’ll go up to this different place where all those people can live together”.
AURORA has also included the last letter of the Greek alphabet, “Omega”. The Omega symbol has a lot of symbolism behind it, and it’s typically used to denote the end of something.
AURORA – A Different Kind of Human Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
“When I was young, I used to always feel like an alien in this world,” says AURORA. “I never really felt like a girl. I felt out of my own body and on the outside of my friends in the school system. But as I’ve grown [with] the help of my fans around the world, and through playing concerts, it pulled me back to Earth and helped me reconnect and fall in love with humankind again.”
Aurora Explores the Disconnect with Humankind’s Most Vital Organ on ‘What Happened To The Heart?’ – American Songwriter
Wake with the morning sun.
What if I say to you it's alright, we're alright
And if you say you need me too, I'll be up all
night, It's alright
The shadows only last 'til sunrise, it's alright,
you'll be alright
'Cause you were born in the sunlight, in the
sunlight and it's very bright
(Hey) Can you feel it, waking with the
morning sun
What a feeling, we're living in the morning
sun
Sometimes all you need is darkness to see
the light, we'll see the light
We get high in the sunshine and the moon
light and it's alright
(Hey) Can you feel it waking with the morning
sun
What a feeling, we're living in the morning
sun (Yeah)
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Flower in the sun (Ohhh no no)
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Flower in the sun (Ha ah hah)
Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Yea yea yea yeah)
Flower in the sun (Flower in the sunshine)
Ah ah ah ah ah ah (shine on me)
Flower in the sun (Come come come come
come come on let it shine)
Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Yeah, yea yea yea yea)
Flower in the sun
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Flower in the sun
Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Whoa oh oh oh)
Flower in the sun
Flower Song by New Sol
Everyone who works at Afiya (as with the rest of our community) identifies as having ‘been there’ in some way. Experiences of various team members range from histories of psychiatric hospitalization to trauma to living in residential programs to living without a home to dealing with addiction and so on. No clinical supports are offered, but people who stay at the house have free access to the community where they can keep (or get) connected to clinical supports as desired.
Afiya House (full version) – YouTube
Maybe we can ease the load.
And I know it's been a while, Since you've traveled here and smiled, If there's something on your mind, I can promise to be kind, Maybe I can ease the load. Cause even cowboys can cry, Shed a tear from time to time, You ain't falling out of line, If you fall and start your cryin' You don't have to tell me why. Cause even cowboys can cry, Shed a tear from time to time, Cause I'd rather see you cry, Then have you tell a lie, Cause sometimes even cowboys cry.
This song is for anyone who has had to brave a long and lonesome road. For those of us who have had to be “cowboys” at one time or another.
Aubrey Hays
Take me home where I belong.
A safe place to rest and rebuild in between moments of stress is essential for autonomic nervous system balance.
THE VAGUS NERVE & CHRONIC ILLNESS — TRAUMA GEEK
Don’t leave me gravity.
Dive in, don't you roll over Don’t you promise your lungs to the fights Starving, hardly knew Mozart Don't you know he was never quite right He used to see craters, in her head He used to be darling and cheap But no one believed him When he said he lost his strength I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images and cling The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing Zombie eyes are promising Crooked teeth are sweet Don't leave me gravity Don’t leave me gravity
He used to see craters, in her head He used to be darling and cheap But no one believed him When he said he lost his strength I always believed him When he said he couldn't find his feet I always believed him When he said it didn't feel complete I always believed I always believed Breathe Breathe I always believed him 'til he made it back to our beat
Don’t Leave Me Gravity, Skating Polly
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.
The Next American Revolution:
Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.
Stay alive.
Please stay alive
Please stay alive
Please stay alive
Please survive
Please survive
Old Friend (Stay Alive) by Laura Jane Grace
Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society…
Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century
of all the sounds i’ve ever heard
i wandered, lost: poems by Kristina Brooke Daniele
death is the loudest
Stimpunks exists so we can survive.
I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which | could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living.
Anais Nin – The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
Up from the rubble now, love is the muscle I train
I walk myself home in the rain
I know it hurts you when they look at you strange
…
When I pause and reflect on the years spent exhausted and wrecked
I just want to go back, put it all on the deck
And say, "Child, just keep going, keep drawing your breath"
Kae Tempest – I Stand On The Line lyrics
Support Kae: Kae Tempest | Official Site
I adore us, I do it all for us
Kae Tempest – I Stand On The Line lyrics
Our warmth is a portal
We’re awkward and graceful
The place we are from is eternal
And what we embody is healing and perfect
Resilience
